I previously blogged about a Canadian constitutional challenge to a New Brunswick restriction on purchasing beer from other provinces and bringing it back to New Brunswick. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled on the case yesterday, and, unfortunately, declined its opportunity to establish a broad principle of free trade within Canada.
The constitutional provision at issue, Section 121, states:
All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces.
On its face, that sounds pretty broad. But the court came up with a narrow interpretation of the scope of provincial measures that are prohibited:
Read the rest of this post →[114] In summary, two things are required for s. 121 to be violated. The law must impact the interprovincial movement of goods like a tariff, which, in the extreme, could be an outright prohibition. And, restriction of cross-border trade must be the primary purpose of the law, thereby excluding laws enacted for other purposes, such as laws that form rational parts of broader legislative schemes with purposes unrelated to impeding interprovincial trade.