Animal Justice on Sept. 2 applied for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada against the recent restoration of Ontario’s Security from Trespass and Protecting Food Safety Act.
Support from at least four of Canada’s nine Supreme Court justices would be required for the Toronto-based national animal rights group’s case to be heard.
“If (leave to appeal is) granted, we’ll be taking our fight to our nation’s highest court to argue that Ontario’s dangerous agricultural gag law is unconstitutional,” wrote Kaitlyn Mitchell, lawyer and Animal Justice’s director of legal advocacy, in a release.
“We are fighting with everything we have for the chance to strike down Ontario’s ag gag law once and for all.”
The Supreme Court of Canada is the nation’s final court of appeal; if it dismisses the group’s application, the lower court decision stands and the case ends. If the court accepts the application and Animal Justice wins on appeal, it could have far-reaching implications for similar provincial laws.
Since the legislation’s passage in 2020, Animal Justice has fought the Act, which the province has said is meant to deter activist disruptions of farms and food processors and close gaps in previous laws protecting the agriculture sector from trespass.
In March 2022, Animal Justice and co-applicants, Jessica Scott-Reid and Louise Jorgensen, launched a lawsuit challenging the Act’s constitutionality.
In April 2024, Ontario Superior Court judge Markus Koehnen ruled that certain provisions within the Act violated the right to freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights.
The Attorney General of Ontario appealed the provincial Superior Court decision to the Ontario Court of Appeal, which fully reinstated the Act in June this year.
“I do not agree that the legislation violates the respondents’ Charter rights,” the appeal court decision stated at the time. “What the respondents claim is a right to access the property of others on their own terms and for their own purposes. Freedom of expression does not provide for this.”
Animal Justice said the “devastating court decision that overturned our previous victory” has made it illegal for whistleblowers, concerned animal advocates, and journalists to expose animal cruelty within “factory farms and slaughterhouses.
“Because of this law, we’ve been forced to stop all agricultural investigations in Ontario, leaving millions of animals trapped in a nightmare system with no one to pull back the curtain,” Mitchell wrote. “We refuse to accept a legal system that shields powerful, abusive industries while punishing those who speak up for animals.”
