## Document record - Publisher: Federal Court of Appeal (Noël C.J.; Boivin and Rivoalen JJ.A. concurring) - Date: 2021-05-05 - Type: Primary record - Establishes: That the merits of the Kattenburg wine-labelling appeal were decided on 5 May 2021, the appeal being dismissed and the matter remitted to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which is not bound by the Federal Court's reasons. - Original: https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fca/doc/2021/2021fca86/2021fca86.html - Archived copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20231121113101/https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fca/doc/2021/2021fca86/2021fca86.html - Citation id: S199 # Canada (Attorney General) v. Kattenburg, 2021 FCA 86 ## What this document is These are the reasons of the Federal Court of Appeal, delivered by Chief Justice Noël with Justices Boivin and Rivoalen concurring, on the appeal from the Federal Court's 2019 judgment about "Product of Israel" labels on wines produced in West Bank settlements. The court file is A-312-19 and the decision is reported at [2021] 3 FCR 410 [S199]. ## What it establishes This is the decision people usually mean when they refer to the Court of Appeal in the Kattenburg litigation, and it is the one most often omitted. The sequence matters. On 29 July 2019 the Federal Court held in 2019 FC 1003 that the labels were false, misleading and deceptive, and remitted the matter to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency [S200]. On 6 October 2020, in 2020 FCA 164, a single judge of the Court of Appeal disposed of several motions for leave to intervene and added Psagot Winery Ltd. as a party respondent; that decision did not touch the merits and set nothing aside [S021]. The merits were decided on 5 May 2021. The appeal was dismissed and the matter remitted to the agency for reconsideration and redetermination [S199]. The reasoning, however, cuts against the Federal Court's own conclusion: applying *Vavilov*, the Court of Appeal held that the Federal Court should not have undertaken the agency's task, and stated at paragraph 19 that the agency may reach whatever outcome it reasonably thinks appropriate [S199]. None of the three decisions endorsed or restricted a boycott. The question throughout was the accuracy of a label under food-labelling statutes. ## Key passages The disposition: "the appeal should be dismissed" [S199]. Paragraph 20: "the matter will be remitted to the Agency for reconsideration and redetermination" [S199]. Paragraph 19: the agency is "not bound by the Federal Court Judge's reasons" [S199]. In the earlier intervention ruling: "the motions for intervention will be dismissed" [S021]. ## How it is used on this site The decision is cited on [boycotting Israel and boycotting settlements](/claims/boycotting-israel-vs-settlements/) and [Is BDS legal in Canada?](/claims/is-bds-legal-in-canada/), and in the [glossary](/glossary/), [key facts](/key-facts/) and [timeline](/timeline/). ## Provenance and access All three decisions are published on CanLII, which refuses automated requests and challenges automated browsers; each was read from the Internet Archive snapshots recorded above. The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an application for leave to appeal the intervention ruling on 1 April 2021, in docket 39474, styled *Independent Jewish Voices, et al. v. Attorney General of Canada, et al.*; that application concerned intervener status, not labelling, and no archived copy of the docket page was located. ## Page history 2026-09-21: First draft.