Self-Defence Debate After Lindsay Ontario Home Invasion

You’ve probably seen the headlines. On August 18 of this year, a homeowner in Lindsay, Ontario confronted an intruder. By the way, the intruder allegedly had a crossbow, no less, who broke into his home, and now the homeowner is charged with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon. How on earth are we here?

This has sparked a real national debate, hasn’t it, about home invasion and the limits of self defense. And I’ll talk a little bit about this particular case and home invasions in general, in the context of section 34 and 35 self defense and self defense of property. But I’ll tell you, a lot of people don’t agree that this person should be charged, but we don’t really know the facts. The police have the facts, and they’ll have to sort that out in court, and we’ll see how that goes. But okay, so under Section 34 the Criminal Code, if someone breaks into your home and you perceive your life as being threatened, you’re under imminent attack, or you’re being attacked or imminent threat, you’re allowed to defend yourself.

You’re allowed to protect yourself or another person in your home, and as long as you use reasonable force, so the force can’t be excessive. My God, someone coming in with a crossbow. What do you do? I don’t know, but obviously this person’s alleged to have assaulted them back with a weapon. It’s a pretty shocking experience. I mean, I can’t imagine in the middle of night coming someone coming into my home with a crossbow. What do I do? Cower in the corner, defend myself, defend my wife, and then I wind up getting charged. The person obviously has some very serious life threatening injuries, the intruder. But some would say, of course, if you break into someone’s home with a weapon in your hands, what you’re asking for, it kind of right. But having said that, certainly we can’t act excessively like just as an example. If someone broke in with a baseball bat or a crossbow and I was able to subdue them with a ball bat, or even, say, shoot them once because they’re coming at me, you can’t then keep attacking them as an example. So I don’t know what the facts are in this case that’ll come out, but I hope that it wasn’t excessive here, and I hope the crown comes to grips with this.

There’s been number of home invasion cases in Ontario and Canada lately where the Crown’s withdrawn. The police seem to err on the side of caution, in my mind, and lay the charges. I’m not sure what side of the debate you’re on, but a lot of people feel our laws should protect homeowners more, because in the shocking adrenaline the situation of someone breaking into your home, are you way to the nice of your blows? Are you going to go through all the checklists of the criminal court about, oh, proportional force? How big is the person? Are they carrying a weapon? No, you act in the heat of the moment. Hopefully you don’t go overboard. But I would think if someone’s coming at you with a crossbow in their hands, you’re entitled to take another weapon and attack them back and subdue them. And that might, it might result in life threatening injuries depending on where your weapon hit them, just as an example. So we’ve got this debate going on. We’ve got our politicians talking about it. We’ve got a lot of people online talking about but it seems like the the weight of the debate is on the side of homeowners having more protective rights. Because what am I supposed to do sit in my house and cower or Am I entitled to protect my wife or my kids or simply comply. Oh, the person’s coming in. I’ll let them do whatever they want. I’m just going to phone the police and cower in the corner. Well, some owners, homeowners, will protect themselves, and some people, some people, think that an intruder deserves what they get, as long as the other person doesn’t act excessively, but that’s what our law says. It’s different than many of the states, where they have a castle doctrine, where there’s no duty to retreat, and you can kind of take matters in your own hand, within a certain level, higher than Canada, but we’ve got a more conservative approach, if it might put it that way, where, where you can’t do that, you can’t act successfully, excessively, or you wind up getting charged. I guess the moral of the story is, I don’t know what, what happens when someone comes in that you’re most people are going to protect themselves, and hopefully most people act reasonably. And I truly hope that that homeowner mean a lot of people hope that they just get the charges withdrawn, but I’m not going to tell you what my side of the debate is. I’m sure leave your comments as what you think of this and whatnot, and whether you think that Canada should change its laws to be more protective for homeowners, because right now, for many people, it seems very unsatisfactory. And. What I’ve noticed over the years, the police seem very much more quick to charge homeowners if the burglar, if I might put it that way, to use a US term, gets hurt in any fashion, and all of a sudden you wind up getting charged. Can’t imagine this, middle of the night, you’re sitting in your bed, adrenaline’s rushing, your life’s under threat, and you’re the one that gets charged. Does it make sense to you? I’ll leave that rhetorical question with you. Boy, this has been a great day of videos. I’ve really enjoyed it. We’re wrapping up our video session soon, and thanks to all our subscribers and viewers, and I hope you enjoy this topic, because it is a national Firestorm debate right now about what a homeowner how they can protect themselves, given the limited extent that the law allows them to under Section 34 and 35 of the Criminal Code.