252 DIVISION OF LEGISLATIVE POWER. 
A portion of an Act of Nova Scotia, 1874, to facili- 
tate arrangements between Railway Companies and their 
auditors’. 
The power to legislate on bankruptcy and insolvency is 
not only a limitation of the provincial power of legislating 
on “property and civil rights ” but also of provincial powers 
relating to “procedure in civil matters.” 
Cushingv. In Cushing v. Dupuy® it was contended that an Act of 
PUPY- the Dominion Parliament which made the judgment of the 
Court of Queen’s Bench in Quebec final in matters of insol- 
vency was ultra vires, as interfering with property and civil 
rights and as dealing with procedure in a civil matter. 
“The answer to these objections,” said Sir Montague Smith 
in delivering the judgment of the Privy Council, “is obvious. 
It would be impossible to advance a step in the construction 
of a scheme for the administration of insolvent estates with- 
out interfering with and modifying some of the ordinary 
rights of property and other civil rights nor without providing 
some mode of special procedure for the vesting, realisation 
and distribution of the estate and the settlement of the 
liabilities of the insolvent. Procedure must necessarily form 
an essential part of any law dealing with insolvency. It is 
therefore to be presumed, indeed it is a necessary implication, 
bhat the Imperial Statute in assigning to the Dominion 
Parliament the subjects of bankruptcy and insolvency in- 
tended to confer on it legislative power to interfere with 
property, civil rights and procedure within the provinces so 
far as a general law relating to these subjects might affect 
them. Their Lordships therefore think that the Parliament 
of Canada would not infringe the exclusive powers given to 
the Provincial Legislatures by enacting that the judgment 
of the Court of Queen’s Bench in matters of insolvency 
1 Murdoch v. Windsor & Annapolis Ry. Co., Russell’s Eq. Rep. 137, and 
Re Windsor & Annapolis Ry, ; 4 Russell & Geldert 312. 
* L. R. 5 App. Cas. 400,