The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled unanimously that provinces have the constitutional right to restrict the importation of goods from each other, as long as the primary aim of the restriction is not to impede trade.
The ruling goes against what the man at the centre of the so-called free-the-beer case had argued and hoped for.
Thursday’s ruling will also dash the hopes of many Canadians who were hoping to have easier access to cheaper and sought-after products in another province, particularly alcohol and tobacco.
Canadian wineries will also be disappointed. They had been looking for support for their lobby to allow direct-to-consumer wine sales across the country.
Gerard Comeau, the retired New Brunswick man who initiated the case, drives two or three times a year from his home in Tracadie — about 160 kilometres north of Moncton — to Quebec, where it’s cheaper to buy beer and liquor.
The Supreme Court found that the primary purpose of New Brunswick’s law was ‘to prohibit holding excessive quantities of liquor from supplies not managed by the province.’ (CBC)
In 2012, Comeau was stopped at the New Brunswick-Quebec border by the RCMP and fined $292.50 for having 14 cases of beer, two bottles of whisky and one bottle of liqueur in his vehicle. His alcohol was confiscated.
Most provinces limit how much alcohol people can bring across provincial borders.
Comeau’s defence centred on section 121 of the Constitution Act, which states products from any province “shall … be admitted free into each of the other provinces.”
A 1921 Supreme Court decision interpreted that to mean the products only had to be free from tariffs, not from other barriers such as limits on quantity.
Comeau and others argued that that decision offered too narrow an interpretation, and that it led to the proliferation of interprovincial trade barriers.
Main purpose
But the Supreme Court disagreed Thursday, ruling that section 121 does not impose absolute free trade across Canada.
The court said that section 121 prohibits laws restricting inter-provincial trade, but only where restricting trade is the laws’ main purpose.
The court found that the primary purpose of New Brunswick’s law was “to prohibit holding excessive quantities of liquor from supplies not managed by the province.”
The court was also concerned with the potential far-reaching implications of taking away any province’s power to control what comes across its borders.
The court said it would undermine Canadian federalism and throw into jeopardy agricultural supply management schemes, public health-driven prohibitions and environmental controls.