In Gear - Today's Trucking

Dispatches
taxation—it could impact a
number of other things.”
Her suspicion is that most
international freight forwarders
are operating under
provincial health and safety
already, and while this decision
might not impact their
daily life, it could make
them think more about how
their business is aligned.
Gavan Magrath, legal
counsel for CIFFA in
Toronto agrees, adding that
for the most part the law
will clear long-standing
confusion over the nature of
interprovincial operations.
“Prior to this decision,
there was ambiguity, definitely,”
he says. “We now have a
better idea of what constitutes
an interprovincial
undertaking. That was the
real meaning of the decision.”
The ruling could also
make companies pay closer
attention to regulations
governing interprovincial
movements that might no
longer be on solid ground.
“Where those regulations
are in place, freight forwarders
will more aggressively
resist charges brought
under those regulations,” he
“We now have a
better idea of what
constitutes an
interprovincial
undertaking. That
was the real meaning
of the decision.”
says. “And some of those
regulations may wind up
getting thrown out.”
Meanwhile, the Fastfrate
decision could also have a
significant impact on many
similar companies’ labor
structure, including DHL,
which in 1994 was also
deemed to be federally regulated
by the Canada
Industrial Relations Board,
and thereby unionized,
regardless of the fact
employees and transportation
equipment operated
locally and did not cross borders
between the provinces.
That’s still how a minority
of Supreme Court judges see
the situation. Dissenting, but
outnumbered, was Justice
William Ian Corneil Binnie,
who was concerned that
freight movers could avoid
federal legal responsibility by
masking as intraprovincial
companies.
“In an era where contracting
out elements of a service
business is commonplace,
the modalities of how a truly
interprovincial transportation
operation ‘undertakes’ to
move its customers’ freight
from one part of Canada and
deliver it to another should
not contrive to defeat federal
jurisdiction,” he wrote.
“Checkerboard provincial
regulation is antithetical to
the coherent operation of a
single functionally integrated
indivisible national transportation
service.”
He described Fastfrate as
having integrated terminals
at a shipment’s origin and
destination. “This is not the
case of a company that is
simply present in each
province with a stand-alone
operation, such as like a
chain of clothing stores.
“What Fastfrate does—
the service it provides, its
‘undertaking’—is to move
freight from the hands of a
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