Canadian Pacific Limited, Appellant v. Her Majesty The Queen in Right of Ontario, Respondent País/Territorio Canadá Tipo de la corte Nacional - corte superior Fecha Jul 20, 1995 Fuente UNEP, InforMEA Nombre del tribunal Supreme Court of Canada Juez LamerLa ForestLHeureux DubéSopinkaGonthierCoryMcLachlinIacobucciMajor Número de referencia 2 S.C.R. 1031 Idioma Inglés Materia Cuestiones jurídicas Palabra clave Derecho constitutional Resumen During controlled burns along the appellant’s railway right of way, dense smoke escaped onto adjacent properties. This led to complaints about injuries to health and property, and the appellant was charged under s. 13(1)(a) of Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act (EPA). This provision constitutes a broad and general prohibition of the pollution "of the natural environment for any use that can be made of it". The constitutional issue that was raised in the Court of Appeal was appealed here. The question was whether s. 13(1)(a), and in particular the words "for any use that can be made of [the natural environment]", was unconstitutionally vague, overbroad, and therefore in violation of s. 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court held that the appeal should be dismissed. Section 13 (1)(a) EPA was neither unconstitutionally vague nor overbroad, and clearly covered the pollution activity at issue. The Court emphasized that a law would be found unconstitutionally vague if it was so lacking in precision as not to give sufficient guidance for legal debate. The standard of legal precision required would vary depending on the nature and subject matter of a particular legislative provision. The purpose of the EPA was to provide for the protection and conservation of the natural environment. In the context of environmental protection legislation, a generally framed pollution prohibition could be desirable from a public policy perspective. The generality of s. 13(1)(a) ensured flexibility in the law, so that the EPA may respond to a wide range of environmentally harmful scenarios which could not have been foreseen at the time of its enactment. Because environmental protection was an important societal value, legislators had to have considerable room to maneuver in regulating pollution. It was important to provide for flexible and ambitious legislative approaches to environmental protection. The statutory definitions of "contaminant" and "natural environment" provided the basis for legal debate as to what constituted a "contaminant" and the "natural environment". Judicial interpretation of what constituted a "use" of the natural environment was easily accomplished through various interpretive techniques. The word had to be considered in its context, should be interpreted in a manner which avoided absurd results, and could be considered in contexts other than environmental law. These principles demonstrated that s. 13(1)(a) did not attach penal consequences to trivial or minimal impairments of the natural environment. A degree of significance, consistent with the objective of environmental protection, had to be found in relation to the use which was impaired. After taking these interpretive principles and aids into account, the scope of s. 13(1)(a) was reasonably delineated, and legal debate could occur as to its application to a specific fact situation. This was all that s. 7 of the Charter requires. Texto completo 1995scc63.html