Section 92(13) of the Constitution Act, 1867, also known as the property and civil rights power, grants the provincial legislatures of Canada the authority to legislate on: 13.
With respect to the former, In the Insurance Reference,[1] Viscount Haldane noted that: the authority to legislate for the regulation of trade and commerce does not extend to the regulation by a licensing system of a particular trade.It is the most powerful and expansive of the provincial constitutional provisions, and is capable of being applied in general matters and in specific cases, as noted by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council: There appears to be no authority and no reason for the opinion that legislation in respect of property and civil rights must be general in character and not in respect of a particular right.
[2]The power has even been used to dissolve specific injunctions, such as one issued against the KVP Company in 1948 for discharging noxious effluent into the Spanish River.
[3] Property and civil rights include: By themselves, incidental effects of provincial regulations on a federal sphere of influence do not change their true nature.
[11] Moreover, the fact that a valid provincial regulation may affect an export trade or the cost of doing business is similarly not conclusive of determining whether it is made "in relation to" that power.