The Decibel - Is it legal to defend yourself if someone breaks into your home?

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

In August, a man allegedly broke into someone’s home in a small Ontario town. After an altercation, the intruder was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. Now, both men face charges. The case has sparked a country-wide conversation about the limits of self-defence, with politicians across Canada weighing in.Today, the Globe’s opinion columnist Andrew Coyne joins The Decibel. He’ll tell us how the public discourse is playing out and what Canadian law actually says about self-defense.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

A couple of weeks ago, an alleged break-and-enter took place in Lindsay, Ontario. Here's what is alleged to have happened. According to local police, Michael Breen entered the apartment of Jeremy MacDonald at around 3 a.m. McDonald assaulted him with a knife, and Breen was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. Police charged Breen with possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. break-and-enter, and theft. But McDonald, the man whose apartment was allegedly broken into, was also charged. His charges include aggravated assault, an assault with a weapon.

The charges against McDonald have sparked strong reactions across the country, from people like Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Something is broken. I know someone breaks into my house or someone else's, you're going to fight for your life. This guy has a weapon. You're going to use any force you possibly can to protect your family.

Alberta Premier Daniel Smith. If you don't want to get shot or beaten up, don't break into people's houses. And conservative leader Pierre Paulyev. You don't want to be harmed, then don't invade someone's house and don't threaten their security. The law needs to be very clear

that people have the right to defend their homes. and their families against lawbreakers. Today, Globe Opinion columnist Andrew Coyne is here. He'll tell us how the public discourse is playing out and what Canadian law actually says about self-defense. I'm Michal Stein, guest hosting The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure.

So the case that we're talking about today is an alleged break-in in a small town. Why do you think so many people are talking about this right now? Well, there's the facts of the case itself, or the alleged facts, which involve somebody being allegedly interrupted in the middle of the night by an intruder in his home. The intruder supposedly had a crossbow. And according to police, in the end, the intruder was sent to the hospital with life-threatening injuries. But look, anybody can imagine themselves being a homeowner in that situation, and it's a very scary thing to think about. Beyond that, the whole state of the law. And I think the reaction to the case is also framed by people's

understanding or lack of understanding of the law. So what most people's reaction is, is, look, I ought to be able to defend myself on my own home. And if the law won't let me do that, then the law is an ass. The law will let you defend yourself in your own home. It just says you have to be reasonable about it. So then people say, well, how can anybody possibly know what's reasonable in the heat of the moment? This is an unreasonable expectation. This is not a new objection. Common law has been dealing with this for centuries, and it's codified in the criminal code now as it's reasonable in the circumstances. So it's not reasonable as some sort of abstract professorial doctrine. It's what would we expect a reasonable person in the same

situation facing the same emotions of panic and confusion and startled and everything else that would be going through your mind? What would they be expected to do in that circumstances? In other words, you could say it's okay to overreact as long as you're overreacting in a way that would be reasonable to someone, a reasonable person in the same set of searchment sense. So people, I think, have overly stringent ideas of what the law allows and does not allow. And that's, I think, feeding into this. Andrew, you mentioned something there. The law is an ass. What does that mean? It's a quote from the put upon Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist. Charles Dickens. In Charles Dickens Oliver Twist, who without getting into the subject matter,

expressed himself to the opinion that if the law thinks that, then the law is a ass. He doesn't say an ass. He says a ass. So I've cleaned it up a little bit for modern consumers. But it's this general idea, this attitude, that the law is much more arcane and dry as dust and not as attuned to real world realities. I think a lot of people suppose this about the law. And when you delve into these cases and you delve into how laws are, you find that, in fact, it's a lot more reasonable, reasonable in the sense of making a lot. allowance for human frailty, making allowance for the complications of individual situations,

then I think people realize. I think people assume the law just has this really one-size-fits-all, clear, obvious meaning and never allows any deviation from it. It's just most of the time not the case. Okay, so it sounds like what's shocking to people here is that the man whose home was broken into was also charged in this case. And that's the difficulty is none of us knows yet how reasonable or unreasonable. that that was until we've seen all of the facts at trial. So I think we should all, frankly,

suspend judgment about this case. But if I read the reaction correctly, I don't think it is just about this case. I think it's about the whole principle of, you know, what should be the limits, if any, on the homeowner's right to defend themselves. And a lot of people you see online and in politics basically seem to be taking the line that anything goes. If somebody comes into my home, I can do what I like to him. And anybody who tells me different is just some point-handed intellectual doesn't understand human reactions. That's not what the law says in Canada. That's not what the law has ever said in Canada.

That's not what the law says in any other democratic country, including the United States, by the way. Even in the United States, there are limits to what you can do to an intruder, and they have to do with reasonableness. So what do our laws say about this? So we used to have a whole set of different laws. You know, some had to do with in the home, out of the home. You know, there was a bit of a hodgepots. 2012, the Harper government, not known for being soft on crime, kind of tidied them up into a single kind of catch-all law that said, you know, whether you're at a bar somewhere in your home,

whether you're defending yourself or your property, the basic rule is respond in a way that is reasonable in the circumstance. That's the really key line. And there's a lot of other stuff that go over, but that's the really key line. There's a body of jurisprudence about what constitutes reasonable. And that jurisprudence, that common law precedent has built in the idea that not everyone's going to respond in the most exactly rational way when they're faced with this kind of terribly frightening situation. So as I say, I think people tend to assume the law is more unreasonable than it actually is. Right, because you'd look at a situation like this and think about, you know, what would I do if I was in the situation? And for a lot of people,

they think, okay, well, I'd be in a fight or flight mode. So you don't know how you're going to That's right. And so we can all imagine that. We can also think, if we think about it more, there'd be situations where it would plainly not be reasonable. If the intruder had been knocked out, okay, and was clearly not a danger to anybody at that point, you could not, you can't go on beating him. If it's a scared, you know, kid who's interrupted in a burglary, he's unarmed, runs away at the first sight of you. That's a little different than if it's some monster with 250 pounds is coming at you with a crossbow. So each situation is different, and it's probably right for the courts to assess each these situations in a slightly different light

depending on the circumstances. That seems to me to be perfectly reasonable. And the other really key point is because a lot of people will say, well, come on, it shouldn't be up to me to show that I would behave reasonably in my own home. Well, newsflash, it isn't up to you. The onus is on the crown. The only thing you have to do in Canadian law, first of all, you have to raise it as a defense. And secondly, do you have to pass this really kind of minimal standard of is there

quote, an error of reality. Does your story make any sense, whatever? As long as it does, then the onus shifts onto the crown. The crown has to show that you were behaving unreasonably. You do not have to show that you were behaving reasonably. So that's, I think, is also not well understood. Obviously, anytime somebody's charged unreasonably, that's a terrible thing. They're put through a terrible ordeal. But any crime or any statute in the book, there's going to be issues about how and when are people charged for it. And you want to have sensible guidelines for prosecutors and police, so they don't lay charges in silly instances, but you can't eliminate altogether the possibility that somebody's going to be unjustly charged.

It's going to happen if you're defending yourself in a bar. This is the nature of self-defense. It's a murky thing. Self-defense is by its nature, you're telling somebody you can use force against another human being, which we generally do not allow in our society. You can do so in these very straightened circumstances of self-defense, but because we don't want that to be abused. We don't want people claiming self-defense when all they're doing is just going out and murdering somebody. Then it's in its nature that it's going to wind

of involving the police and probably the courts. And I think an important distinction to make here is that in the case that sparked this discussion, the man who allegedly acted in self-defense was charged. He has not been convicted yet. And what we're talking about here is that people can be charged with assault in situations of self-defense. That's not the same as conviction. It's not even in the case of being tried. It's entirely possible in this case or in others that the prosecutor looks at the charges and says we're not proceeding with these. Again, we're going to have to wait and see what all the facts of this case are before we can judge how well judged was the police decision to, you know, suggest these charges or the prosecutor's decision to proceed with

them. So to come back to the backlash about this person, Jeremy McDonald, getting charged, a lot of that backlash is coming from conservative politicians. Are these laws or is this use of the law particularly new? It's not. I mean, it's the current statute goes back to 2012 under the Harbor government. We've had some statute or other about reasonableness of self-defense going back to the first criminal code in 1892. It's been a matter of the common law for centuries. If you look at the statutes of basically any advanced democracy, they have some similar language.

Now, there are gradations. Some countries, like Germany or Italy, have more of a provision to weigh things on the homeowner's side. In Germany, for example, there's an explicit exception that if you panic or in fright, you'll have a different standard applied to you. Italy has a bit more of a, it's closer to a kind of a castle doctrine like they have in the United States. Japan or New Zealand, they're closer to the idea of, no, you've got to really show that you were, the prosecution necessarily show, but there has to be some element of reasonableness to this. So if people wanted to argue maybe we need to move one direction or another along that continuum, I think there's a reasonable debate to be had about that.

Should we make it more automatic, the presumption of reasonableness on the homeowners part so that they don't even have to raise it as a defense, that's one way to go. But the populist idea expressed by people like Pierre Puevae that you have a right to defend yourself full stop, quote unquote, is appealing to. this idea that any limit whatever is illegitimate. And I just think that just does not, however fervently people may believe it, is just simply not the way a civilized country conducts itself. We'll be right back. So, Andrew, you were talking about other countries kind of taking slightly different approaches. Where does Canada's approach fall in there? How does

it compare? We're, I think, more towards the direction of requiring reasonableness. But again, it's, I wouldn't exaggerate that. You really only have to have that basic establishment of the air of reality, and then it's on the crown to demonstrate that you were unreasonable. I think that the jurisprudence, though, is pretty squarely in the mainstream of international law in this regard. So these are really questions of degree. Even in the United States, where they famously have the castle doctrine, all that that really does is it says, we're going to have an automatic presumption of reasonableness. If somebody's in your home, we're going to stay from the get-go that it's reasonable for you to fear for your life or fear for your safety and therefore

to be able to use some degree of force, if not deadly force. But even there, it's open to prosecutors to rebut that presumption by saying, look, the facts of this case, you know, maybe the intruder was already out cold or for some other reason. You can't sustain that this was reasonable. You behaved excessively over. So even the United States, you can't. It can be. It'll depend upon, obviously, the discretion of prosecutors. And some states are going to have different attitudes towards that. But if you're looking at the law on its face, there's a presumption in the United States as there's a presumption in Canada. It can be overridden in the States or overruled in the states as it can in Canada by the evidence. So, again, differences in degree. But my point is this, even in the United States, you cannot just fire at oil, as some people seem to imagine. Correct me if I'm wrong here. Does Castle Doctrine, so this presumption that the householder is acting in self-defense because someone has come into their home, does that mean that if someone allegedly assault someone in an act of self-defense, that they would not be charged or they may still be charged and would have to have that play out through the... It would be less likely they would be charged in the first place.

Okay. And if they were, it's an absolute defense. It's sort of on the table right away. in Canada, that you have to raise this as a defense. In the United States, it's already sort of presumed from the start. And I would imagine, I don't know exactly, but I would imagine it precludes a lot of prosecutions because there will be no reasonable prospect of conviction. But again, these things are to some extent a matter of prosecutorial discretion. Right.

Okay. So a big difference between the way the law works in many U.S. states and the way it works in Canada is that in Canada, one would be likely to be charged if you're alleged. Legitably acting in self-defense and assault someone in the process. And in the U.S., where they have these castle doctrine laws, if someone breaks into your home, you assault them, they're less likely to be charged. Maybe less likely. Even in Canada, you're not likely to be charged unless there's a reasonable prospect of conviction. So you have to be behaving in a pretty manifestly unreasonable thing. I'm not making any judgment on the particular case that we're talking about.

But as a general principle, as I understand it, you would have to be behaving in a way that was unreasonable enough. that the prosecutor could feel that he or she would be able to discharge the onus of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that you had behaved unreasonably. So even in Canada, I would suggest you're probably very unlikely to be charged in the first place. And if you are charged, I think the rate of conviction is even lower. Juries are going to look at this. And if there's any reasonableness to your behavior at all, I think people can identify. That's one of the values of the jury system is people can, you know, you have these principles that are laid out, the law, and that's valuable. It's also valuable to have regular folks take a look at it

and apply it in a common sense way. And I think it's the combination that is the genius of our system. Just to go back to the U.S. for a moment, I think a lot of people will be familiar with, quote, stand your ground laws that were first introduced in Florida back in the early 2000s. How did that change things? Well, stand your ground is a more general principle that applies not just to household situations, but any situation. And what it says is there's an old kind of common law understanding, that you have kind of a duty to retreat, that is say, if there's any way that you can just get yourself out of the situation rather than escalating it, there's a common law expectation that you should. And what Stand Your Ground said was,

no, we're going to make as a matter of statute, in the case of Stand Your Ground, wherever you are, if you feel like your life or health is threatened, you can go out and use force to try to resolve. What the Castle Doctrine does is, first of all, it applies that in a household setting, And secondly, it has this idea about we're going to presume reasonableness that if somebody's in your home, it's reasonable for you to be in fear for your life or safety. Right. This is one of the interesting things about the Canadian approach is that the difference, as I say, is more when you get down to the nub of it, is more indigree than kind. But it's also, it's more discretionary. It's a more principle-based rather than rules-based.

What the Canadian system says is, wherever you are, was it reasonable in the circumstances? And it kind of leaves it to the courts to work out through accumulated precedent. what is reasonable or not rather than trying to be too prescript. I mean, it does lay down some guidelines in the next clause of law about how the courts should be figuring out what's reasonable or not. But ultimately, it comes down to precedent and how these things have been worked out over many, many cases. So I want to come back to the Canadian context here.

We've heard a lot of conservative politicians speak out quite strongly against the man being charged. What do you make of that? Well, they are capitalizing on a couple of things. First of all, violent crime is rising in Canada. It's way below where it was in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but it's true to say that it's rising. And so public perception is very attuned to that, and people tend to say that crime rate's much higher than it actually is. So there's never any real percentage loss for a politician in coming out and saying we're not being tough enough on crime. Secondly, this is the sort of case that allows you to pitch yourself on behalf of the harried homeowner, the common sense person,

versus a bunch of pointing ahead of intellectuals, writing the laws or interpreting the laws, who don't understand how real people live. And that's a really popular thing to say right now. Experts don't know anything. Expertise means nothing. It's all just how do I feel about it? So I think those two things together make this very potent.

And as I say, add to it the seeming alleged facts of this case, again, with the provisor that we'll have to find out exactly what happened in this case, it's a free kick. You know, it's interesting. You're not only seeing conservatives coming out and saying, this is outrageous. A man's home is this castle. You can do it like. You're seeing a lot of liberals.

I think it's a great opportunity for liberals to kind of flex their muscles a little bit and beat their chest and say, yeah, if somebody came into my house, I'd beat the crap out of them as well because liberals are tired of having to be the people saying, oh, you know, too much force is too much and we need control guns, et cetera. So they kind of had a holiday from that. They could behave like their members of the NRA for a moment. But I think if people in the cold write a day stopped and asked themselves, okay, you know, is this just some new rule that Justin Trudeau invented because he listened to a couple university professors? Or is this something that's been on the books in one way or another for centuries that is the norm across the democracies that isn't hugely different even from the states, then I think it puts a rather less coloration.

What we're dealing here is with degrees of difference between different countries, probably. which is not this kind of black and white, you can do anything, you can't do anything that people like to portray it as because that's more fun. There's a curious discrepancy at play as well, too, when we look at crime stats because my understanding is that while violent crime, you know, in general is increasing in 2024, a lot of violent crime actually went down. Youth crime was down, violent crime was down, break and enters are down. Do you think there's a discrepancy between the way that people feel about public safety and what bears out in the statistics? Well, yes and no. I don't know how much stock you can put in any one year of figures. But look, since around the middle of the 2010, 2015 or so, which if you're a conservative, you're going to say just when Trudeau came in, for one reason or another, maybe because of that, maybe not.

Violent crime rates have been on a sort of secular increase with flips up and down in any one year. So that's a fact that's valid. It's one way of looking at. Another way of looking at it is violent crime is way lower now than it was, you know, when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s or even the 80s. And so from that perspective, it's not as valid an issue. But look, if you're the person whose house has been broken into, you don't have a lot of use for the stats.

And if there's enough of them or enough people fearing that they're going to be next, it's entirely appropriate that politicians should be trying to grapple with this. They shouldn't just be telling the people, you know, go away, your fears aren't worth worrying about. But they do, I think, have to try to approach that in some sense that makes some actual sense, you know, both in terms of effectiveness and in terms of proportionality. You know, we don't as a society typically say it's okay to kill people if you're afraid, you know. It's okay to use deadly force if you've got no alternative. That's the general rule that we've had. Andrew, just before we let you go, this story has really drummed up a lot of fervor.

What do you think that says about the moment that we're in right now? Well, I think this is driven less by fear of crime, though that is certainly part of it, than by hostility to know-at-all experts. And look, some of that is valid. Sometimes experts have too much confidence in what they know and can make extravagant statements. And it's always been valid. there's always been a small, see, conservative tradition of skepticism of what I might call overweening intellectuals, intellectuals, intellectual overconfidence.

For example, intellectuals in the mid-20th centuries who thought you could plan the economy. I think it was a sensible intellectual response to say, actually, you know, that requires a level of knowledge that no human society could possibly possess and blah, blah, blah. That's the sort of case for markets versus central planning. So in any issue like this, it's valid to be skeptical. It's valid to look at what the intellectual is saying, what the experts are saying, and subjected to tests of, does the evidence support this? My fear is that with a lot of these issues, expertise is being dismissed not in spite of the expert's knowledge, but because of it.

The fact that an expert is saying it means it must be invalid. It must be untrue. And this is definitely tapping into this that, I mean, part of it is just, frankly, people haven't read the law. they're reacting to the laws they think it is rather than as it actually is. But it's also tapping into, you know, some academic out there thinks this is a good idea and they don't know how regular people live. Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time and joining us today. My pleasure.

That was Andrew Coyne, an opinion columnist for the Globe and Mail. That's it for today. I'm Michael Stein. I produce the show along with Madeline White and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thank you for listening.