LISTEN: Pierre Poilievre plans to introduce act to amend Criminal Code on self-defence

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre wants the government to amend the Criminal Code to say that the use of force is presumed to be reasonable to defend your home if someone breaks into it.

He said if the government doesn’t do this, his party will introduce a private member’s bill aimed at making the change this fall during a press conference in Brampton, Ont.

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This comes after a 44-year-old Lindsay, Ont. man was charged with assault in an altercation after a man with a crossbow allegedly broke into his apartment.

The alleged intruder, a 41-year-old man also from Lindsay, was airlifted to a hospital in Toronto with life-threatening injuries.

He joined The Evan Bray Show on Friday morning to talk about his newly proposed Stand on Guard Act.

Listen to the full interview with Poilievre, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: The last time you were on the program was just before the byelection in Alberta, so congratulations on that win. I’m sure you’re anxious to get back into the house in a couple of weeks.

PIERRE POILIEVRE: Thank you to the wonderful people of Battle River—Crowfoot, who are not Saskatchewanians, but almost, right up against the border.

What was the announcement that you made this morning?

POILIEVRE: I announced something called the Stand on Guard Act. It brings in the castle doctrine—the idea that your home is your castle. The problem that we’re trying to fix here is section 34 of the Criminal Code, which is very unclear on what circumstances allow someone to use force in their own defence.

There are nine complicated conditions that judges can interpret how they like, and that has meant that numerous people who have been defending their homes from invaders have themselves ended up in handcuffs. One guy in Collingwood, Ontario, took on three masked intruders who were armed with a sawed-off shotgun. He managed to get the gun free and use it against two of the invaders, and then, when the police got there, they charged him, even though he was defending himself.

There’s another man in Milton, Ontario, whose home was stormed by five masked and armed intruders believed to be committing a robbery. They actually tied him up. He broke free, used his legal firearm to shoot one of the intruders. By the way, that intruder was carrying a nine millimetre handgun. And this guy, the home defender, was charged with second-degree murder, had to pay $130,000 to get bail, lost his firearms license and his passport, and was forced to live at his grandmother’s house as a bail condition, and only after five months in hell were the charges dropped.

My solution with the Stand on Guard Act is this: we’re going to change the law to say that if someone has broken into your house and is a threat to your family, the use of force you apply is presumed to be legal, even lethal use of force.

So it’s basically changing the presumption?

POILIEVRE: Yes, under two conditions: they break into your house and you believe they are a threat to your family, automatically, your actions against that person are deemed legal.

How do we guard against the extreme, where people take this as the opportunity to shoot, no questions asked? It comes down to that whole proportionate force. How do you see that balance here?

POILIEVRE: We’ve created a special rule for when it’s your home. Because some people have said, some of these cases, it’s in a dark parking lot, and a couple of drug dealers get into a fight and an argument, and the guy says, ‘Oh, I killed him in self-defence.’ Well, that’s not what we’re talking about.

We’re talking about a case where someone has illegally intruded into your home. So right there, you know that you’re in a serious risk. Someone’s going to be brazen enough to break into your house, they’re likely willing to be violent. The second thing is that you reasonably believed that the person was a threat to you.

A topic very similar to this and not identical played out in Saskatchewan a number of years ago, involving a farmer and someone who had come onto their property, and there was a perceived threat. It actually went through a whole court process, and ultimately the farmer—who was defending his property—was found not guilty. There was a lot of political fallout. Do you see this as a breaking into homes issue versus being on the property? Is there a differentiation there?

POILIEVRE: Yes, we are looking at doing another second self-defence law. Because even for off-property self-defence, we think the law is too weighted for the criminal and not for the defender. But we do think there’s a special thing called your home, your castle, where you have an extra degree of latitude to protect yourself.

I say to people who say it’s cruel, if you don’t want to get shot, you don’t want to get pummeled, don’t break into someone’s house, and you won’t have to worry about someone using this new conservative law to attack.

— with files from The Canadian Press