Ontario Premier Doug Ford said 'something is broken' in reaction to the decision to charge a homeowner for assaulting someone who broke into his home.Carlos Osorio/The Canadian Press
For a few years now, I’ve been mulling a question: should I have a baseball bat in my bedroom?
I often think about this late at night. By most standards, I live in a safe neighbourhood. Yet it seems these days there are few areas immune from break-and-enters. What if it happened in my home? What would I do? Confront the burglar in my pajamas shouting: “Get out, you rascal?” After he stopped laughing, he’d likely continue on his tour of the place to see what was worth stealing.
I’ve even thought about souping up my imagined bat by hammering nails into it so the sharp, pointy ends would stick out, as to cause as much pain as possible upon contact with the flesh of another. I know, it sounds dark and medieval. Blame it on Game of Thrones.
But this discussion I’ve been having in my mind about protecting my family against unwanted middle-of-the-night thieves took on a more serious demeanour last week when Ontario Premier Doug Ford mentioned at a news conference how outraged he was by a decision in Lindsay, Ont., to charge a homeowner for assaulting someone who broke into his home.
“Something is broken,” the Premier said about the decision.
And on this one, most Canadians would likely agree.
According to the Kawartha Lakes Police Service, a man entered a home occupied by 44-year-old Jeremy McDonald. There was an altercation between the two and Mr. McDonald allegedly assaulted the intruder with a knife and, according to police, “did endanger the life” of the other man.
That person, Michael Breen, 41, was wanted by police for unrelated offences and was charged with possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, break and enter and theft, and a couple of other ancillary counts.
Opinion: The police will be there immediately – in more than two hours
So, to wit: an armed and wanted man enters a stranger’s home with the purpose of robbing the place. The homeowner allegedly confronts him with a knife, a struggle ensues, and the suspect sustains life-threatening injuries. The homeowner also gets charged.
Reaction to this story has been swift and loud. Most people can’t believe the homeowner is facing a criminal charge – Doug Ford, and me, included.
Kawartha police issued a statement in response to the public outrage, saying that under Canadian law, “individuals have the right to defend themselves and their property.” Okay, then what is the problem?
Well, as they went on to say, the law requires any defensive action be proportionate to the threat faced. “This means that while homeowners do have the right to protect themselves and their property, the use of force must be reasonable given the circumstances,” the police statement said.
The use of force must be reasonable and proportionate to the threat? But what does that mean? A homeowner woken up from a dead sleep by noises in their house investigates and confronts someone trying to steal their possessions isn’t thinking: “Now, what would be a reasonable use of force here?”
The homeowner is likely scared out of their wits. And presuming the house is dark and the intruder is masked (making them look even more menacing), the homeowner doesn’t know if the person has a knife or a gun or simply plans to beat them into submission.
If I confronted an intruder with my imaginary medieval baseball bat (maybe not that imaginary for much longer) I would like to think I would have made enough noise to alert the unwanted person that someone is awake, giving them an opportunity to leave. If they didn’t, then they are asking for trouble in whatever form that may take. If I’m confronting an intruder, I’m not asking 100 questions. I’m defending my property and my loved ones within it.
If my assault on the person causes life-threatening injuries, that’s on the person who illegally entered my home, not on me.
Under Canadian law, a person is not guilty in these circumstances if 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.” Well, to my mind, when someone breaks into a house, that person is a threat to anyone living in it. Full stop. The onus shouldn’t be on the homeowner to discern or assess what type of threat the burglar poses or whether they are possibly concealing a weapon.
When you break into someone’s house, you are assuming all the risk. And if you get taken out on a stretcher from that home and are later fighting for your life, you have no one else to blame but yourself.