Criminal Code (Canada)

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The Criminal Code (French: Code criminel) is a law of the Parliament of Canada that codifies most, but not all, criminal offences^[b] and criminal procedure^[c] in Canada. Its official long title is An Act respecting the Criminal Law (French: Loi concernant le droit criminel). It is indexed in the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985 as chapter number C-46^[1] and it is sometimes abbreviated as Cr.C. (French: C.Cr.) in legal reports.^[2] Section 91(27) of the Constitution Act, 1867 establishes that the Parliament of Canada has sole jurisdiction over criminal law. Accordingly, the Criminal Code applies to the entirety of the country, meaning that in Canada, all crimes which are defined under the Criminal Code are federal crimes and can be prosecuted anywhere they occur in or out of the country.

The Criminal Code contains some defences, but most are part of the common law rather than statute. Important Canadian criminal laws not forming part of the Code include the Firearms Act,^[3] the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act,^[4] the Canada Evidence Act, the Food and Drugs Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Customs Act, and the Contraventions Act. The Code underwent a major revision in 1954, which came into force in April 1955, but nonetheless remains the fundamental criminal law of Canada, despite several initiatives at major reform or the enactment of a new criminal code entirely.^[5][6][7][8] In 2018, and later 2019, the Trudeau government made a large revision to the Code which repealed numerous unconstitutional or archaic offences that had remained in it up to that point.^[9]

One of the conveniences of the Criminal Code was that it constituted the principle that no person could be convicted of a crime unless otherwise specifically outlined and stated in a statute. This legal document has played a major part in Canada's history and has also helped form other legal acts and laws, for example, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.^[10]

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