Sentient but Silent: Animals, Political Exclusion, and the Charter in Canadian Democracy

I. Introduction

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“Charter”) provides the collective Canadian community with basic rights, including life, liberty, and security of the person.^[1] Courts have interpreted “security of the person” as protecting interests in physical and psychological integrity, including freedom from state-imposed undue suffering.^[2]Courts have also created precedent that identifies that animals are sentient and have the ability to suffer. Yet, under Canadian law, only human beings are entitled to this protection under the Charter, despite the overwhelming evidence that animals raised and slaughtered for food suffer directly at the hands of the agriculture sector in Canada.^[3] The growing recognition of animal sentience (rather than mere species membership) in science, ethics, and law, raises important moral and legal questions when approaching the subject of raising animals for food on an industrial scale and the “usual and customary” abuse that comes with it.^[4] A jurisdiction’s laws reveal what a society believes matters. It tells us who gets protected from harm and who does not. When Canadian law refuses to extend Charter protection to animals experiencing proven suffering, it’s not avoiding a philosophical question, it’s making one.

On a natural law understanding, law is not merely a set of commands, but an expression of deeper moral commitments about which beings are owed protection from serious harm.^[5] The exclusion of sentient animals from Charter protection raises not only a doctrinal question about rights, but also a democratic question about whose interests the Canadian Constitution is structured to represent. Farmed animals are governed by legislation and policy that determine every stage of their lives, from breeding to slaughter, yet they lack any political rights and have no direct representation in the processes that generate and maintain these legal frameworks. This paper reviews that exclusion and argues that Canada’s democratic foundation has perpetuated a form of intentional, and structural, marginalization for sentient non-human animals that is increasingly difficult to reconcile with the Charter’s democratic purposes.^[6]

In this paper, I argue that animals are improperly denied political rights and, therefore, have no direct representation when legislative decisions are made that affect everything from the timing of their births through to their delivery at the slaughterhouse for processing. I make that argument in three parts. First, I will show how Canadian constitutional law has excluded animals from the democratic process using voting rights cases and the concept of structural ‘lockups’ to explain this artificial separation. Second, I will argue that the Charter itself doesn’t require this exclusion; we’ve chosen it through interpretive decisions that aren’t inevitable. In fact, the growing public sentiment about farmed animal welfare is an example of the framers understanding of how the law will evolve over time. Third, I will look at cases where humans try to represent animal interests in court, why that matters, and why it’s not enough. Finally, I will propose a legislative fix using existing administrative and quasi-judicial Canadian law. Such legislation would begin to shift Canada away from an industry rife with psychological and physical abuse and toward a more consistent democratic order that recognizes the connection between animal sentience and the capacity to suffer both physically and psychologically.^[7]

II.        Democratic Architecture and Structural Marginalization

A.        Who counts as the “people”? Lessons from voting rights jurisprudence

Canadian constitutional law has long recognized that democracy is more than just counting votes. In Reference re Secession of Quebec, the Supreme Court identified democracy as one of the four unwritten constitutional principles that inform the interpretation of the written text, encompassing not only participation by electors but also a broader commitment to “the sovereignty of the people” and the “accommodation of cultural and group identities.”^[8]

Canada’s voting-rights case law supplies the clearest evidence of who counts as part of the democratic community and why. In Sauvé v Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), Chief Justice McLachlin wrote for a 5-4 majority that “the history of democracy is the history of progressive enfranchisement” and that denying the vote to incarcerated persons “sends the unacceptable message that democratic values are less important than punitive measures.”^[9][10] Frank v Canada (AG)extended that logic to non-resident citizens, holding that a five-year residency cutoff for overseas voting violated s. 3 and could not be saved under s. 1^[11]; writing on Frank, Burton described the case as one about “locating the people”.^[12]Who counts as part of a democracy?, is a serious constitutional question, and the answer has, historically, moved in the direction toward more inclusion.^[13]

Animals are subject to Canadian law in the most basic sense: their bodies, lives, and deaths are governed by statutes, regulations, and codes of practice written entirely without their consultation or input. They do not vote, nor can they, but the conversation of a proxy for animals to vote in their best interests, is the point. Issacharoff and Pildes’ “politics as markets” discussions of democratic lockups, suggest that farmed animals are made up of groups whose interests are regulated by law yet incapable of voting, running for office, petitioning, or participating in any political process at all.^[14] The lockup in their case is quite literal, rather than political, but the mismatch between organized industry actors, with motives outside the safety of farmed animals, and silenced non-human Canadians, becomes harder to hide from the public.^[15]

B.        Effective Representation and the Structural Gap

The Supreme Court has described the core of s. 3 as the right to “effective representation,” not equality of voting power.^[16] In Reference re Provincial Electoral Boundaries (Sask), Justice McLachlin explained that “[o]ur democracy is a representative democracy. Each citizen has the right to be represented within the governmental edifice.”^[17] Effective representation includes relative parity of voting power but also recognition of community of interest, geography, and minority representation, all of which may justify deviation from strict population-based districting.^[18] The concept is malleable, grounded in the idea that legislatures should continue to attempt to translate popular interests, legitimate public interests, into political voice.

The problem with animal welfare regulation is the opposite situation as just described: animals have interests that are affected by legislative and regulatory choices, yet there is no constituency, no community of interest, and no channels through which those interests receive any weight to animal interests. They are represented, if at all, only incidentally, through human allies whose advocacy competes with industry lobbies on terms leaning in the direction of the industry.^[19]

C.        Industrial Agriculture’s Political Power

The imbalance between industry actors and unrepresented animals was illustrated in 2025, when the prorogation of Parliament ended a series of animal-welfare bills that were moving slowly through Parliament. Bill C-355, An Act to prohibit the export by air of horses for slaughter and to make related amendments to certain Acts, was among them.^[20]Despite broad public support, the bill was stalled in the Senate by the now-retired Senator Don Plett of Manitoba, a province from which horses have historically been exported to Japan for slaughter after travelling over twenty-eight hours without food, water, or rest.^[21] Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, which linked industrial animal agriculture to zoonotic disease risks under a “One Health” framework, and Bill S-15, which would have amended the Criminal Code and the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act to improve protections for captive wildlife, all shared the same fate.^[22]

These legislative defeats reveal the imbalance between industry actors who can vote, and animals whose interests are affected by the legislation in question, but who lack any political rights or formal representation in the process.^[23]The point is not that every animal welfare bill must pass; the point is that the structure of the process favours industry, because only one side has a voice.

The Criminal Code sections governing animal abuse also exacerbates the problem. Sections 445.1(1)(a) and 446(1)(a) make it an offence to wilfully cause or permit unnecessary pain, suffering, or injury to an animal, or to cause damage by wilful neglect during transport.^[24] But enforcement of these provisions is provincial, and provincial willingness to enforce depends heavily on local dependence on animal agriculture.^[25] Provinces with robust animal-welfare statutes, British Columbia’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act and Alberta’s Animal Protection Act, for example, offer much higher protections than provinces whose frameworks focus primarily on food safety.^[26] More importantly, each province has effectively carved out “generally accepted practices” exemptions that legalize conduct in slaughterhouses, laboratories, and factory farms that would qualify as criminal cruelty if done to a companion animal.^[27]This results in criminal provisions in which the same act is “cruelty” in one legal context and “industry” in another, with no democratic voice for the animals on whose bodies the distinction is forced. The defining feature of the current exclusion of farmed animals from Charter protections is that beings whose welfare is at stake, have no seat at Canada’s democratic “table”.

III.      Charter Rights, Sentience, and the Implicit Exclusion

Animals’ primary legal status in Canada is that of property.^[28] This means legislative decisions about them are mostly mediated through owners’ rights, not animal interests.^[29] Part III examines how the Charter interacts with that framework, focusing in particular on s. 7 as a direct rights’ claim and on s. 2(b) as protection for advocates who speak on behalf of farmed animals.

A.        Section 7: “Everyone” and the Human-Only Assumption

Section 7 of the Charter provides that “[e]veryone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”^[30] The Department of Justice’s Charterpedia summary describes the purpose of s. 7 as protecting “the right to physical and psychological integrity,” including freedom from state-imposed serious suffering and psychological harm.^[31]

Two textual features of s. 7 are worthy of discussion for all commodified animals. First, the section uses “everyone,” not “every human being” or “every person.” The choice is not accidental: ss. 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the Charter speak explicitly of “every citizen” or “every citizen and permanent resident of Canada,” because those sections attach rights that, by their nature, are restricted to members of particular classes.^[32] S. 7 avoids such limiting language; second, the interests s. 7 protects (bodily integrity and freedom from serious psychological suffering)  reflecting directly onto the interests that animal sentience research identifies as morally and empirically significant. The Canadian Veterinary Medical Association’s (CVMA) sentience statement describes exactly the kind of “positive and negative feelings” that s. 7 has been interpreted to protect in the human context, only.^[33]

Despite these links, Canadian courts have treated s. 7 as applying only to human beings. In Singh v Minister of Employment and Immigration, the Supreme Court observed that s. 7 applies to “every human being who is physically present in Canada and by virtue of such presence amenable to Canadian law.”^[34] Skinner argued that early Charter jurisprudence supports a broader reading under which sentient non-human animals could, in principle, fall within “everyone” where the interests at stake are those s. 7 was designed to protect.^[35] This point has been developed at length in current literature, partially contending that extending s. 7 to farmed animals would not require the Court to invent doctrine but only to follow where its own interpretive commitments to purposive and evolving interpretation already lead.^[36] In addition, the broader critique of anthropocentric legal orders, creates the base of Deckha’s argument: Canadian law already contains the conceptual resources needed to recognize animals as “beings” rather than “things,” and has failed to do so largely because of interpretive habits (animal classifications and industry practices) rather than legal necessity.^[37]

The stakes of this interpretive choice are democratic. If s. 7 is read to exclude sentient animals, then a major substantive protection of the Charter is, by categorical definition, unavailable to the beings most acutely affected by state-sanctioned suffering in Canada, the millions of farmed animals whose lives and deaths are authorized, regulated, and at times, directly produced by government choices.^[38] That categorical exclusion is not, on its face, what the text requires. Courts have turned an antiquated “human-centered” idea into solid law, but the Charter’s broad availability of interpretation, does not force Canada to maintain this status.^[39] Whether or not s. 7 is would apply, the fact that its text allows the argument is democratically important; the wholesale exclusion of animals from Charter protection rests on contestable interpretation rather than on a settled constitutional mandate.

B.        Section 2(b): Freedom of Expression as a Structural Safeguard

Even if s. 7 remains closed to direct claims on behalf of animals, s. 2(b)’s freedom of expression still protects animal welfare indirectly. It allows human advocates and groups speak for, and argue in favour of, animals lacking political rights and legal standing in court.

The Supreme Court has developed an egalitarian model of democracy; regulation of expression is meant to prevent the wealthy from silencing others.^[40] Harper v Canada (AG), upheld spending limits^[41]; Working Families Coalition (Canada) Inc v Ontario, reaffirmed this framework while striking down Ontario’s cap as too broad.^[42] The egalitarian view is directly applicable to the problem of animal representation, even though it developed within the electoral context. Agricultural producers can advertise, lobby, and sue, but animals can't speak at all. Human journalists and whistleblowers who expose farm cruelty also struggle unless the law protects their right to speak.^[43] The s. 2(b) protection of expression for whistleblowers, undercover investigators, and animal advocates is a non-negotiable part of protecting animal interests by identifying the problems where they live. The Supreme Court’s recognition in Toronto (City) v Ontario (AG) that s. 2(b) protects “an open and accessible political discourse” and makes democratic deliberationpossible.^[44]

C.        Implications of the Gap: Regulation Without Representation

The cumulative effect of these interpretive choices moves farmed animals outside of any direct constitutional protection, while remaining subject to legal regulations. There is no constitutional requirement that government actors consider the Charter in relation to the treatment of animals, even as animal lives are shaped in almost every respect by state action.^[45] The Supreme Court regularly cites the expansion of “who counts”, and it is difficult to maintain a constitutional order in which sentient beings are comprehensively regulated without any mechanism for the recognition of their interests. The same basic question continues to request an answer: whose interests does democracy have to acknowledge? The Charter keeps growing to include those it has not included, previously, a fundamental characteristic of a well-functioning democracy.

IV.       Case Studies: Representation by Proxy

A.        Reece v Edmonton (City): Standing, Access, and Fraser CJ’s Dissent

Two modern cases show what happens when humans try to represent animal interests in court, Reece v Edmontonand Animal Justice v Ontario. Reece v Edmonton (City) concerned an Asian elephant named Lucy, who lived in isolation at the Edmonton Valley Zoo.^[46] Zoocheck Canada and individual applicants sought a declaration that Edmonton was in breach of Alberta’s Animal Protection Act by keeping Lucy in conditions incompatible with her welfare, and an order compelling her relocation to a sanctuary. The Alberta Court of Appeal majority dismissed the appeal, holding that the application was procedurally invalid, effectively branding it a private prosecution, and declining to even hear, let alone consider, the welfare arguments.^[47]

The main message of Chief Justice Fraser’s dissent is important and pivotal; the law cannot reasonably leave animals without remedy when the government breaks animal protection laws. When those affected by legal regulation cannot appear in court, the justice system’s legitimacy depends on responsible proxies.^[48] The majority’s approach in Reece illustrates the limits of proxy representation under current law. Standing requirements, rules against private prosecutions, and the property classification of animals combine to leave very little doctrinal room for claims brought in an animal’s name, even where statutory protections exist. Human advocates are not perfect stand-ins for animals; their help, in part, depends on their own legal standing, willingness to pay the costs, and tenacity to remain flexible within a traditionally static environment. In essence, courts fail to level the playing field for animal advocates against powerful, rich, and politically influential, agriculture.

B.        Animal Justice v Ontario: Expression, Whistleblowing, and Democratic Accountability

In 2024, Animal Justice challenged Ontario’s ag-gag laws, laws that criminalize undercover animal welfare investigations to document what happens within the walls of the industry.^[49] Ag-gag laws are the types of laws designed to keep the cameras out, the widows blocked, and the advocates silent.

Justice Morgan held that several of the impugned provisions of Ontario’s ag-gag legislation violated s. 2(b) of the Charter and could not be saved under s. 1.^[50] Section 9 of the Regulations, which barred advocate interactions with animals in transit (including at slaughterhouse gates), was found to be overbroad and disproportionate.^[51] Parts of ss. 11 and 12 of the Regulations were struck because they required whistleblowers to know in advance whether particular industry practices, like piglet thumping, were legal or illegal, a demand that effectively chilled this freedom of expression.^[52] Other provisions also remained in place, most notably those prohibiting unauthorized physical interference with another person’s property.^[53] The result was a partial, but meaningful, victory for freedom of expression on matters of significant public interest.^[54]

The democratic importance of Animal Justice is not simply that it is a win for advocates. It is that the decision recognizes that whistleblower expression is the only substantive channel through which the Canadian public can educate themselves about what is done inside facilities that house farmed animals affected by Canadian law. The “ag-gag” provisions functioned as a double lockout of the democratic process: animals cannot speak, and the humans who would document their conditions risked criminal liability for trying to speak for them.^[55]

Both cases tell us something important. Reece shows the limits of proxy representation in the courtroom: the legal system is not well-equipped to recognize humans as effective representatives of non-human interests, which keeps farmed animals at arm’s length, rendering consumer choice impossible. Animal Justice shows what proxy representation makes possible when permitted: s. 2(b) protected speech by advocates, partially corrects the imbalance that, otherwise, allowed the industrial agriculture sector to operate beyond scrutiny.

V.         A Federal Animal Legal Status and Rights Act (“ALSRA”)

Canadian democracy regulates sentient animals without representing them, and the Charter alone, whether interpreted generously or not, cannot solve the problem. A federal Animal Legal Status and Rights Act (“ALSRA”) would establish a limited, or quasi-personhood, status for sentient non-human animals, create national minimum standards of welfare, and establish an administrative tribunal modelled on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to adjudicate complaints on animals’ behalf. The proposal draws on existing Canadian institutional models, takes the federal-provincial architecture seriously, and situates itself within the Charter values identified.

A.        National Minimum Standards and Quasi-Personhood

The most influential piece of the proposed legislation is a statutory quasi-personhood for sentient animals. This means: (1) the law recognizes animals’ interests as legal interests; (2) there are national minimum welfare standards for transport, confinement, slaughter, research, and entertainment standards that override industry codes; (3) there is enforcement outside the hands of provincial prosecutors who might not care.^[56]

National minimum standards address the fragmentation problem without ignoring the federal-provincial division of responsibilities. Rather than arguing about which level of government has constitutional jurisdiction over which aspect of animal welfare, ALSRA would use Parliament’s criminal law power, its regulatory powers over interprovincial transportation, and its jurisdiction over agriculture to establish a floor of protection below which no provincial regime could fall.^[57] Provinces would retain the authority to legislate above the floor, and to administer day-to-day enforcement, but would be required to meet basic federal standards in the areas where inconsistency has generated the worst animal welfare violations.

B.        A Tribunal for Animal Welfare: The CHRT Model

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (“CHRT”) offers the most suitable template.^[58] An analogous Animal Welfare Tribunal under ALSRA would:

1. Receive complaints from any person or accredited organization concerning conduct alleged to breach national minimum standards, regulations made under ALSRA, or codes of practice incorporated by reference.

2. Investigate or cause investigations to be undertaken, with independent inspectors empowered to enter licensed facilities without prior notice, subject to appropriate privacy and safety limitations.

3. Adjudicate complaints with procedural fairness for respondents and with formal recognition of the animal as the subject of the protection at issue.

4. Issue orders ranging from remedial welfare requirements, and monetary penalties to licence suspensions and, in serious cases, referrals for criminal prosecution and animal prohibitions.

5. Maintain public reasons and a searchable database of decisions, contributing to the kind of transparent democratic record that current self-regulatory arrangements lack.

The tribunal would act as a proxy for animals, which is not a new administrative law phenomenon. Tribunals already represent varied public interests; this proposal is simply one about animals.^[59]

C.        Constitutional Connections: Living Tree and Democratic Evolution

ALSRA constitutionally rests on three anchoring ideas. First, the living tree doctrine, articulated in Edwards v Canada (AG) (“the Persons Case”), holds that constitutional texts must be interpreted in a “large and liberal” manner capable of “growth and expansion within its natural limits.”^[60] The evolution of personhood from a category that excluded women in 1928 to one that includes them today is a relevant example of constitutional growth; the doctrine supports a legislative recognition of limited legal status for sentient animals as an extension of Canadian constitutional development.^[61] Parliament has the authority through its power over criminal law, interprovincial transportation, agriculture, as all are settled federal powers.

Third, and most important for this argument, ALSRA is not radical. It is what Landemore calls non-electoral representation.^[62] Democracy includes more than voting; it includes tribunals, citizen assemblies, and captures other bodies that bring public interests into decision-making that voting cannot. The ALSRA is a proposal that recognizes the growing public interest in farmed animal welfare. An objection of any form of legal status provided to animals is that it is just a philosophical move, about personal morality, sentience, and rights, that belongs to ethics rather than to the law of democracy. A democracy that regulates sentient beings without giving them a voice is unstable, and it is the same problem as disenfranchising incarcerated people or long-term expatriates. Not because those groups necessarily deserve full membership philosophically, but because regulation without accountability erodes democratic legitimacy.

VI.       Conclusion

A democracy that extensively regulates the lives of sentient beings, controlling when they are born, how they live, and when they die, without granting them any political rights or representation, faces a fundamental legitimacy question.^[63] The gap between Canada’s constitutional commitment to protecting bodily and psychological integrity and its treatment of sentient animals in industrial agriculture, reveals a tension that cannot be sustained as Canada moves into the future.

The Charter analysis in this paper demonstrates that the textual openness of “everyone” in s. 7, combined with the section’s focus on freedom from state-imposed suffering,  and leaves space for extending protections to sentient animals that courts have so far declined to provide. The case studies show that human advocates are already attempting to represent animal interests through litigation under s. 2(b) and public-interest standing doctrines, and that they face significant barriers built into a legal order that treats animals as property, rather than as a subject of democracy. The proposed ALSRA would address the resulting democratic deficit by creating institutional mechanisms for representing animal interests in administrative decision-making and enforcement, grounded in the well-tested Canadian Human Rights Tribunal model.

This is not a radical departure from Canadian constitutional principles, but rather their logical evolution. Just as s. 3 has been interpreted to include incarcerated persons and long-term expatriates whose inclusion was once thought unnecessary, and just as “persons” under the Constitution Act, 1867 grew to encompass women through the living tree doctrine, the democratic architecture of Canadian law can evolve to recognize the interests of sentient beings who suffer under laws they have no voice in creating.^[64] A federal quasi-personhood mandate for animals, modelled on existing human rights frameworks and supported by Charter values of expressive freedom and substantive equality, would begin to reconcile Canada’s democratic values with its treatment of the sentient animals under its jurisdiction. The alternative is to continue maintaining a regulatory regime whose legitimacy rests on the silence of those it most directly governs, a silence that the law of democracy gives us both the vocabulary and the tools to question.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LEGISLATION

Animal Protection Act, RSA 2000, c A-41.

Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2022.

Bill C-355, An Act to prohibit the export by air of horses for slaughter and to make related amendments to certain Acts, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2023 (second reading in Senate 5 December 2024).

Bill S-15, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2024.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982(UK), 1982, c 11.

Canadian Human Rights Act, RSC 1985, c H-6.

Constitution Act, 1867 (UK), 30 & 31 Vict, c 3, reprinted in RSC 1985, Appendix II, No 5.

Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46.

Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, RSBC 1996, c 372.

Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, 2020, SO 2020, c 9.

O Reg 701/20.

JURISPRUDENCE

Animal Justice et al v Attorney General of Ontario, 2024 ONSC 1753.

Canada (AG) v Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society, 2012 SCC 45.

Edwards v Canada (Attorney General), [1930] AC 124 (PC).

Frank v Canada (Attorney General), 2019 SCC 1.

Harper v Canada (Attorney General), 2004 SCC 33.

Irwin Toy Ltd v Quebec (AG), [1989] 1 SCR 927.

Libman v Quebec (AG), [1997] 3 SCR 569.

New Brunswick (Minister of Health and Community Services) v G (J), [1999] 3 SCR 46.

Ontario (Attorney General) v Working Families Coalition (Canada) Inc, 2025 SCC 5.

R v Big M Drug Mart Ltd, [1985] 1 SCR 295.

R v Chen, 2021 ABCA 382.

R v Kapp, 2008 SCC 41.

R v Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30.

Raîche v Canada (AG), 2004 FC 679.

Reece v Edmonton (City), 2011 ABCA 238.

Reference re Provincial Electoral Boundaries (Sask), [1991] 2 SCR 158.

Reference re Same-Sex Marriage, 2004 SCC 79.

Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 SCR 217.

Sauvé v Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), 2002 SCC 68.

Singh v Minister of Employment and Immigration, [1985] 1 SCR 177.

Toronto (City) v Ontario (Attorney General), 2021 SCC 34.

SECONDARY MATERIAL: MONOGRAPHS

Bisgould, Lesli. Animals and the Law (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2011).

Deckha, Maneesha. Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021).

Landemore, Hélène. Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

Rollin, Bernard E. Animal Rights & Human Morality, 3rd ed (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006).

SECONDARY MATERIAL: ARTICLES

Burton, Sarah. “Locating the People: A Case Comment on Frank v Canada” (2021) 66:4 McGill LJ 637.

Clasky, Adam. “Animals as Rights-Holders: Could the Charter Abolish Farmed Animal Use?” (2025) 13:1 GJAL 4, online: <doi.org/10.71389/gjal.155586>.

Feasby, Colin. “Libman v Quebec (AG) and the Administration of the Process of Democracy Under the Charter: The Emerging Egalitarian Model” (1999) 44 McGill LJ 5.

Fernandez, Angela. “Animal Welfare Law in Canada: An Overview” (2019) 7 Can J Comp & Contemp L 1.

Issacharoff, Samuel & Richard H Pildes. “Politics as Markets: Partisan Lockups of the Democratic Process” (1998) 50 Stan L Rev 643.

Pal, Michael. “Democracy and the Notwithstanding Clause” (2024) Can JL & Jur 1, online: <cambridge.org/core/journals/canadian-journal-of-law-and-jurisprudence/article/democracy-and-the-notwithstanding-clause/CDB280748B79D0CA98C518EEE1451C0D>.

OTHER MATERIALS

Animal Justice. “Canada’s Agriculture Lobby and Animal Welfare Legislation” (2024), online: Animal Justice<animaljustice.ca/>.

Animal Legal Defense Fund. “Customary Cruelty in the Farm Industry: When Animal Abuse Is Legal” (3 April 2015), online: ALDF<aldf.org/article/customary-cruelty-in-the-farm-industry-when-animal-abuse-is-legal/>.

Animal Legal Defense Fund. 2017 Canadian Animal Protection Laws Rankings: Comparing Overall Strength & Comprehensiveness (July 2017), online (pdf): <aldf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2017-Canadian-Rankings-Report-1.pdf>.

Canada. Department of Justice. “Section 7 – Life, Liberty and Security of the Person” (last modified 8 November 1999), online: Charterpedia <canada.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art7.html>.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “One Health” (2023), online: <inspection.canada.ca/en>.

Canadian Horse Defence Coalition. “Horse Slaughter Export Legislation: Background” (2024), online: <defendhorsescanada.org/>.

Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, online: <chrt-tcdp.gc.ca/en>.

Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. Animal Sentience (Position Statement, 16 May 2024), online: <canadianveterinarians.net/policy-and-outreach/position-statements/statements/animal-sentience/>.

Centre for Constitutional Studies. “Living Tree Doctrine” (3 July 2019), online: <constitutionalstudies.ca/2019/07/living-tree-doctrine/>.

Macnab, Aidan. “Court Strikes Down Laws Restricting Investigations by Animal Rights Activists into Animal Cruelty” (21 February 2024), online: Law Times <lawtimesnews.com/news/general/court-strikes-down-laws-restricting-investigations-by-animal-rights-activists-into-animal-cruelty/385248>.

Skinner, Samantha. “Animals and Section 7: How Early Charter Jurisprudence Supports Protections for Animals” (2020) [unpublished manuscript, presented at the Canadian Animal Law Conference, 13 September 2020].

World Animal Protection. “‘Meat Animals’ Are Living Individuals” (4 November 2024), online: World Animal Protection<worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/podcast-2-meat-animals/>.

Young, Rachel. “Wrangling with the Law: Can Federalism Save Rodeo Animals?” (14 July 2019), online: Centre for Constitutional Studies <constitutionalstudies.ca/2019/07/wrangling-with-the-law-can-federalism-save-rodeo-animals/>.

^[1] Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, s 7, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11 [Charter].

^[2] R v Morgentaler, [1988] 1 SCR 30 at 56; New Brunswick (Minister of Health and Community Services) v G (J), [1999] 3 SCR 46 at paras 58-61.

^[3] World Animal Protection, “‘Meat Animals’ Are Living Individuals” (4 November 2024), online: World Animal Protection<worldanimalprotection.org/latest/blogs/podcast-2-meat-animals/>.

^[4] Animal Legal Defense Fund, “Customary Cruelty in the Farm Industry: When Animal Abuse Is Legal” (3 April 2015), online: ALDF<aldf.org/article/customary-cruelty-in-the-farm-industry-when-animal-abuse-is-legal/>.

^[5] Bernard E Rollin, Animal Rights & Human Morality, 3rd ed (New York: Prometheus Books, 2006) at 110-11.

^[6] Samuel Issacharoff & Richard H Pildes, “Politics as Markets: Partisan Lockups of the Democratic Process” (1998) 50 Stan L Rev 643 at 643-52, 708-13.

^[7] Maneesha Deckha, Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021) at 3-10.

^[8] Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 SCR 217 at paras 61-69 [Secession Reference].

^[9] Sauvé v Canada (Chief Electoral Officer), 2002 SCC 68 at paras 33-35 [Sauvé].

^[10] Ibid at para 31 (“The right to vote is fundamental to our democracy and the rule of law and cannot be lightly set aside.”).

^[11] Frank v Canada (Attorney General), 2019 SCC 1 at paras 25-80 [Frank].

^[12] Sarah Burton, “Locating the People: A Case Comment on Frank v Canada” (2021) 66:4 McGill LJ 637 at 663-71.

^[13] Sauvé, supra note 9 at para 35; Frank, supra note 11 at paras 25-29.

^[14] Issacharoff & Pildes, supra note 6 at 646-48, 708-13.

^[15] Ibid; also, Deckha, supra note 7 at 56-72.

^[16] Reference re Provincial Electoral Boundaries (Sask), [1991] 2 SCR 158 at 183-88 [Carter].

^[17] Ibid at 183.

^[18] Ibid at 184-88.

^[19] Ibid at 188; Raîche v Canada (AG), 2004 FC 679.

^[20] Bill C-355, An Act to prohibit the export by air of horses for slaughter and to make related amendments to certain Acts, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2023 (second reading in Senate 5 December 2024).

^[21] Canadian Horse Defence Coalition, “Horse Slaughter Export Legislation: Background” (2024), online: <defendhorsescanada.org/>.

^[22] Bill C-293, An Act respecting pandemic prevention and preparedness, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2022; Bill S-15, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Wild Animal and Plant Protection and Regulation of International and Interprovincial Trade Act, 1st Sess, 44th Parl, 2024. On the “One Health” framing, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, “One Health” (2023), online: <inspection.canada.ca/en>.

^[23] On the lobbying asymmetry, Animal Justice, “Canada’s Agriculture Lobby and Animal Welfare Legislation” (2024), online: <animaljustice.ca/>.

^[24] Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, ss 445.1(1)(a), 446(1)(a).

^[25] Animal Legal Defense Fund, 2017 Canadian Animal Protection Laws Rankings: Comparing Overall Strength & Comprehensiveness (July 2017), online (pdf): <aldf.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/2017-Canadian-Rankings-Report-1.pdf>.

^[26] Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, RSBC 1996, c 372; Animal Protection Act, RSA 2000, c A-41.

^[27] Angela Fernandez, “Animal Welfare Law in Canada: An Overview” (2019) 7 Can J Comp & Contemp L 1 at 15-22.

^[28] Deckha, supra note 7 at 36-55.

^[29] Ibid at 47-51.

^[30] Charter, supra note 1, s 7.

^[31] Canada, Department of Justice, “Section 7 - Life, Liberty and Security of the Person” (last modified 8 November 1999), online: Charterpedia<canada.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/check/art7.html>.

^[32] Charter, supra note 1, ss 3-6.

^[33] Canadian Veterinary Medical Association. Animal Sentience (Position Statement, 16 May 2024), online: <canadianveterinarians.net/policy-and-outreach/position-statements/statements/animal-sentience/>.

^[34] Singh v Minister of Employment and Immigration, [1985] 1 SCR 177 at para 35.

^[35] Samantha Skinner, “Animals and Section 7: How Early Charter Jurisprudence Supports Protections for Animals” (2020) [unpublished manuscript, presented at the Canadian Animal Law Conference, 13 September 2020].

^[36] Adam Clasky, “Animals as Rights-Holders: Could the Charter Abolish Farmed Animal Use?” (2025) 13:1 GJAL 4 at 12-28, online: <doi.org/10.71389/gjal.155586>.

^[37] Deckha, supra note 7 at 12-34.

^[38] Ibid at 40-46; World Animal Protection, supra note 3.

^[39] R v Big M Drug Mart Ltd, [1985] 1 SCR 295 at 344.

^[40] Libman v Quebec (AG), [1997] 3 SCR 569 at paras 41-50 [Libman]; Colin Feasby, “Libman v Quebec (AG) and the Administration of the Process of Democracy Under the Charter: The Emerging Egalitarian Model” (1999) 44 McGill LJ 5 at 7-19.

^[41] Harper v Canada (Attorney General), 2004 SCC 33 at paras 61-72 [Harper].

^[42] Ontario (Attorney General) v Working Families Coalition (Canada) Inc, 2025 SCC 5 at paras 40-64.

^[43] On the informational asymmetries, Animal Justice, supra note 31.

^[44] Toronto (City) v Ontario (Attorney General), 2021 SCC 34 at paras 36-41.

^[45] Clasky, supra note 36 at 24-28.

^[46] Reece v Edmonton (City), 2011 ABCA 238 [Reece].

^[47] Ibid at paras 15-30 (majority).

^[48] Ibid at paras 35-148 (Fraser CJ dissenting); Ibid at paras 54-70.

^[49] Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act, 2020, SO 2020, c 9; O Reg 701/20.

^[50] Animal Justice et al v Attorney General of Ontario, 2024 ONSC 1753 at paras 53-130 [Animal Justice].

^[51] Ibid at paras 95-108.

^[52] Ibid at paras 109-14.

^[53] Ibid at paras 14-15.

^[54] Aidan Macnab, “Court Strikes Down Laws Restricting Investigations by Animal Rights Activists into Animal Cruelty” (21 February 2024), online: Law Times <lawtimesnews.com/news/general/court-strikes-down-laws-restricting-investigations-by-animal-rights-activists-into-animal-cruelty/385248>.

^[55] Libman, supra note 40; Harper, supra note 41.

^[56] Deckha, supra note 7 at 107-38; Clasky, supra note 45 at 30-38.

^[57] Constitution Act, 1867 (UK), 30 & 31 Vict, c 3, ss 91(10), (13), (27), (29), 95, reprinted in RSC 1985, Appendix II, No 5.

^[58] Canadian Human Rights Act, RSC 1985, c H-6; Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, online: <chrt-tcdp.gc.ca/en>.

^[59] Canada (AG) v Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society, 2012 SCC 45 at paras 29-52 (on public-interest standing as a structural accommodation).

^[60] Edwards v Canada (Attorney General), 1929 UKPC 86, [1930] AC 124 (PC) at 136.

^[61] Centre for Constitutional Studies, “Living Tree Doctrine” (3 July 2019), online: <constitutionalstudies.ca/2019/07/living-tree-doctrine/>.

^[62] Helene Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-first Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

^[63] Deckha, supra note 7 at 139-62.

^[64] Edwards, supra note 60; Sauvé, supra note 9; Frank, supra note 11.