Lord Atkin:-

This is an appeal from the judgment of the Supreme Court, delivered on 17th June 1936, in the matter of a reference by the Governor-General in Council, dated 5th November 1935, asking whether the Employment and Social Insurance Act, 1935, was ultra vires of the Parliament of Canada. The majority of the Supreme Court, Rinfret, Cannon, Crocket and Kerwin, JJ. answered the question in the affirmative, the Chief Justice and Davis, J. dissenting. The Act in its preamble recited Art. 23 of the Treaty of Peace, by which in the Covenant of the League of Nations the members of the League agreed that they would endeavour to maintain fair and humane conditions of labour (omitting however in the recital that this agreement was subject to and in accordance with the provisions of international conventions existing or hereafter to be agreed), and Art. 427 of the said treaty, by which it was declared that the well-being, physical, moral and intellectual, of industrial wage earners, was of supreme international importance. It then recited that it was desirable to discharge the obligations to Canadian labour assumed under the provisions of the said treaty; and that it was essential for t