Thank you.
I'm referring now to evidence that Professor Ryder gave to the Senate committee when he addressed this point.
By way of a preamble, he referred to section 91(27) of the Constitution, which confers on Parliament the exclusive jurisdiction to pass laws in relation to criminal law. The leading decision on that is the Margarine Reference in 1949, when Justice Rand held that a valid criminal law must have “as its dominant characteristic the putting in place of prohibitions, coupled with penalties”, for “a typically criminal public purpose”, such as the protection of public peace, order, security, health, and morality. That's the definition that's been used.
Then he goes on to talk about a wide range of statutes that have been upheld pursuant to that. These include the following: prohibitions on anti-competitive practices in combines legislation; the consumer protection provisions in the Food and Drugs Act; the now-defunct therapeutic abortion provisions in the Criminal Code; Tobacco Products Control Act, now the Tobacco Act; the Lord's Day Act; the Firearms Act; recent legislation repealing the long-gun registry; the Young Offenders Act, now the Youth Criminal Justice Act; the drug offences in the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act; the toxic substance provision in what is now part 5 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act; the prohibition on issuing false prospectuses in what is now section 400 of the Criminal Code; and the prohibited activities provisions in section 5(1) of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.