The Justice document considers reforms to defence of property without giving the reader any sense of the scope, context, or frequency of resort to this defence after physical or fatal violence. It is impossible to usefully reform this defence without any information about how it is currently understood or interpreted. For example, although the document suggests that courts have stated that defence of property alone can never justify taking human life, there have been cases, widely publicized, where police have decided not to lay any charges against shopkeepers who have killed intruders. In fact, the “law and order" or "vigilante" symbolism of this defence may be more critical than its narrow legal interpretation.

What is critical is to point out that persons defending property have options available to them that do not involve violence. Property defenders have the opportunity to withdraw and avoid or cease a confrontation.

Furthermore, the discussion document identifies the main problems with this defence as inconsistency and complexity in the law, while failing to inquire as to the equality and justice implications of the current law. CAEFS notes, for example, that property rights are unequally distributed according to race, sex, and class in Canadian society. Therefore, this defence prima facie reinforces inequalities. In particular, when one thinks of Canada’s most property-less groups, one thinks immediately of First Nations peoples who are involved in a concerted effort to claim their lands by challenging conventional understandings of property and criminal law.

Women too are largely property-less, as understood by the criminal law. CAEFS urges the Department of Justice to return to first principles before proceeding with this reform. Guidance can be found in the writings of Bertrand et al., A Feminist Review of Criminal Law, and Clare Beckton (Beckton, 1985), both of whom demonstrate the range of women’s economic interests and argue for an expanded notion of "property", so as to equally protect women’s, not just men’s, economic interests in law.

Finally, CAEFS suggests that consideration be given to the question of whether this defence, like the defence of provocation, is so deeply rooted in inequality that abolition, not reform, is in order. Given the reality that property offences are most often committed by those who experience deprivation, it is possible that those killed or injured by persons relying upon the defence of property are also more likely to be poor or working class and Aboriginal or otherwise racialized. The demographics of our jails and prisons certainly suggest that the majority of offenders commit property versus violent offences, and that they are disproportionately poor, Aboriginal, and African-Canadian.