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,
