Over time courts and academics began to interpret the power as only applying where conformity to one law would necessarily violate the other.
In that case, both the provincial and federal governments had enacted virtually identical insider trading legislation.
A later example was in the decision Law Society of British Columbia v. Mangat, where the Court found an operational conflict between the provincial Legal Profession Act prohibiting non-lawyers from appearing in front of a judge and the federal Immigration Act, which allowed non-lawyers to appear before the immigration tribunal.
"[6] The majority in each of these held that: Justice Côté wrote vigorous dissents in all three cases, arguing that the majority's interpretation of the first branch conflicts with the clear standard of impossibility of dual compliance as a result of an express conflict expressed in prior jurisprudence,[7] which was succinctly expressed in Multiple Access as "where one enactment says 'yes' and the other says 'no'; 'the same citizens are being told to do inconsistent things'; compliance with one is defiance of the other.
"[8] As well, the majority's interpretation of the second branch conflicts with the Court's prior ruling in Mangat,[6] in that "harmonious interpretation of both federal and provincial legislation cannot lead this Court to disregard obvious purposes that are pursued in federal legislation.