Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
My name is Dr. Jodi Lazare. I am an associate professor at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie, where I teach the mandatory constitutional law course and an animal law seminar.
I previously held a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to study the constitutional dimensions of animal rights advocacy and farm trespass laws. I have published articles in peer-reviewed journals on that subject.
I'm going to use my time here to touch on my primary concern with the proposed bill, which is simply that, just as in 2021, it may not correspond with the division of powers. By that I mean that Bill C‑275, in its current form, without the amendments voted on by committee last time around in 2021 in dealing with Bill C‑205, might well be outside of the federal government's legislative jurisdiction.
Some of the discussion in the House and in committee thus far has suggested that statutory consistency across provincial jurisdictions is a worthwhile goal, and I agree with that. It is a fact that uniform federal legislation would often be more efficient and more effective than a patchwork of different provincial laws.
However, the nature of Canada's constitutional structure means that it's simply not always possible to have consistency across provinces, and, respectfully, the federal government can't force consistency if it is acting outside of its area of jurisdiction.
I understand that this bill aims to improve biosecurity on farms and that it is, in some part, about protecting animals and about food safety, but it has also been stated, several times now, that the bill is primarily about trespass.
I'm sure the committee members don't need this kind of breakdown, but in the interest of clarity, I ask you to just please bear with me as I take you through my quick thinking about the constitutional issues here.
In determining whether a law was properly adopted by a particular level of government—that is, at the federal or provincial level—courts will look at what the law actually does. They look at a law's purpose and at its effects to uncover what's known in legal jargon as its “pith and substance” or its “dominant feature”.
They might look at the context of the adoption of a law, such as current events motivating its introduction—those have, of course been relevant here—and at speeches and debates and hearings like this one. All of those things, in the present case, clearly suggest that the “dominant feature” of this bill is not entirely protecting biosecurity. That's because, in addition to what has been said about this being a trespass bill—as this committee has heard before and I think we'll hear again today—biosecurity threats on farms are not in fact driven by trespassers, protesters or activists—by people “without lawful authority” to be on the farm, to use the words of the bill.
You've heard already—and I suspect we'll hear again—that CFIA records show that there is no documented evidence or instance of an activist or trespasser or protester introducing disease onto a farm, but that the greatest risks to animals are diseases transmitted from farm to farm. Diseases are transmitted from workers, suppliers, etc., going between farms, and by birds and wildlife and so on. In other words, they are not from individuals who are present illegally.
From a constitutional perspective then, in my view and as has been repeated here, this is a trespass bill, which may or may not, based on the evidence, have perhaps incidental or secondary effects on biosecurity. It's quite clear that this bill is about shutting down activism and trespass and about protecting the mental health of farmers and farm families. In other words, it is about protecting a particular industry by shutting down activism in the form of trespass.
In fact, the bill's sponsor has stated explicitly that this bill is about the protection of private property, and as we all know, these things fall under the provincial jurisdiction over property and civil rights. Legislation protecting private property is not, in other words, part of the federal government's tool box, so to speak.
The fact is that all provinces have trespass laws. Some of them have laws specific to trespass on farms, although some of those laws are currently being challenged in court. In fact, interestingly, Prince Edward Island's legislation, aside from the part about taking in any animal or thing, contains exactly the same wording as Bill C‑275 and has not been subject to any constitutional questioning, suggesting again that this bill, Bill C-275, should fall under provincial jurisdiction.
I want to be clear here that I am not suggesting that Parliament cannot legislate to protect health and safety and biosecurity on farms. It's been said numerous times by the courts that Parliament can legislate to protect health and safety by way of the Criminal Code, and in this case, perhaps by using its jurisdiction over agriculture, although there is not a lot of case law and interpretation of that provision.
My submission, rather, is that this bill, as it is currently written, does not do that: It does not target the most likely source of biosecurity risks. However, a law that provided for the same restrictions and applied to everyone who enters a farm, legally or illegally—in other words, that adopted the same amendments voted on with respect to Bill C-205 in 2021—would be much more likely to survive constitutional scrutiny because, in its dominant feature, it would be a biosecurity bill.
I will leave it at that in the interest of time, and of course I'm happy to answer questions.
Thank you.
