Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours was a parish municipality, in the Outaouais region of Quebec, incorporated under provincial law.

[2] That triggered the resulting lawsuit in the courts of Quebec and eventually the Judicial Committee, as the municipality sought to enforce its order and the accumulated penalty of $200.

The matter went first to the Superior Court of Quebec, which upheld the municipal order to remove the blockage from the ditch.

[9] However, federally regulated railways do not cease to be part of the province in which they are located and continue to be subject to provincial law.

[11] He concluded that on the facts of the case, the municipality was simply seeking to have the obstruction removed, without any change to the structure of the ditch, and therefore the order applied to the CPR Co.[12] As a result, the Committee advised Her Majesty that the appeal should be dismissed, affirming the judgment below, with court costs to be paid by the railway company.

[13] The Supreme Court of Canada continues to cite the Notre Dame de Bonsecours case with approval, for the proposition that provincial laws apply to federally regulated works and undertakings as long as they do not attempt to regulate the specifically federal character of the work or undertaking.

For example in Ontario v Canadian Pacific, the Supreme Court held, in short reasons from the bench, that an environmental law applied to the CPR Co., citing Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours.

[16] More recently, in 2019 the British Columbia Court of Appeal cited Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours in its decision that the province could not regulate the amount or type of product shipped on an inter-provincial pipeline, as that would intrude on the scope of federal regulation of the operation of the pipeline.