The Canada Temperance Act, also known as the Scott Act, was an Act of the Parliament of Canada passed in 1878, which provided for a national framework for municipalities to opt in by plebiscite to a scheme of prohibition. It was repealed in 1984.

Pre-Confederation colonial legislation

Temperance legislation of general application had been enacted by the various colonies as early as 1855, when New Brunswick implemented total prohibition to mixed success. Others, beginning with the Province of Canada on the passage of the Dunkin Act in 1864, named after its sponsor Christopher Dunkin, opted to allow local municipalities to implement temperance upon an approval by plebiscite. The Act proved to be problematic in its operation following the division of the Province into Ontario and Quebec. In Ex parte O'Neill, RJQ 24 SC 304, it was held that the Legislative Assembly of Quebec could not repeal the Dunkin Act, but it could pass a concurrent statute for regulating liquor traffic within the province. It was also later held that the Parliament of Canada could not repeal that Act with respect only to Ontario.

Post-Confederation

The provinces continued to enact temperance legislation after the establishment of Canadian Confederation in 1867. Ontario passed the Crooks Act in 1876 to provide for the limiting of licences granted by municipal councils in areas not otherwise subject to the Dunkin Act. The Parliament of Canada shortly followed afterwards with the passage of the Scott Act, which offered local option within a national scheme, followed in 1883 by the McCarthy Act, named after its sponsor, Dalton McCarthy, and its national licensing system. In 1917, provision was made to suspend the operation of the Act if provincial temperance legislation was determined to be as restrictive in application.

Application

The Act was brought into effect in 17 municipalities:

Legal controversy

The Act was the subject of several constitutional challenges, many of which were of major importance in developing the jurisprudence underlying Canadian federalism: When prohibition in Ontario was relaxed in 1927, a reference question to the Supreme Court of Canada resulted in the 1935 finding that the Act still applied in the counties of Perth, Huron and Peel. A subsequent reference question by the Province of Ontario to the Ontario Court of Appeal resulted in a declaration that the Canada Temperance Act was constitutional, which was subsequently affirmed by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1946 in Ontario v. Canada Temperance Federation. Manitoulin and Peel would later hold plebiscites that revoked the application of the Act in December 1951, and Huron and Perth, the last jurisdictions in which the Act applied in Canada, would not do so until November 1959.

Repeal

The Act remained on the statute books until its repeal in 1984.

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