The Permissible Limits of Sub-Delegation: Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights v. Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FCA 82; Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail c. Association des entrepreneurs spécialisés en procédé industriel du Québec, 2025 QCCA 587

As a matter of general principle, when a statute vests a power or function in an identified person, such as “the Commissioner” or “the Board”, the identified person or entity – and no one else – should exercise the power or function (see, e.g. Canada (Attorney-General) v. Brent [1956] SCR 318; Roncarelli v. Duplessis [1959] SCR 121). This is known as the no-delegation principle.

A corollary of this principle is that where the identified person has a power to make rules, this cannot be transformed into a power to exercise discretion: put simply, the identified person cannot make a vague rule that allows them to exercise discretion on a case-by-case basis (Brant Dairy Co. v. Milk Commission of Ontario, [1973] SCR 131).

Both the principle and this particular corollary were at issue in two recent appellate cases: Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights v. Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FCA 82; and Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail c. Association des entrepreneurs spécialisés en procédé industriel du Québec, 2025 QCCA 587.

The CCRF case involved a judicial review of firearms regulations. The regulations at issue were made under the Criminal Code. Section 117.15(1) provides that the Governor in Council “may make regulations prescribing anything that by this Part is to be or may be prescribed”. Acting under this provision, the Governor in Council adopted (and in 2020 amended) the Regulations Prescribing Certain Firearms and Other Weapons, Components and Parts of Weapons, Accessories, Cartridge Magazines, Ammunition and Projectiles as Prohibited, Restricted or Non-Restricted, SOR/98-462. Throughout the Regulations, the various provisions specify a prohibited firearm and add “and any variant or modified version of it” on well over 200 occasions. Here is an example:

• 180 The firearms of the designs commonly known as the Sturmgewehr MKb 42, the Sturmgewehr MKb 42(W), the Sturmgewehr MP43, the Sturmgewehr MP43/I, the Sturmgewehr MP45 and the Sturmgewehr StG44 rifles, and any variants or modified versions of them, including the

  • (a) American Tactical Imports GSG Sturmgewehr StG44;

  • (b) German Sport Guns GSG Sturmgewehr StG44;

  • (c) Hill & Mac Gunworks STG;

  • (d) Hill & Mac Gunworks STG-P;

  • (e) Mauser Mauser StG44;

  • (f) Sport Systeme Dittrich BD42 (H); and

  • (g) Sport Systeme Dittrich BD44.

This has been a feature of the Regulations for decades. But the 2020 amendment added nine ‘families’ of firearm and put in place further prohibitions based on bore type and power. As the Federal Court of Appeal explained:

The Regulations added nine general “families” of makes and models, and “any variants or modified versions of them” to the existing list of prohibited firearms found in the 1998 Regulations (Regulations, s. 3; 1998 Regulations, Schedule, Part I, items 83, 87-94). The Regulations also prohibit firearms based on two physical characteristics, namely a bore diameter of 20 mm or greater and the capacity to discharge a projectile with a muzzle energy greater than 10,000 joules (Regulations, s. 3; 1998 Regulations, items 95 and 96). The Regulations list approximately 1,500 firearms as named variants of the nine families or as having the physical characteristics related to bore diameter and the muzzle energy. Additional variants are also prohibited even if they are not expressly named; they are referred to as “unnamed variants” (at para. 11).

The structure of the Regulations gave rise to two arguments, one based on the legal effect of the Regulations, the other on practical effect. First, the appellants argued that, as a matter of law, by using the term “variant or modified version” the Governor in Council had transformed the regulation-making power into a discretionary power. In other words, what should have been specified in regulations was subject instead to administrative discretion. This was a Brant Dairy argument, focused on the nine ‘families’ added in 2020. De Montigny CJ rejected it:

The Regulations prescribe nine types of firearms by make and model as well as firearms based on two characteristics. They also prohibit variants and modified versions of these types of firearms. [T]he decision to prescribe variants and modified versions of prohibited firearms is that of the GIC. That the language used requires interpretation for its implementation by law enforcement officers and various other officials does not detract from the fact that the GIC did exercise its delegated power to determine which firearms are prohibited. Whether a particular firearm is or is not an unnamed variant or modification of the firearms listed in the Regulations is a purely administrative decision of a factual nature (at para. 69).

De Montigny CJ relied on the same court’s earlier decision in Actton Transport Ltd. v. Steeves, 2004 FCA 182. There, a provision relating to entitlement to overtime turned in part on “prevailing industry practice”, a definition left to be worked out by civil servants on a case by case basis. In Actton, the relevant classes were specified by the Governor in Council in regulations, as was the basis of the distinction between different classes. Here, it could be said that the relevant classes had also been specified — the nine ‘families’ of firearms  — and the basis of the specification was comparability to the firearms or characteristics set out in the Regulations. Another way to put the point, borrowing from the language of constitutional sub-delegation, would be that by describing the firearms in the Regulations, the Governor in Council had provided an ‘intelligible principle’ that interpreters of the Regulations could use: there was no power ‘at large’ to revisit the firearms that have been listed or to list variants or modifications on any basis other than similarity to the listed firearms.

Second, the appellants argued that in practice, the firearms registry maintained by the RCMP categorically determined which firearms are to be treated as variants or modifications and which are not. As a practical matter, law enforcement relies upon the registry to determine compliance and to initiate proceedings as necessary. However, De Montigny CJ reasoned, the registry was not binding in its effect as the question of whether a particular firearm is prohibited or not (i.e. whether it is properly characterized as a ‘variant or modification’) is ultimately a legal one to be determined in court proceedings :

[The registry] is no more than a guide for the implementation and application of the Regulations, and it is not meant to (nor does it) establish an individual’s rights or obligations. It does not legally bind judges, law enforcement officers or administrative decision-makers under the Firearms Act and does not determine a firearm’s classification. At the end of the day, the onus always remains on the Crown to prove every element of a criminal offence, including that the firearm at issue is prohibited (at para. 71).

This could also occur in judicial review proceedings aimed at including an item in the registry (at para. 76). At the end of the day, the source of the prohibition being the Regulations, not the registry, there could be no impermissible sub-delegation.

The Quebec case concerned the regulation of the recruitment agency industry. A set of amendments were made to Quebec’s labour laws in 2018 to regulate recruitment agencies, especially aiming to protect workers from being exploited. The new law prohibited arrangements where a temporary worker would be paid a lower salary than that paid to permanent employees and ensured that the recruitment agencies were on the hook for pecuniary obligations arising under the legislation:

41.2.   No personnel placement agency may remunerate an employee at a lower rate of wage than that granted to the employees of the client enterprise who perform the same tasks in the same establishment solely because of the employee’s employment status, and in particular because the employee is remunerated by such an agency or usually works fewer hours each week.

95.       An employer who enters into a contract with a subcontractor, directly or through an intermediary, is solidarily liable with that subcontractor and that intermediary for the pecuniary obligations fixed by this Act or the regulations.

A personnel placement agency and a client enterprise that, within the framework of a contract with the agency, uses an employee’s services are solidarily liable for the pecuniary obligations fixed by this Act or the regulations.

The legislation also introduced a licensing scheme. As can be seen, the concepts of a “personnel placement agency” and a “client enterprise” are critical. The legislation permitted the provincial government to adopt regulations. These regulations specified the concepts as follows:

“client enterprise” means a person, partnership or other entity that, to meet labour needs, retains the services of a personnel placement agency or a recruitment agency for temporary foreign workers; (entreprise cliente)

“personnel placement agency” means a person, partnership or other entity that has at least one activity consisting in offering personnel leasing services by providing employees to a client enterprise to meet its labour needs; (agence de placement de personnel)

The regulations went on to enumerate criteria for the grant of a licence and, in addition, suitability criteria which were at the heart of the litigation:

The person, partnership or other entity that meets all the conditions provided for in section 10 may be denied the issue of a licence by the Commission …[if]..in the 5 years preceding the application, unless the person, partnership or other entity has obtained a pardon, the person, partnership or other entity has been found guilty or the person has been an officer of a legal person, partnership or other entity found guilty of a penal or criminal offence that, in the Commission’s opinion, is connected with the carrying on of activities for which the licence is applied for.

The highlighted language appears in multiple subsequent provisions in the ‘suitability’ section of the regulation.

Bich JA rejected the challenge to the regulation, holding amongst other things that there was no impermissible sub-delegation. The government had done precisely what the legislature intended by detailing a scheme of regulation for the industry. That the Commission had an administrative role in applying the concepts found in the regulations did not usurp the government’s role or distort the statutory scheme:

Il n’y a pas de sous-délégation formelle dans ce mécanisme extrêmement commun. Le gouvernement, par son Règlement, ne confie pas ici à la CNESST le soin de fixer les normes, règles et obligations que le législateur l’autorise à prescrire en vertu de l’art. 92.7 L.n.t. Plutôt, il les édicte puis, conformément aux art. 5, 92.5, 92.6 et 92.8 L.n.t., c’est la CNESST qui se charge de leur mise en œuvre, tant globalement qu’individuellement. Elle peut ainsi prendre toutes les mesures d’information, de renseignement et de surveillance (art. 5 L.n.t.), mais aussi gérer le régime de permis élaboré par le Règlement. Elle devra donc statuer, en fonction de celui-ci, sur toutes les demandes de permis qui lui seront adressées et sur toutes les situations susceptibles de mener à la suspension ou à la révocation d’un permis, et ce, au terme d’une vérification cas par cas. Elle doit s’assurer en effet que la situation de chacun est conforme à l’exigence réglementaire. Qu’elle jouisse dans ce cadre d’une certaine marge d’appréciation n’est pas de la sous‑délégation d’un pouvoir réglementaire et ne s’y apparente pas non plus. Il s’agit uniquement pour la CNESST d’appliquer le Règlement et les normes ou règles qu’il dicte aux situations individuelles qui lui seront soumises, pour en vérifier et en évaluer la conformité (at para. 204).

What about the highlighted language? Bich JA accepted that this required further analysis. Indeed, in other regulatory schemes (and in the CCFR case noted above) the government lists specified violations but here it had not done so. Here, she held, the regulation did sufficiently cabin the discretion of the Commission. The notion of ‘connection’ was sufficient, in her view:

Cette balise est intégrée aux paragr. 5 à 7 et 12 à 14, à savoir que l’infraction pénale ou criminelle dont l’agence ou le dirigeant a été déclaré coupable doit avoir « un lien avec l’exercice des activités pour lesquelles le permis est demandé » ou détenu (« is connected with »), c’est-à-dire, en ce qui nous concerne, les activités de placement de personnel au sens de l’art. 1 du Règlement. La notion de lien ou de connexion, au sens ordinaire[191], va plus loin que les idées générales d’honnêteté, de probité et d’intégrité qui ressortent de l’entièreté de l’art. 11 et en forment le contexte interprétatif. Elle implique que l’infraction se rapporte rationnellement à l’activité de placement ou y soit rationnellement rattachée, et ce, d’une façon assez étroite, assez forte, et non pas ténue, de sorte qu’on ne puisse raisonnablement considérer l’octroi ou le maintien du permis. C’est une balise simple, qui n’est peut-être pas exhaustive ou d’une précision parfaite, mais qui suffit, car elle permet, pour emprunter de nouveau à Issalys et à Lemieux, « une décision d’application de la norme – au besoin par interprétation de ses termes –, et non pas une décision comportant la création d’une norme nouvelle, particulière ». L’interprétation requise ici doit en outre, cela va de soi, tenir compte de la loi elle-même (c’est-à-dire des objectifs poursuivis généralement par la L.n.t., mais aussi par les dispositions qu’y a introduites la Loi modificatrice de 2018) (at para. 218).

The Commission was thus not “without direction” and was not exercising a legislative power (Vic Restaurant v. City of Montreal, [1959] SCR 58, at p. 99): again, it is almost as if there was an ‘intelligible principle’ at play. Indeed, Bich JA held, the discretion ensures that a mechanical application of regulatory criteria does not lead to injustice, as can happen in some instances (see e.g. here discussing 2025 ONSC 647). Moreover, as in CCFR, there are adjudicative mechanisms that permit those subject to the regulatory regime to contest decisions made under it (at para. 224).

Both of these cases are helpful in understanding the scope and limits of the Brant Dairy principle. In short, just because an official exercises discretion under a regulation, this does not necessarily mean the official is usurping the authority of the regulation-maker, or that the regulation was improperly made. Furthermore, both cases recognize that officials have a role to play in implementing complex regulatory schemes, especially where conditions on the ground can change rapidly. As ever, the existence of adjudicative mechanisms is important, in order to ensure that the discretion is wisely exercised.

This content has been updated on May 26, 2025 at 21:48.