Not true, the Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty is unconstitutional for all crimes less than murder.
Kennedy v. Louisiana, 2008
Canada does not have a ‘Castle Doctrine’ like in the U.S. If someone breaks in to your home, your duty is to escape if you can. If you can’t escape you still can’t use lethal force unless you have evidence that your life is in danger. So if some thugs break in and say, “Give us your car keys and we’ll go”, you give them the car keys. If you shoot them, you’ll be charged with manslaughter or murder. Even if they said, “Give us the car keys or we will kill you” and brandished a gun. If handing over the keys ends the conflict, that’s your legal responsibility.
Even if you are trapped and the intruders are yelling, “We’re going to mess you up bad when we find you”, if you shoot them when they open the closet door you are hiding behind you had better hope they had guns or knives, or you’re facing a manslaughter charge. Maybe you’ll be acquitted, maybe not.
Basically, you can only use lethal force in Canada if you have exhausted your means of escape and you believe the intruder wants to kill you and has a weapon.
I have owned a car in Toronto for the last 35 years. I have had exactly one car stolen: an ‘89 Honda Civic sedan in 1994.
I don’t have a garage, so my cars sit in the driveway. My keys are in a faraday box, if someone wants the cars they can have them.
I understand that this sounds bad. But look at it from a rational rather than an emotional perspective.
The police aren’t encouraging crimes to happen and they’re not saying they’re giving up on apprehending criminals. But they are seeking to minimize the harm caused by criminals.
In the scenario described, a criminal has already broken into a house and is looking to steal something. At this point, the homeowner’s priority should be on getting that criminal out of his house as quickly as possible, even if that means making it easier for him to steal something.
The error the officer made is that there is a big difference between giving someone private rational advice and announcing it on TV as a good general policy. The latter can act as encouragement to thieves.
As private advice, it’s not bad. If they’ve already broken into your home, having them turn around and leave with your car keys is a win. Especially in a country where confronting them can result in bodily injury or death if you lose, and an assault or manslaughter charge if you don’t.
Here’s the actual law:
Defence — use or threat of force
- 34 (1) A person is not guilty of an offence if
- (a) they believe on reasonable grounds that force is being used against them or another person or that a threat of force is being made against them or another person;
- (b) the act that constitutes the offence is committed for the purpose of defending or protecting themselves or the other person from that use or threat of force; and
- (c) the act committed is reasonable in the circumstances.
- Marginal note:Factors(2) In determining whether the act committed is reasonable in the circumstances, the court shall consider the relevant circumstances of the person, the other parties and the act, including, but not limited to, the following factors:
- (a) the nature of the force or threat;
- (b) the extent to which the use of force was imminent and whether there were other means available to respond to the potential use of force;
- (c) the person’s role in the incident;
- (d) whether any party to the incident used or threatened to use a weapon;
- (e) the size, age, gender and physical capabilities of the parties to the incident;
- (f) the nature, duration and history of any relationship between the parties to the incident, including any prior use or threat of force and the nature of that force or threat;
- (f.1) any history of interaction or communication between the parties to the incident;
- (g) the nature and proportionality of the person’s response to the use or threat of force; and
- (h) whether the act committed was in response to a use or threat of force that the person knew was lawful.
- Marginal note:No defence(3) Subsection (1) does not apply if the force is used or threatened by another person for the purpose of doing something that they are required or authorized by law to do in the administration or enforcement of the law, unless the person who commits the act that constitutes the offence believes on reasonable grounds that the other person is acting unlawfully.
So if somebody has broken into your house and you are trapped and they threaten to “mess you up bad” you would be legally justified in defending yourself by shooting the intruder. If it turns out the intruder was laying and was unarmed, that wouldn’t alter that fact that they directed a threat of force against you which you would have reasonably believed was true.
I intentionally chose ‘mess you up’ and not ‘kill you’, because the prosecution would argue that ‘mess you up’ just means hit and kick you to teach you a lesson or something, and lethal force is not warranted.
Or rather, it MAY be warranted. If you are a 110 lb woman and the intruders are large men, then sure I think you could probably shoot them in that circumstance. But if I, a 200 lb man open the door and start blasting and it turns out I killed an unarmed scrawny high school student, I’m boned. Or a career criminal with no record of violence, also unarmed. Probably boned.
Well, here is my reasoning:
The premise is that there are thieves who are primarily interested in taking my car, and thus would not harm me or my property if they just had easy access to my keys.
But, if this is the case, what harm would they do if the keys aren’t immediately available? Sure, they might trash the place looking for them, but there really isn’t anything they would practically look in that would be worth more than my car. Or, if I’m present, they probably would just go straight to me and demand the keys, with a threat. Harming me wouldn’t make sense since they don’t know where the keys are.
So, sure, while my car is worth less than my life, that doesn’t seem to be the comparison.
Then there’s the other considerations: what about those who break into or sneak into my house for other reasons, and find easy access to a car? That would encourage them to take the car when they otehrwise wouldn’t have.
And then, yes, there is what @Sam_Stone said: if this becomes a wider practice, then now car thieves know it would be easy to get the car, making them more likely to break in in the first place, instead of getting a car in some other way.
All in all, it doesn’t seem to me to add up to being a good practice.
Can you give us an example of any prosecutor ever making that argument in any Canadian court?
I am well-acquainted with that particular gun-owner’s fantasy.
And sure, you could get tried for it, even if you were defending yourself. That’s as it should be: When there’s a homicide, there should be a trial, to determine whether it’s justified. It’s only a problem if the result of that trial is a guilty verdict, when you were actually defending yourself. How common is that?
I don’t get it… While a gun is in the process of being cleaned, isn’t it temporarily inoperable? That seems like about the worst possible case for the homeowner: The intruder sees them as a threat, immediately attacks them, gets a gun in addition to whatever else they’re stealing, and the homeowner is unable to defend themself.
Not if a bullet is chambered.
Quite common happening.
Yes, there are various possibilities.
Scenario 1: The criminals break in your house illegally with no intent to commit any other illegal act. They see your car keys and decide to steal your car, which they would not have otherwise done, because the easy access to the keys made the car theft convenient.
I find this scenario really unlikely. Criminals do not break into homes just to be inside those homes. Breaking into a home is, by itself, a serious offense and criminals generally only do it when they have some other intent while they are inside.
Scenario 2: The criminals break in your house illegally with the intent of stealing something valuable. They see your car keys and decide to steal your car, because the easy access to the keys made the car the easiest valuable thing for them to steal.
In this scenario, I’d call this a likely loss. You as the property owner would have preferred they stole the items which had the least value. A car is generally one of the more valuable things a person owns.
On the other hand, if the criminals were planning on stealing something and took your car and left because that theft was easy, you might have faced worse consequences if they hadn’t found the keys so readily. If they had spent time searching the house looking for the keys, they might have found more of your valuable items during the search and taken those along with your car.
Scenario 3: The criminals break in your house illegally with the intent of committing crimes against the people in the house. They see your car keys and decide to steal your car instead, which they would not have otherwise done, because the easy access to the keys made the car theft convenient.
This one’s a win. The loss of your car is much less than whatever harm would have been done to your family.
Scenario 4: The criminals break in your house illegally with the specific intent of stealing your car. They find the keys readily available and steal your car and leave.
The criminals stealing just your car and leaving is better than alternatives like the criminals stealing you car and also stealing other things or the criminals stealing your car and also harming you or your family.
Scenario 5: The criminals break in your house illegally with the specific intent of stealing some valuable item you own other than your car. They find the keys readily available and decide to steal your car along with the valuable item.
What do you have in your house? Impressionist paintings? If you have some high value items like this, you’re going to have better security than the average house. And anyone who breaks into steal these valuable items will be professionals who aren’t going to steal a car in an offhand manner.
Yes you’re right. I live in Canada and Canada wants to end gun violence unlike USA. I’m from Detroit originally came to Canada as a 12 year old boy with parents. I’m 31. Did you know the Canadian government buyed back guns from law abiding gun owners and paid them money for it.
Sorry to hear that about your car. I agree Toronto is dangerous place for car jackings. You still live in Canada now?
Part of the problem is supposedly that the legal penalties in Canada for stealing a car are, in practice, not strong enough to deter criminals in comparison to the US. Is this true? You’d have to ask someone smarter.
My car was stolen from the garage in the middle of the night 3 decades ago, I’ve gotten over it.
I still live in Canada and in most categories there is less crime than there was in the 70s and 80s, contrary to the line Pierre Poilievre is spouting.
Perhaps he has time to load it when he hears the door being pounded on.
Someone is kicking your door in. What makes you think they are after the keys to your car? Or is it etiquette amongst thieves to announce their intentions before entry? Even if they shout, “we’re just after your car!”, do you believe them.
What is needed is a thieves guild like on Discworld. You pay your ‘insurance’ and they ensure you don’t get robbed. Seeing the police/government won’t do it now.
Maybe I just don’t understand men.
It’s not hard to understand that people don’t want their stuff stolen or to be assaulted in their homes. How is this a man thing?
Thieves are bad people making bad decisions. They’ve already made the bad decision of breaking into my house to steal my car. I now have a choice:
- get into a gunfight over the car where the best case scenario is a dead guy seeping blood into my floor, a few dozen cops, lawyers, and hopefully I don’t get charged with a felony, and the worst case scenario is also a dead guy seeping blood into my floor… me.
- let the guy take the car and call Liberty Mutual.