Les menaces conditionnelles

R. v. Deneault, 2002 BCCA 178 (CanLII)

[24] As Beetz J. pointed out in R. v. Nabis, supra, whether the threat raises a possibility of imminent or remote danger is of no consequence.

[25] Conditional threats are also not excluded from the ambit of s. 264.1(1)(a), as R. v. Ross reflex, (1986), 26 C.C.C. (3d) 413 (Ont. C.A.) illustrates. In Ross, the accused had gone to his bank and demanded money from his accounts. He was told that the accounts had been seized by the sheriff acting under a court order. The accused told a bank employee that he was going home to get his gun and would proceed to the sheriff’s office and then return to the bank. The bank employee and others who heard the accused found his words to be a threat to their continued well-being. The following day, Constable Sobolta was sent to the home of the accused to investigate the allegation of threats to a member of the bank staff. The constable went to the door but after being met with obscenities from the accused, he returned to his cruiser. There he received a radio communication from Constable Belbas, who was in the police communications room, advising him to clear the area immediately as the police department had received a telephone call that the constable would be shot if he did not leave. In the phone call to Constable Belbas, the accused had said “tell that bugger to get off my doorstep. He is disturbing the peace and trespassing on my property”. When asked who was trespassing he replied: “One of your cops. If he does not leave he will be shot”. The accused was charged with uttering a threat to Mike Belbas to cause death or injury to John Sobolta. The trial judge held the accused’s statement was a warning, not a threat, and acquitted the accused. In allowing the Crown’s appeal, the Ontario Court of Appeal said (at 415), in part:

The trial judge held that the respondent’s statement was a warning not a threat. In effect, he held that a conditional threat is not covered by the provision. In so concluding, we think, with respect, that he erred. In our view “threat” in s. 331(1)(a) includes what may be thought of as a conditional threat. One of the definitions of “threat” in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is:

A denunciation to a person of ill to befall him; esp. a declaration of hostile determination or of loss, pain, punishment, or damage to be inflicted in retribution of or conditionally upon some course; a menace. (Emphasis [of Morden J.A.].)

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A conditional threat, if one wants to describe it that way, is part of the ordinary meaning of threat and we think that it would be in accordance with the purpose of s. 331(1) [now 264.1(1)] to interpret it as including such a threat. In Black’s Law Dictionary, 5th ed. (1979), the definition of “threat” reads, in part:

The term, “threat” means an avowed present determination or intent to injure presently or in the future. A statement may constitute a threat even though it is subject to a possible contingency in the maker’s control.

[26] In my opinion, neither the legislative history of the offence of uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm nor the jurisprudence relating to uttering threats provides support for the suggestion that, because of their contingent or future nature, the words uttered by the appellant in this case could not come within the ambit of the offence created by s. 264.1(1)(a).