R. v. Hauser

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R. v. Hauser, [1979] 1 S.C.R. 984 is a leading Constitutional decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, where, In a four to three decision, the Court upheld the federal Narcotic Control Act as constitutional under the peace, order and good government power. The case is a particularly unusual as the Act had previously held to be constitutional under the Criminal law power in the decision of Industrial Acceptance Corp. v. The Queen [1953] 2 S.C.R. 273.

Pigeon J., writing for the majority, held that the matter of law had sufficient "newnewss" to fall under the p.o.g.g. power, stating that:

...the most important consideration for classifying the Narcotic Control Act as legislation enacted under the general residual federal power, is that this is essentially legislation adopted to deal with a genuinely new problem which did not exist at the time of Confederation and clearly cannot be put in the class of "Matters of a merely local or private nature".