A provincially incorporated contractor providing construction services to federally regulated telecommunications companies sought to challenge a provincial labour relations board's certification of its construction technicians as a provincially regulated bargaining unit.
The contractor argued that its construction technicians performed work vital, essential, or integral to federal undertakings and should therefore be subject to federal labour jurisdiction.
The Court of Appeal reversed the Divisional Court's decision, holding that the presumption of provincial jurisdiction over labour relations was not displaced.
The court found that the federal undertaking (Rogers) was not dependent on the contractor's construction technicians, and that the proper focus in derivative jurisdiction analysis is whether the federal undertaking is dependent on the particular employees in question, not whether the work performed is generally important to the federal undertaking.
