Can a municipality enforce its by-laws by issuing a stop work order against a private law plaintiff?

Wilson J. applied Anns v. Merton and concluded that the circumstances were such as to give rise to the potential of a private law claim. Her analysis also led her to the conclusion that the non-feasance, misfeasance distinction was irrelevant when the underlying issue was determining whether a duty of care exists. The major difficulty was that of functionally characterizing the conduct of the municipality. Remembering that a stop-work order had been issued, was the city, in failing to take additional steps to enforce its by-laws, exercising an operational or a policy function. Madam Justice Wilson, appreciating that this was a delicate area, made the following comments at p. 672: The making of inspections, the issuance of stop work orders and the withholding of occupancy permits may be one thing; restore to litigation, if this became necessary, may be quite another. Must the city enforce infractions by legal proceedings or does there come a point at which economic considerations, for example, enter it? And if so, how do you measure the "operational" against the "policy" content of the decision in order to decide whether it is more "operational" than "policy" or vice versa? Clearly that is a matter of very fine distinctions.