Canada Extended Criminal Law to the Moon — But Struggles to Apply It Equally Across Borders.

Section 7 of the Criminal Code, Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, and the Politics of Protection

Executive Summary:

1. Introduction

2. The Criminal Code and the Evolution of Its Reach

3. What Space Law Reveals About Earthbound Priorities

4. International Obligations and the Pattern of Selective Reach

5. Bill C-16's Missed Window of Opportunity

6. Case Law and the Evolution of Canadian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

6.1) Libman v. The Queen (1985) || Financial Crime and Jurisdiction Through Connection

6.2) R. v. Hape (2007) || Financial Crime and the Limits of Constitutional Protection Abroad

6.3) R. v. Klassen (2008) || Child Sexual Exploitation Abroad and Nationality-Based Jurisdiction

6.4) R. v. Khawaja (2008) || Canada's First Post-9/11 Terrorism Prosecution

6.5) R. v. Malik and Bagri (2005) || The Air India Bombing Prosecution Before Canada's Modern Terrorism Laws

6.6) Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr (2010) || Canada's Own Culpability in a Torture-Linked Case

6.7) R. v. SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. || Foreign Bribery, Corporate Power, and Jurisdiction by Separate Statute

7. The Politics of Recognition and the Architecture of Protection

8. When Harm Returns Home, but Jurisdiction Does Not

9. Torture, Legal Categories, and Uneven Recognition

10. Belém do Pará and the Delayed Recognition of Violence Against Women

11. Comparative Cases: When Law Travels Unequally

11.1) Amanda Todd Online Sexual Extortion || Cross-Border Online Sexual Extortion of a Minor

11.2) Cross-Border Intimate Partner Violence: A Canadian Case Study

12. Conclusion — The Distance Between Nations

Appendix A

Selected Authorities Relevant to Canadian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

I. Supreme Court of Canada

  • Libman v. The Queen, [1985] 2 S.C.R. 178

    Established the "real and substantial link" doctrine governing connection-based criminal jurisdiction.

  • R. v. Finta, [1994] 1 S.C.R. 701

    Confirmed Parliament's authority to prosecute certain international crimes committed abroad under specialized statutory provisions.

  • R. v. Hape, 2007 SCC 26

    Defined the limits of the Charter's application to Canadian officials operating abroad.

  • Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2010 SCC 3

    Recognized Charter obligations arising from Canada's participation in foreign detention processes contrary to fundamental justice.

  • R. v. Khawaja, 2012 SCC 69

    Upheld Canada's post-9/11 terrorism legislation and confirmed Parliament's authority to legislate against transnational terrorist threats.

II. Other Canadian Judicial Authorities

  • R. v. Klassen, 2008 BCSC 1762; aff'd 2012 BCCA 99

    Upheld nationality-based jurisdiction for child sexual offences committed abroad by Canadians.

  • R. v. Malik and Bagri, 2005 BCSC 350

    Demonstrated the prosecution of transnational terrorism through conventional criminal law before the Anti-terrorism Act.

  • R. v. Munyaneza, 2009 QCCS 2201

    First conviction under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

  • R. v. Karigar, 2014 ONSC 3093; aff'd 2017 ONCA 576

    First significant conviction under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act.

III. Principal Canadian Legislation

  • Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46

  • Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, S.C. 1998, c. 34

  • Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, S.C. 2000, c. 24

  • Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. 30 (4th Supp.)

  • Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1, S.C. 2022, c. 10

  • Protecting Victims Act, S.C. 2026, c. 19

IV. Principal International Instruments

  • Geneva Conventions (1949)

  • Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (Hague Convention) (1970)

  • Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons (1973)

  • International Convention Against the Taking of Hostages (1979)

  • Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) (1984)

  • Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989)

  • Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará) (1994)

  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (OECD Anti-Bribery Convention) (1997)

  • Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography (2000)

  • United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Convention) (2000)

  • Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol) (2000)

  • Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention) (2001)

Appendix B

Chronology of the Evolution of Canadian Extraterritorial Criminal Jurisdiction

The following chronology illustrates the incremental and selective evolution of Canadian extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction through judicial decisions, legislative enactments, and international commitments.

  • 1892: Criminal Code enacted.

  • 1949: Canada becomes party to the Geneva Conventions.

  • 1970: Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (Hague Convention) establishes international obligations concerning aircraft hijacking.

  • 1970s: Parliament expands jurisdiction over aircraft offences, internationally protected persons, and hostage-taking in response to emerging treaty obligations.

  • 1984: Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) adopted, reinforcing international obligations concerning torture and state accountability.

  • 1985: Libman v. The Queen establishes the "real and substantial link" doctrine for connection-based criminal jurisdiction.

  • 1997: Parliament enacts child sex tourism provisions extending nationality-based jurisdiction over specified offences committed abroad.

  • 1998: Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act enacted.

  • 2000: Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act enacted.

  • 2001: Anti-terrorism Act enacted following the September 11 attacks.

  • 2007: R. v. Hape clarifies the limits of Charter application abroad.

  • 2008: R. v. Klassen upholds nationality-based jurisdiction for child sexual offences committed abroad.

  • 2008–2012: R. v. Khawaja tests and ultimately confirms the constitutionality of Canada's modern terrorism framework.

  • 2009: R. v. Munyaneza results in the first conviction under the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

  • 2012: Bill C-310 expands Canada's human trafficking jurisdiction in specified circumstances.

  • 2013: CFPOA amended to establish nationality-based jurisdiction over foreign bribery by Canadians and Canadian corporations.

  • 2014: R. v. Karigar produces the first significant conviction under the CFPOA.

  • 2022: Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1 extends aspects of Canadian criminal jurisdiction to the Lunar Gateway and, in defined circumstances, the surface of the Moon.

  • 2025: Canada signs the Convention of Belém do Pará.

  • 2025–2026: Bill C-16 proposes further reforms to Canada's cross-border criminal justice framework.

1. Introduction

The title of this paper poses an intentionally provocative question: how can Canadian criminal jurisdiction extend approximately 406,000 kilometres from Earth, yet become uncertain across the comparatively short distance between two sovereign states?

The question is rhetorical only in appearance. It points to a genuine feature of Canadian criminal law. Parliament has demonstrated both the constitutional authority and legislative willingness to extend criminal jurisdiction beyond Canada's territorial borders where it considers particular harms, institutions, treaty obligations, or national interests sufficiently important.

Section 7 of the Criminal Code is Canada's principal statutory framework governing when Canadian courts may exercise criminal jurisdiction over conduct occurring wholly or partly outside Canada's territory. Over more than a century, Parliament has expanded that framework incrementally in response to changing technologies, international obligations, and evolving conceptions of public safety. Ships and aircraft were followed by internationally protected persons, hostage-taking, terrorism, child sexual exploitation abroad, human trafficking, cybercrime, and, most recently, the International Space Station, the Lunar Gateway, and—in defined circumstances—the surface of the Moon.

Yet the history of Section 7 is not simply a history of expanding jurisdiction. It is also one of selective expansion.

Tracing that evolution shows that extraterritorial criminal law is never only about where conduct occurs. It is also about whose vulnerability, whose safety, whose movement, and whose interests the state has deemed sufficiently important to follow beyond its borders. Time and again, Parliament has legislated beyond Canada's geographic limits when compelling legal, political, or international interests have demanded it. The more difficult question is why some categories of harm have received that protection while others have not.

This paper argues that the evolution of Section 7 reveals a pattern of incremental and selective statutory development rather than a single, coherent theory of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction. Courts have occasionally filled jurisdictional gaps through common-law principles, while Parliament has enacted increasingly specialized statutory regimes in response to terrorism, corruption, child sexual exploitation, war crimes, organized crime, and space exploration. Together, these developments demonstrate that extending Canadian criminal jurisdiction beyond its borders has rarely been a question of constitutional capacity. More often, it has been a matter of legislative choice, institutional priority, and political will.

That observation raises an important policy question. If Parliament has concluded that Canadian law should follow astronauts, corporations, diplomats, financial markets, and organized transnational threats beyond Canada's borders, should it also reconsider whether survivors of serious interpersonal violence receive comparable access to justice and protection when those offences occur abroad?

This concern has important domestic precedent. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls—announced in 2015, launched in 2016, and culminating in its 2019 Final Report—documented how jurisdictional fragmentation, institutional neglect, and discriminatory systems of protection became systemic features of Canadian justice. Although the Inquiry principally examined violence occurring within Canada's borders, its findings illustrate a broader principle that also informs this paper: legal jurisdiction alone does not guarantee equal access to protection, accountability, or justice.

This paper does not suggest that every offence committed abroad should fall within Canadian jurisdiction. Nor does it argue that territorial sovereignty should be displaced as the organizing principle of international criminal law. Rather, it asks a narrower question: whether the current scope of Section 7 remains coherent when viewed alongside Parliament's own legislative history. If Canada has expanded extraterritorial jurisdiction in response to identified harms and national priorities, it is appropriate to ask whether serious cross-border interpersonal violence now warrants the same careful review.

2. The CriminalCode and the Evolution of Its Reach

Canada's Criminal Code, first enacted in 1892, was built on inherited English legal traditions and shaped by nineteenth-century British attempts to organize criminal law into a single written code. Rather than creating an entirely new criminal justice system, it consolidated a fragmented body of offences, doctrines, and statutes into a national framework. Since then, the Code has gradually evolved through successive amendments reflecting changing political ideologies, social values, and understandings of harm. Section 7 and its legislative predecessors form part of that same history.

In Canada, a criminal case proceeds as "R. v. [Accused]" or "Crown v. [Accused]" because a criminal offence is understood not merely as a crime inflicted on an individual, but as a wrong against the public order. When the state claims responsibility for responding to such wrongs, criminal law inevitably reflects choices about which harms warrant public condemnation, punishment, and state intervention.

Like many common-law systems shaped by older imperial and patriarchal assumptions, Canada's criminal law historically prioritized sovereignty, order, and property over many forms of interpersonal harm. Section 7 is no exception. Only in more recent decades do we see clearer efforts to include offences that protect everyday citizens and vulnerable people alongside offences primarily designed more directly to protect the state.

That reach has grown in stages: from ships to aircraft; from offences against diplomats and internationally protected persons to corruption and cross-border fraud; from terrorism and nuclear threats to trafficking and sexual offences involving minors; and more recently, from online harms to the surface of the Moon.

Today, Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, illustrates that the framework continues to evolve. Its proposed amendments to the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act would modernize how Canada co-operates with foreign states, international criminal tribunals, and certain supranational prosecutorial bodies. The machinery of reform is active. More contested is which offences receive extraterritorial attention—and who benefits from it.

The larger question, therefore, remains unresolved: which harms has Canada deemed serious enough to follow beyond its borders—and which are still left behind?

This paper calls on the British Columbia Ministry of the Attorney General, the federal Department of Justice, Global Affairs Canada, and the Senate to review Section 7 of the Criminal Code to ensure that access to justice for Canadians victimized abroad is no longer selective and to ensure consistency with Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guaranteeing equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination.

3. What Space Law Reveals About Earthbound Priorities

Canada did not extend its criminal law to space all at once. It did so incrementally: first to the International Space Station in the late 1990s, and later to the Lunar Gateway in 2022. In each instance, Parliament acted within the legal architecture of international co-operation and formal partner agreements.

Those jurisdictional expansions are reflected in Section 7 of the Criminal Code. They apply to indictable offences committed on, in relation to, or during transportation to and from designated flight elements and—in the Lunar Gateway provisions—to conduct occurring on the surface of the Moon. That final inclusion is especially striking: Parliament legislated in advance for future human activity on the lunar surface before such activity involving Canadians had become a practical reality, with clear foresight that sustained lunar activity was on the horizon.

More revealing still is how those provisions were enacted. The Lunar Gateway amendments were not introduced through a standalone criminal-law reform bill or broad public debate on access to justice abroad. They entered Parliament through the 2022 Budget Implementation Act—an omnibus executive bill sponsored by the Minister of Finance and advanced through interdepartmental government processes. Even the expansion of Canadian criminal law to the Moon arrived through machinery designed for organized state priorities rather than a rights-driven reconsideration of who Section 7 should protect.

Instead of asserting sovereignty over space itself, Parliament legislated within systems of registration, shared control, and reciprocal jurisdiction established through international partner agreements. Under such frameworks, states do not claim general territory in orbit. Instead, they retain jurisdiction over registered objects, contributed infrastructure, and, in defined circumstances, associated personnel. A spacecraft is therefore more than a vehicle: it can function as a site of state authority. The governing logic is revealing. Jurisdiction attaches first to platforms, assets, and institutional roles. Persons are included, but they are not the organizing principle.

That helps explain why Canadian jurisdiction was expressly legislated for the International Space Station and Lunar Gateway. These were not ordinary travel contexts, but structured multinational projects in which Canada held formal partnership status, contributed critical infrastructure, and anticipated sustained human presence. Clear criminal-law rules protected Canadian crew members, Canadian flight elements, and Canada's reciprocal rights within shared governance systems. Parliament thus extended jurisdiction where Canadian interests were organized, durable, and concrete—not through any general principle that Canadian law follows Canadians wherever they travel.

This distinction becomes sharper when contrasted with Artemis II. Although the mission marked a historic milestone for Canada through the participation of Jeremy Hansen, it was a NASA-led mission aboard a U.S. spacecraft rather than a multinational habitat governed through the ISS or Gateway framework. As a result, Hansen may not have fallen clearly within the specific Section 7 protections Parliament enacted in 2022.

There is a layered irony here—one that reveals not parliamentary incapacity, but the patchwork evolution of Section 7. Ultimately, lawmakers contemplated future criminal offences on the surface of the Moon—and legislated for them—before ensuring comparable protection for the Canadian personnel participating in the missions to help us get there, travelling outside the narrowly defined jurisdictional space law provisions. Yet, through earlier Section 7 expansions addressing financial crime, child exploitation abroad, trafficking, terrorism, corruption, and cybercrime, Parliament had already demonstrated an ability to extend special jurisdiction beyond ordinary territorial limits (or state-owned assets) when deemed necessary.

That asymmetry raises a broader question running through Section 7 as a whole. Whose movement, whose vulnerability, and whose interests have been considered important enough to justify criminal jurisdiction beyond Canada's borders? In practice, some interests were embedded in statute, others secured through agreement, and others missed altogether.

Section 7 is not a coherent theory of justice applied abroad—it is an archive of legislative priorities, often first earmarked by the United Nations General Assembly and then selectively applied by parliamentarians. The chronology that follows is not simply a list of amendments, but a map of what Canada has considered important enough to pursue beyond its borders. 

4. International Obligations and the Pattern of Selective Reach

Canada's modern space-law provisions are not unprecedented. They echo older maritime rules, codified in Canadian law since 1892, under which Canadian ships were treated as mobile extensions of Canadian legal authority. From the beginning, special jurisdiction often followed state-owned property and transportation, not persons alone.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Parliament extended similar logic to aircraft registered in Canada, while also addressing hijacking, in step with emerging international aviation conventions such as the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft (commonly known as the Hague Convention). It later extended jurisdiction to hostage-taking and offences against internationally protected persons, including heads of state, foreign ministers, diplomats, and their families, reflecting commitments associated with the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons. Jurisdiction now followed not only state interests, but also state actors.

By the mid-1980s, cross-border financial crime pushed jurisdiction further. Rather than relying solely on Section 7, Canadian courts increasingly grounded prosecutions in meaningful connections to Canada, culminating in the common-law "real and substantial link" test. Jurisdiction could now follow not only territory, but systems, institutions, and economic effects.

By the late twentieth century, Section 7 began to reflect clearer concern for vulnerable victims. The 1997 amendments permitting the prosecution of Canadians who committed sexual offences against children abroad marked a significant shift. Those reforms aligned with a broader international legal movement reflected in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols, to address the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography. Where vulnerable children were concerned, Parliament was prepared to make jurisdiction follow citizenship rather than territory.

The post-9/11 era expanded Canada's reach again to offences tied to terrorism, crimes against humanity, war crimes, attacks against UN or associated personnel, financing of terrorism, explosive or other lethal devices, and offences against cultural property. Canada's obligations under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) also reinforced jurisdiction over grave breaches, war crimes and torture-related conduct in defined circumstances. Where national security and international obligations converged, Parliament legislated decisively.

A new decade brought overdue responses to human trafficking and the digital world. In 2012, Parliament passed Bill C-310, allowing Canada to prosecute citizens or permanent residents for certain trafficking offences committed abroad, consistent with the Palermo Protocol. In 2014—although it did not directly amend Section 7 jurisdiction—Bill C-13 was an important piece of cross-border legislation because it modernized digital evidence-gathering powers, aligning aspects of Canadian law with the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention) (2001), and improving Canada's ability to pursue offences involving foreign actors, overseas servers, or victims in Canada by establishing international co-operation and mutual assistance mechanisms for such offences.

Another revealing example lies in Canada's response to transnational corruption. Rather than amending Section 7 of the Criminal Code, Parliament enacted the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA) in 1998 to implement Canada's obligations under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions (OECD Anti-Bribery Convention). Parliament substantially strengthened the CFPOA in 2013 by extending nationality-based jurisdiction over Canadian citizens, permanent residents, corporations, and certain organizations operating abroad. In doing so, Parliament demonstrated a clear willingness to criminalize conduct occurring largely outside Canada where market integrity, international reputation, and treaty compliance were at stake.

The pattern is instructive: where transnational misconduct threatens markets, institutions, or Canada's standing abroad, jurisdictional hesitation has often yielded to legislative precision. Where Canada faces treaty obligations, reputational pressure, or coordinated international enforcement norms, Parliament has repeatedly shown a willingness to legislate where priorities were clear.

5. Bill C-16's Missed Window of Opportunity

The history traced thus far is not complete. Parliament's currently proposed Bill C-16 demonstrates that Canada's framework for extraterritorial criminal law continues to evolve. Among other reforms, it would again amend MLACMA to facilitate co-operation not only with foreign states and international criminal tribunals, but also with certain supranational bodies responsible for criminal investigations and prosecutions.

Although this is a meaningful investigative advancement in cross-border offences, these bodies focus on international law in the traditional sense: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, terrorism, large-scale corruption, fraud against public institutions, organized crime networks, trafficking enterprises, cyber-enabled transnational offences, and other matters affecting states, markets, or collective security. As such, these supranational bodies are not designed to address interpersonal violence committed abroad, where the central barrier is often not a lack of evidence but a lack of jurisdiction.

Despite being among the most prevalent forms of violence globally, power-based violence and gender-based violence are rarely treated as matters of collective security in international courts. Individual cases, therefore, remain primarily the responsibility of domestic legal systems.

Responsively, Bill C-16's broader domestic reforms seek to address power-based violence through the inclusion of coercive control, femicide, child protection, sexual deepfakes, sentencing, and procedural delay, showing that Parliament remains willing to update criminal law where emerging harms become politically legible. However, the Bill does not directly address serious interpersonal violence committed abroad by Canadians against other Canadians or permanent residents. That omission illustrates the continuing selectivity of Canada's extraterritorial framework.

If coercive control is serious enough to criminalize domestically, then serious coercive violence committed abroad by Canadians should also be addressed, in equal measure. Currently, Bill C-16 modernizes the machinery of cross-border justice, but misses an opportunity to make access to justice more equal. A pattern emerges: Parliament has repeatedly extended Section 7 and Canadian extraterritorial jurisdiction when state interests, organized systems, or international obligations are at stake. As in many legal systems, power-based violence has historically attracted comparatively less extraterritorial jurisdictional development.

When the evolutionary lag of Section 7 is examined closely, older patterns of imperial-era prioritization, state protection, and class-inflected access to security remain visible. The movement toward a more human rights-centred model of justice has been real, but partial. Special jurisdiction has reached the International Space Station, but not between borders. The Lunar Gateway, but not always the Canadians, travelling beyond it. Sexual offences against minors, but not against adults. Acts of torture, but only where state responsibility is engaged. And mass violence, but not violent assaults. 

The current framework may invite future Section 15 equality arguments where specialized extraterritorial protections exist for some categories of harm, but not others. This may leave victims with the reasonable perception that prosecuting such violations is impractical, prohibitively costly, or assigned a lower institutional priority. For many victims, the denial or unavailability of jurisdiction can operate as a second institutional harm.

It is, therefore, necessary to review Section 7 of the Criminal Code of Canada and its application across offences, with a focus on ensuring that all Canadian victims of cross-border violent crime have meaningful access to justice. If Canadian law can follow assets, treaties, markets, and missions beyond Earth, it can modernize Section 7—or enact parallel legislation— so that survivors of serious violence are not left without protection in the far shorter distance between nations.

6. Case Law and the Evolution of Canadian Extraterritorial Jurisdiction

The seven cases that follow illustrate how Canadian extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction has evolved through both judicial doctrine and legislative intervention. At times, courts constructed jurisdiction where Parliament had not yet acted. At others, Parliament responded by creating tailored statutory regimes reflecting new technologies, international obligations, or changing conceptions of harm. Together, these authorities demonstrate that Canada's jurisdiction beyond its borders has expanded incrementally rather than according to a single coherent theory.

6.1 ) R. v. Libman & Libman v. The Queen (1985) — Financial Crime and Connection-Based Jurisdiction

In Libman v. The Queen (1985), the Supreme Court of Canada confronted the challenge of prosecuting cross-border fraud in an increasingly interconnected world. The case involved a scheme that operated through the 1970s and 1980s, targeting victims outside Canada—primarily in the United States—while maintaining operational connections to Ontario. The accused was charged with seven counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud. At the time, no statutory provision expressly extended Canadian jurisdiction to the conduct in question.

The Defence challenged Canada's jurisdiction from the outset, arguing that the alleged offences were committed outside the country and therefore fell beyond the reach of Canadian law. That jurisdictional issue carried through the appeals process to the Supreme Court of Canada, where the Court addressed the territorial limits reflected in section 6(2), that no one may be convicted in Canada for an offence committed outside Canada.

On its face, the provision appears to impose a strict territorial limit on Canadian criminal law. The Supreme Court, therefore, turned to the common law, holding that jurisdiction could be established where there was a "real and substantial link" to Canada. The inquiry was not confined to where the offence began or ended geographically, but whether significant elements of the scheme were sufficiently connected to Canadian actors, systems, institutions, or operations to justify prosecution.

By holding that an offence may be considered committed in Canada where a significant portion of the underlying activities occurred within the country, the Court effectively reframed the concept of territoriality. An offence need not be wholly domestic to be prosecutable in Canada. It was enough that the connection to Canada was real, meaningful, and substantial. In doing so, the Court filled a legislative gap—constructing jurisdiction where Parliament had not yet defined it and ultimately held that the offence was not wholly foreign.

Libman reflects a connection-based model of jurisdiction—one developed judicially in the absence of explicit statutory direction. It matters because it shows that before Parliament designated many categories of extraterritorial offences, courts were already constructing doctrines to prevent transnational economic crime from slipping through judicial gaps.

6.2 ) R. v. Hape (2007) — Financial Crime & The Limits of Constitutional Protection Abroad

More than two decades later, R. v. Hape (2007) addressed a different dimension of extraterritorial law: not the reach of jurisdiction, but the limits of constitutional rights.

The case arose from an investigation in the late 1990s into suspected money laundering connected to an offshore investment scheme operating through the Turks and Caicos Islands. Canadian authorities co-operated with local law enforcement, and RCMP officers conducted investigative activities abroad, including covert searches, under the authority and in co-operation with local authorities. The evidence obtained was later used to lay charges in Ontario for possession of proceeds of crime and related offences.

At trial, the accused was convicted. On appeal, Hape challenged the admissibility of the evidence, arguing that the searches violated his rights under section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects individuals against unreasonable search and seizure, and raised the broader question of whether Charter protections apply to the actions of Canadian officials operating outside the country.

The Supreme Court held that the Charter does not generally apply extraterritorially where doing so would interfere with the sovereignty of a foreign state, emphasizing principles of international law and comity.

Hape establishes an important counterpoint to Libman. Canadian law may extend beyond its borders in some circumstances, but Canadian constitutional protections do not automatically follow. Jurisdiction and rights do not always move together.

6.3 ) R. v. Klassen (2008) — Child Sexual Exploitation Abroad and Nationality-Based Jurisdiction

In R. v. Klassen (2008), the British Columbia Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Canada's child sex tourism laws, confirming that Canadian courts could prosecute a citizen for offences committed entirely abroad. The case arose from a multi-year international investigation triggered by evidence intercepted at the Canadian border in 2004, leading to charges involving multiple victims across jurisdictions.

The charges related to conduct that occurred between approximately 1998 and 2002 in countries including Colombia and Cambodia. They were brought under Section 7(4.1) of the Criminal Code, which extends Canadian jurisdiction to specified offences involving the sexual abuse or exploitation of children committed abroad by Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

At trial, Klassen challenged the application of these provisions, arguing that Canada lacked jurisdiction over acts committed abroad involving non-Canadian victims. Still, the Court rejected that argument and upheld Parliament's authority to legislate extraterritorially in this context. Klassen ultimately pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2010, receiving an 11-year sentence.

On appeal in 2012, Klassen challenged his sentence as unfit, arguing that insufficient weight had been given to his guilty plea, that aggravating factors, such as victim vulnerability, had been overstated, and that the trial judge had placed excessive emphasis on denunciation and deterrence. The British Columbia Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal and upheld the 11-year term of imprisonment.

Klassen shows how decisively Parliament can legislate when a harm is clearly named and politically recognized.

6.4 ) R. v. Khawaja (2008) — Canada's First Post-9/11 Terrorism Prosecution

Widely recognized as the first major prosecution under Canada's post-9/11 Anti-terrorism Act, 2001, R. v. Khawaja became the inaugural judicial test of the country's modern terrorism legislation. Charges were brought in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in relation to conduct between 2002 and 2004 connected to a United Kingdom-based terrorist plot.

Momin Khawaja, a Canadian citizen, was charged under several of the Criminal Code's new terrorism provisions, including participation in the activity of a terrorist group, facilitating terrorist activity, instructing activity for a terrorist group, and related financing or property offences. He was ultimately convicted for conduct that included developing a remote detonator device and providing financial and logistical assistance.

Although the alleged plot was centred in the United Kingdom and involved substantial international elements, Canadian jurisdiction did not depend primarily on the traditional extraterritorial mechanisms found in Section 7 of the Criminal Code. Instead, the prosecution rested strongly on conduct that occurred in Canada: work on devices, communications, support activity, and participation carried out domestically.

At the same time, Parliament had clearly drafted the terrorism provisions with transnational threats in mind. Some definitions and offences expressly contemplate conduct occurring inside or outside Canada, recognizing that terrorist networks often operate across multiple jurisdictions. In that sense, the legislation was designed from the outset to respond to threats unconstrained by national borders.

The prosecution and conviction were not legally straightforward. On appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, Khawaja challenged the constitutionality of the terrorism provisions themselves, arguing they were overbroad and vague contrary to Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms [not Section 7 of the Criminal Code], and that aspects of the definition of terrorist activity infringed freedom of expression. In 2012, the Court rejected those claims and upheld both the legislation and its application.

Rather than relying on a single jurisdictional clause, Khawaja demonstrates that Parliament can construct criminal jurisdiction through carefully tailored offences targeting transnational threats. In response to terrorism, Parliament enacted new offences outside Section 7 of the Criminal Code that could capture conduct with both domestic and international dimensions.

6.5 ) R. v. Malik and Bagri (2005) — The Air India Bombing Prosecution Before Canada's Modern Terrorism Laws

Unlike the other cases in this section, Air India did not establish a new jurisdictional doctrine. Its significance lies in demonstrating both the strengths and limitations of Canada's pre-terrorism legal framework. The prosecution illustrates how conventional criminal law was used to address a transnational act of mass violence before Parliament enacted specialized terrorism legislation.

Although Air India predates Khawaja by more than two decades, it is considered here because the contrast illustrates how Canada's modern terrorism framework evolved in response to earlier institutional and legislative shortcomings. It demonstrates that Canada's post-9/11 terrorism framework did not arise in a vacuum, but followed an earlier national tragedy prosecuted through conventional criminal law.

The prosecution arising from the Air India Flight 182 bombing remains one of the most consequential criminal proceedings in Canadian history. It illustrates how Canada confronted transnational terrorism before the enactment of its modern post-9/11 terrorism laws.

On June 23, 1985, Air India Flight 182 was destroyed by a bomb off the coast of Ireland after departing Montreal on a route originating in Toronto, killing 329 people. Most victims were Canadian residents, making it the deadliest terrorist attack in Canadian history. Although the detonation occurred abroad, the alleged conspiracy had deep territorial connections to Canada.

The bombing has widely been understood as motivated by violent Khalistani separatist extremism and anger over the Indian government's 1984 actions in Punjab, including Operation Blue Star and subsequent anti-Sikh mass violence. Air India was targeted as a symbol of the Indian state.

The principal accused prosecuted in Canada were residents of British Columbia, and the main trial proceeded in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The Crown alleged that substantial planning, bomb preparation, logistical coordination, and conspiratorial activity occurred within British Columbia. Those domestic acts provided a strong territorial basis for prosecution, even though the ultimate harm occurred overseas.

Unlike later cases such as R. v. Khawaja, the proceedings did not rely on specialized terrorism offences. Prosecutors instead proceeded through conventional criminal law tools, including murder, conspiracy, and explosives-related offences. The case, therefore, demonstrates that, before Parliament enacted dedicated anti-terrorism legislation, Canadian law could still reach transnational political violence through ordinary criminal offences when substantial domestic conduct was present.

Yet the proceedings also exposed serious institutional weaknesses. Investigative failures, intelligence-sharing breakdowns, and witness management problems contributed to the acquittal of key accused in 2005, while Inderjit Singh Reyat was the only person convicted in relation to the bombings.

Air India reveals an enduring pattern in Canadian extraterritorial law: the state often possesses legal tools to act, but whether those tools are effectively deployed depends on political will, institutional competence, and the priority assigned to the victims.

6.6 ) Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr (2010) — Canada's Own Culpability in a Torture-Linked Case

Unlike the criminal prosecutions discussed elsewhere in this paper, this case did not ask whether Khadr had committed an offence. It asked whether the Canadian government's own conduct abroad had violated Khadr's rights under the Charter.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002 at the age of fifteen and transferred to Guantánamo Bay detention camp, where he was held as an "enemy combatant" rather than recognized as a prisoner of war. The U.S. position was that non-state armed groups such as al-Qaeda fell outside the traditional prisoner-of-war protections of the Geneva Conventions. Critics argued this approach circumvented established wartime protections. Others emphasized that, whatever the allegations against him, he was a minor at the time of capture and that international law governing children associated with armed conflict called for greater emphasis on rehabilitation and special procedural protections than those afforded under the Guantánamo detention regime.

He remained detained for years without ordinary criminal process and was subjected to a military commission system later criticized by multiple courts and human-rights bodies. Between 2003 and 2004, Canadian intelligence and foreign-affairs officials travelled to Guantánamo to interview him while he was still in U.S. military custody. By later interviews, Canadian officials knew U.S. authorities had subjected him to sleep-deprivation techniques known as the "frequent flyer program," involving repeated cell transfers intended to disorient detainees and weaken resistance before questioning.

Despite that knowledge, Canadian officials proceeded with the interviews and shared the resulting information with U.S. authorities. By participating in and benefiting from a regime inconsistent with fundamental justice, Canada became implicated in treatment contrary to basic constitutional and international legal norms, including principles reflected in the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture (UNCAT). Khadr's lawyers turned to the Canadian courts, arguing that Canada's participation in the Guantánamo process—and its refusal to seek his repatriation—violated his Charter rights. What began as foreign detention therefore became domestic constitutional litigation over the obligations of the Canadian state.

In 2010, while Khadr remained detained at the age of twenty-three, the Supreme Court of Canada held that Canada's participation in that process violated his rights under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The significance of the decision lies in what triggered constitutional scrutiny: not merely that a Canadian citizen was mistreated abroad, but that Canadian state actors, through their own conduct, became implicated in a foreign process contrary to fundamental justice.

The case therefore stands as an important qualification to the general rule articulated in Hape that the Charter does not ordinarily apply extraterritorially. The Court did not hold that Charter rights automatically travel wherever Canadians are detained abroad. Rather, it held that Canada's own conduct abroad may attract Charter scrutiny where Canadian officials participate in and benefit from a process inconsistent with fundamental justice.

While the Supreme Court recognized that Canada's conduct engaged constitutional obligations beyond its borders, it declined to order Khadr's repatriation, leaving the remedy to the executive branch. In the years that followed, Khadr entered a plea agreement before a U.S. military commission in 2010, was transferred to Canada in 2012, later obtained release on bail in 2015, and reached a settlement with the Canadian government in 2017.

The decision illustrates a critical limitation in extraterritorial law. Even where rights violations are recognized, coercive treatment is acknowledged, and constitutional duties are engaged, remedies may remain contingent—shaped not only by law, but by diplomacy, alliances, and executive discretion.

6.7 ) The SNC-Lavalin Affair (2015–2019) — Foreign Bribery, Corporate Power & Jurisdiction by Separate Statute

Proceedings involving SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. illustrate a different model of Canadian extraterritorial criminal law: one built not through Section 7 of the Criminal Code, but through a separate Act of Parliament.

In February 2015, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police laid charges against Canadian-based SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. and SNC-Lavalin Construction Inc., alleging fraud and offences under the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA) arising from alleged payments of approximately $47.7 million and related fraud involving roughly $129.8 million connected to officials in Libya between 2001 and 2011.

Public reporting indicates that the RCMP's Libya investigation, Project Assistance, began in 2011 after information was shared by Swiss authorities, illustrating how Canadian enforcement of foreign bribery can depend not only on domestic law, but also on international co-operation and external institutional triggers.

The CFPOA was enacted in 1998 to implement Canada's obligations under the OECD Anti-Bribary Convention and was significantly strengthened in 2013 through amendments extending nationality-based jurisdiction over Canadian citizens, permanent residents, corporations, and certain organizations operating abroad. It therefore provided a direct statutory basis for prosecuting foreign bribery involving conduct occurring substantially outside Canada.

That jurisdictional framework was subsequently affirmed through prosecutions under the CFPOA, most notably R. v. Karigar (2014 ONSC 3093; aff'd 2017 ONCA 576), the first significant conviction under the Act.

The matter became politically significant in 2018–2019 when debate arose over whether the Public Prosecution Service of Canada should invite SNC-Lavalin to negotiate a remediation agreement rather than proceed toward trial. Then-Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould later stated that she had experienced inappropriate political pressure relating to the decision. Her subsequent resignation from Cabinet, followed by the resignations of Jane Philpott and senior adviser Gerald Butts, transformed the case into a major national controversy.

Ultimately, in December 2019, the fraud and corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. were stayed after SNC-Lavalin Construction Inc. pleaded guilty to a single fraud charge relating to conduct in Libya and agreed to pay a $280 million fine over five years. No conviction was entered against the parent company.

The episode is instructive because it demonstrates that where markets, international reputation, and organized commercial misconduct are implicated, Parliament has created tailored extraterritorial enforcement tools outside the Criminal Code itself. Unlike the connection-based approach developed judicially in Libman or the nationality-based provisions examined in Klassen, the CFPOA represents a bespoke statutory regime created specifically to implement Canada's international anti-corruption obligations. The SNC-Lavalin affair demonstrates that Canada already possessed the jurisdictional tools to act; the central issue became how those tools would be exercised.

Taken together, these cases demonstrate that Canadian extraterritorial criminal law has developed through multiple jurisdictional models. Other authorities—including R. v. Finta, R. v. Munyaneza, and R. v. Karigar—likewise demonstrate Parliament's willingness to create specialized extraterritorial jurisdiction where particular international harms or treaty obligations have been identified. Sometimes courts have extended existing legal principles, as in Libman. Sometimes Parliament has created nationality-based offences, as in Klassen. In other contexts, Parliament has enacted entirely separate statutory schemes, as with the CFPOA. Across each model, the common thread is legislative willingness to respond when particular harms become sufficiently visible or strategically significant. The remaining question is whether serious cross-border interpersonal violence has yet received equivalent recognition.

Read together, these authorities demonstrate that the principal question has rarely been whether Parliament possesses the constitutional authority to legislate beyond Canada's borders. Rather, the recurring question has been when it chooses to exercise that authority, for whom, and in response to which harms.

7. The Politics of Recognition and the Architecture of Protection

The seven cases surveyed demonstrate that extraterritorial criminal law is never shaped solely by doctrine. Libman concerned fraud schemes targeting victims abroad via Canadian systems. Hape turned on Canadian investigators operating within another state's sovereignty. Klassen reflected Canada's willingness to police child exploitation abroad alongside emerging international norms. Khawaja showed that terrorism laws were redesigned to address threats unconstrained by borders. The Air India prosecutions exposed domestic consequences of transnational political violence linked to overseas conflict. Khadr placed alliance management with the United States in tension with constitutional obligations owed to a Canadian citizen abroad. SNC-Lavalin demonstrated that foreign bribery enforcement may engage trade interests, diplomatic reputation, and executive sensitivity to economic consequences.

Again and again, jurisdiction has been entangled with foreign affairs: sovereignty, extradition, intelligence-sharing, treaty compliance, alliance management, commercial reputation, and the practical reluctance of states to criticize one another's institutions. Extraterritoriality, therefore, operates at the intersection of criminal justice, foreign affairs, and state reputation. The law may authorize action, yet whether action follows can depend as much on diplomacy, reciprocity, administrative capacity, and political appetite as on legal principle.

The SNC-Lavalin proceedings illustrate this especially well. They reveal how Parliament can build a tailored extraterritorial regime when harm is understood to be sufficiently international, economically significant, and reputationally consequential. The CFPOA did not emerge as a general amendment to the Criminal Code. It was enacted as standalone legislation to implement Canada's obligations under the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention and was later strengthened by a nationality-based jurisdiction over Canadian companies, citizens, and permanent residents operating abroad. Where foreign bribery threatened markets, treaty compliance, and Canada's standing among trading partners, Parliament created a bespoke legal tool.

That choice matters. It demonstrates that extraterritoriality is not only a technical question of where an offence occurs. It is also a political and institutional question of which harms are sufficiently compelling to justify specialized legislative responses. Viewed as a whole, the legislative history and judicial decisions examined in this paper reveal a recurring pattern. Where misconduct has threatened markets, state security, treaty obligations, diplomatic relations, or international reputation, Parliament has developed specialized jurisdictional frameworks or offences. By comparison, harms arising within private or intimate relationships have attracted fewer expressly extraterritorial legislative responses.

Section 7—or, if preferred, a standalone Act of Parliament—remains an available mechanism through which Parliament could respond to those identified gaps. Properly modernized, it could provide clearer jurisdictional pathways for serious cross-border offences and better align Canadian criminal law with the realities of an interconnected world.

8. When Harm Returns Home, but Jurisdiction Does Not

The history of Canadian extraterritorial criminal law shows that Parliament and the courts can respond decisively when misconduct implicates markets, security, treaty obligations, organized crime, or state interests. Where harms are structured, visible, and institutionally legible, legal pathways tend to emerge.

The more difficult question is what happens when the harm is no less serious, but arises primarily within private or intimate relationships rather than organized criminal, political, or institutional structures. Examples include intimate violence, coercive abuse, strangulation, sexualized harm, and psychological abuse occurring beyond Canada's borders before returning home through trauma, health consequences, economic loss, and ongoing safety risk.

Here, the contrast becomes more apparent. International law has developed robust frameworks for terrorism, hostage-taking, war crimes, corruption, and torture. Yet serious interpersonal violence committed by private actors—particularly violence disproportionately affecting women in intimate or domestic contexts—has historically attracted fewer expressly extraterritorial jurisdictional frameworks and more limited mechanisms for cross-border accountability.

The issue is not the absence of suffering. It is the uneven legal architecture built around different kinds of suffering. The section that follows illustrates how some harms travel easily with law, while others return home without it.

9. Torture, Legal Categories, and Uneven Recognition

The evolution traced in this paper also reveals differences in how international law has developed in relation to particular forms of violence. Canada embraced longstanding international commitments addressing torture, war crimes, terrorism, and other organized or state-linked harms decades before signing the Convention of Belém do Pará in 2025. This chronology illustrates how different categories of serious violence have generated different legal and legislative responses, shaping the jurisdictional tools available to address them.

Few norms in modern international law are stated more clearly than the prohibition against torture. Canada is party to the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture, both of which condemn torture, cruel treatment, and grave abuses linked to state custody, armed conflict, or official coercion. Canada has also supported related accountability mechanisms through domestic war crimes and crimes against humanity legislation.

Within the inter-American system, the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture was adopted in 1985, reinforcing regional commitments to prevention, prosecution, and punishment of torture. The treaty's focus, like most torture law, centred on abuse by state actors, detention systems, or persons exercising public authority. That focus is understandable. Torture by the state carries singular historical significance because it represents organized violence by institutions entrusted with power.

Yet the category also reveals a limit in legal design. Severe private violence can produce terror, domination, humiliation, bodily injury, and lasting psychological trauma resembling harms condemned most forcefully in torture law. Sleep deprivation, strangulation, coercive control, confinement, threats, and repeated assaults may profoundly fracture autonomy and security. But absent state involvement, such conduct is usually processed through ordinary assault frameworks—assuming effective investigation occurs at all.

The distinction is not necessarily one of suffering. It is one of legal category, jurisdiction, and political urgency.

10. Belém do Pará and the Delayed Recognition of Violence Against Women

A similar pattern appears in the treatment of violence against women. In 1994, the Convention of Belém do Pará became the first binding treaty to frame violence against women explicitly as a human-rights violation and to require states to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish it.

Canada did not sign the Convention until March 2025—more than thirty years after its adoption. The timing is notable. During those decades, Canada often presented itself internationally as a progressive advocate for equality, inclusion, and gender justice. Domestically, important reforms did occur. Yet the timing still reflects a broader historical tendency.

The record examined throughout this paper suggests a broader pattern. Parliament has repeatedly extended criminal jurisdiction in response to aviation, diplomacy, terrorism, organized crime, corruption, child sexual exploitation, trafficking, and, more recently, space exploration. By comparison, violence disproportionately affecting women in private or intimate settings has attracted fewer expressly extraterritorial legislative responses.

The contrast is revealing. The inter-American system recognized torture as a treaty priority in 1985. Canada did not sign the region's principal treaty addressing violence against women until 2025. Legal systems often move fastest where institutional priorities, treaty obligations, or national interests have already crystallized. The chronology examined throughout this paper suggests that violence occurring within private or intimate relationships has not always occupied the same position within Canada's evolving framework of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction.

11. Comparative Cases: When Law Travels Unequally

These distinctions are not theoretical. Their consequences become clearer through two modern cross-border examples.

11.1) R. v. Aydin Coban and the Amanda Todd Case — Cross-Border Online Sexual Extortion of a Minor

Beginning in or around 2009, Amanda Todd was targeted through online sexual extortion by a perpetrator operating abroad. The abuse crossed borders instantly through digital communication, coercion, harassment, and image distribution. Following her death by suicide in 2012, the case generated sustained public attention.

Through years of international co-operation, authorities identified Aydin Coban in the Netherlands. He was prosecuted there, extradited to Canada, and later convicted by a Canadian jury in 2022. Jurisdiction in this case was not immediate, but it was ultimately achievable. The harm was digitally transnational, supported by evidence trails, recognized offence categories, treaty-based co-operation tools, and strong institutional commitment.

11. 2) Cross-Border Intimate Partner Violence: A Canadian Case Study

In another cross-border case involving alleged intimate partner violence in Italy, both complainant and accused were Canadian. The physical, psychological, medical, and financial consequences later returned to Canada. Yet no comparable pathway materialized.

The barriers were different: delayed investigative engagement, territorial deference, foreign limitation rules, and the absence of a clear jurisdictional framework for serious private violence committed wholly in another state. In cross-border matters, delay can be outcome-determinative. Evidence windows narrow, witnesses disperse, limitation periods expire, and opportunities for foreign co-operation diminish.

The harm returned home, but jurisdiction did not.

The contrast is instructive. In one case, injury travelled through networks, and law eventually followed. In the other, harm travelled through the body, trauma, healthcare systems, social assistance programs, and ongoing public-safety risk, while responsibility remained stranded between borders. Whether this means that one harm mattered more than the other, or simply that some harms fit existing legal structures more readily, is a question many victims ask without receiving an answer.

12. Recommendations

Recommendation 1— Undertake a Comprehensive Review of Section 7

Direct the Department of Justice Canada to undertake a comprehensive review of Section 7 of the Criminal Code.

The review should assess whether the current scope of Canada's extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction remains coherent in light of Parliament's incremental legislative expansion over the past century.

Recommendation 2 — Consider a Targeted Nationality-Based Jurisdiction for Specified Serious Violent Offences

Examine whether specified serious interpersonal offences committed abroad should attract nationality-based jurisdiction in defined circumstances where committed abroad by Canadian citizens or permanent residents against Canadians or permanent residents. The review should determine which offences, if any, warrant nationality-based jurisdiction, recognizing that not every offence committed abroad should be prosecutable in Canada.

The review should consider offences including:

  • attempted murder

  • aggravated assault

  • sexual assault

  • aggravated sexual assault

  • stalking

  • kidnapping

  • unlawful confinement

Recommendation 3 — Conduct Intergovernmental and Expert Consultation

Consult broadly before legislative reform.

The review should include consultation with:

  • Department of Justice Canada

  • Global Affairs Canada

  • provincial Attorneys General

  • constitutional scholars

  • international criminal law experts

  • non-state torture experts, advocates, and survivors

  • victim-survivor organizations

  • Indigenous organizations

  • police and prosecutors

  • the European Commission for Victims Rights in the EU and their Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence

Recommendation 4 — Evaluate the Appropriate Legislative Vehicle

Assess whether reform is best achieved through amendments to Section 7 or through standalone legislation.

As demonstrated by the CFPOA and the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, Parliament has previously adopted specialized statutory models where particular harms warranted bespoke jurisdictional frameworks.

Recommendation 5 — Preserve Constitutional Safeguards and International Comity

Canada should also seek to become a global leader in victim-centred approaches to cross-border criminal victimization.

Any reform should respect:

  • foreign sovereignty

  • international comity

  • prosecutorial discretion

  • double jeopardy protections

  • evidentiary reliability

  • Attorney General consent where appropriate

  • Charter rights

  • fair trial rights

13. Conclusion: The Distance Between Nations

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently acknowledged that "international law has often been applied with varying rigour depending on the accused or the victim." Canada should ensure the same pattern of uneven protection is not reproduced domestically through its own cross-border justice framework.

Section 7 of the Criminal Code has never been static. It has expanded whenever Parliament judged a harm sufficiently urgent, organized, or internationally significant to justify action beyond territorial borders. Ships, aircraft, diplomats, terrorism, trafficking, child exploitation, corruption, cybercrime, war crimes, orbital stations, and recent space-law amendments underscore the point.

That history matters because it demonstrates that the principal barrier to broader protection has rarely been legal impossibility. More often, it has been legislative choice, institutional priority, and political will. Where harms are organized, strategic, commercial, or treaty-driven, jurisdictional pathways tend to emerge.

Where harms are private, relational, or politically diffuse, victims have more often faced delay, uncertainty, or abandonment. These patterns are not historically new. In Canada, fragmented jurisdiction and unequal protection have long fallen disproportionately on Indigenous women and girls, as documented by the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

This paper does not propose that Canada abandon territoriality as the organizing principle of criminal law. It argues only that Parliament should periodically reassess whether the existing exceptions remain coherent in light of their own evolution.

Ultimately, the issue is no longer whether Canada can legislate beyond its borders. It plainly can. The enduring challenge is how, when, and for whom Parliament chooses to exercise that authority. If Canadian law can follow assets, treaties, markets, and missions beyond Earth, it can modernize Section 7—or enact parallel legislation— so that survivors of serious violence are not left without protection in the far shorter distance between nations.