Robert E. Houston

Appeal concerning whether employees of an intraprovincial Alberta short line railway carrying grain to a national railway fell under federal or provincial labour jurisdiction.

The majority held the railway was neither itself an interprovincial undertaking nor sufficiently integrated with a core federal undertaking under the functional integration analysis from the labour jurisdiction jurisprudence.

Physical connection, commercial dependence, and participation in a federally regulated grain transport system were insufficient to constitutionalize the undertaking as federal.

The appeal was allowed, the constitutional question was answered in the negative, and provincial labour jurisdiction applied.

The applicants brought a motion for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Court dismissed the motion for leave to appeal.