Welcome to Cases That Should Have Gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, But Didn’t! This week, lawyer Kyla Lee discusses promissory estoppel.
Acumen Law Corporation lawyer Kyla Lee gives her take on a made-in-Canada court case each week and discusses why these cases should have been heard by Canada’s highest court: the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1973 that it is not a defence to a zoning bylaw case that the city has never enforced the bylaw before. The SCC made that decision specifically about zoning bylaws.
Now in our society, we see so many other cases that deal with these city’s enforcement or nonenforcement of bylaws particularly in cities across this country that use their municipal powers to allow cannabis dispensaries to operate in the grace sphere. Prior to legalization, those dispensaries got city permits or operated without city permits and the city did nothing to enforce them.
Since legalization, we’ve seen raids by cities and shutdown of dispensaries by cities including huge fines and potential jail time for people continuing to operate cannabis dispensaries.
A similar situation happened in a case in Montreal involving a numbered corporation which was running a business as a massage parlour that was offering erotic massage services. Despite the fact that the city had taken no action to enforce the erotic massage services bylaw that prevented the business from carrying on this way, the city for years did nothing and then finally took action to shut this business down.
At trial, the business tried to argue that they couldn’t enforce the bylaw after years of ignoring that this was going on even though they were well aware of it. It’s a doctrine law known as “estoppel”.
Watch the video for more.
