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 and Is BDS legal in Canada?, and in the glossary, key facts and 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.