Get the inside scoop on applying to our JD program directly from the Faculty of Law Admissions Office and hear from current law students. This commentary was first published in the Financial Post on November 21, 2008.
One of the important roles of the Supreme Court of Canada is to resolve conflicts among lower courts on difficult issues of law and, in the commercial sphere and other areas of consensual law, to develop rules and doctrines that promote predictability of outcomes and enhance the free-flow of goods and services among contracting parties.
Judged by these standards, the Supreme Court's decision last month in Saulnier vs. Royal Bank of Canada will disappoint many, not because of what the court said but because of what it failed to say.
The immediate issues before the court were whether a bank can acquire a valid security interest in a commercial fishing license issued by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and held by a Nova Scotia fisher, and whether a trustee in bankruptcy acquires the fisher's interest in the license if the fisher becomes bankrupt.
However, fishing licenses are only a small subset of a much larger realm of licenses issued by a multitude of government agencies --federal, provincial and municipal. Typical examples are milk quotas for dairy farms, tobacco quotas for tobacco farmers, nursing home licenses to care for the elderly, taxicab licenses, landing licenses for aircraft at commercial airports and broadcasting and cable licenses.