Efficacy of Administrative Monetary Penalties in Compelling Compliance with Federal Agri-Food Statutes

Abstract

The objective of the thesis is to determine whether the administratively imposed monetary penalty system established by the Canadian Parliament through the Agriculture and Agri-Food Administrative Monetary Penalties Act, 1995, an omnibus statute, has improved compliance with the Health of Animals Act and the Plant Protection Act. It does this by critically examining the purposes underlying the omnibus statute, which are to provide a fair and efficient alternative to the existing penal system and to supplement existing penal measures to enforce statutes brought within its ambit. A historical perspective on the use of criminal sanctions is provided in Part I, touching briefly on strict liability in regulatory prosecutions. The Part also describes decriminalization, and the developments in Europe, the United States, Australia and Canada that are were ostensibly aimed at decriminalizing less serious regulatory offences. Before analyzing the data, the thesis describes the role of field officials responsible for enforcing the statutes concerned, and the important contributions of compliance theorists, such as Ayres, Braithwaite and Sparrow. Data on prosecutions over a ten-year period from 1996/97 to 2005/06, and on administrative monetary penalties over the second half of that period, are analyzed through eight focus groups, graphs, and 21tables, compared, summarized, and assessed in order to draw conclusions on the issues of fairness and efficiency. The thesis cautions that enforcement data are not the sole indicator of compliance, and they do not translate into efficacy which is the raison d’être of the omnibus statute. Sanctions play a supportive role in the total regulatory scheme. The mere availability of these powers, and perhaps the threat of their use, often suffices to induce compliance. Ayres & Braithwaite’s Enforcement Pyramid emphasizes that point. The author makes some observations in Part III, setting the stage for a number of legislative reforms, such as allowing the defence of due diligence to individuals charged with serious violations, raising the burden of proof of violation from a balance of probabilities standard to a higher, intermediate standard, clarification of the term continuing violations, disgorgement of profits, and a legislative direction on the use of amps.