Case information

Municipal law — By laws — Validity — Jurisdiction — Legislation — Interpretation —Administrative law — Judicial review — Municipality making bylaw amendment aimed at addressing renovictions — Landlord challenging bylaw as ultra vires the jurisdiction of the municipality — What is the appropriate standard of review for the challenge of administrative action when a non-adjudicative administrative body, a municipality, enacts legislation granting itself jurisdiction over a subject matter that a legislature intended to be governed exhaustively by other legislation, and to be administered exclusively by another adjudicative administrative body — How does a court assess whether legislation is intended to exhaustively govern subject matter to the exclusion of any other legislation, regardless of the existence of conflict between the legislation — Whether a municipality can use its delegated authority pursuant to its jurisdiction to regulate in relation to business when a provincial legislature intended that the subject matter be exhaustively governed by an existing provincial scheme administered by an expert tribunal enjoying a privative clause — Community Charter, S.B.C. 2003, c. 26, ss. 8(3)(g), 8(6), 10, and 63 — Residential Tenancy Act, S.B.C. 2002, c. 78 — City of New Westminster Bylaw No. 8130, 2019.

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The applicant is the owner of a four-storey, multi-family residential rental building with 21 suites located in the respondent city. The building was built in approximately 1959 and had not had major renovations by the time the applicant purchased it in May, 2019. The same month, the City passed a bylaw amendment to its Business Regulations and Licensing (Rental Units) Bylaw through Bylaw No. 8130, 2019. The amendment restricts the ability of landlords to evict tenants in order to accommodate renovation work, by requiring the landlord to either enter into a new tenancy agreement with the tenant for a comparable unit in the same building on the same or better terms, or make arrangements for temporary accommodation for the tenant and subsequent return to the renovated unit for the same rent. The applicant challenged the bylaw as ultra vires and beyond the legislative jurisdiction of the City. The petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, as was an appeal to the Court of Appeal for British Columbia.