L'utilisation d'un pseudonyme ne permet pas de conclure à la culpabilité d'une personne de fraude à l’identité

R. v. Northrup, 1982 CanLII 3710 (NB CA)

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There is only one issue involved in this appeal and it is whether a person who uses a fictitious name is guilty of an offence under s. 361(a) of the Criminal Code. It was agreed that the appellant, upon being arrested by the Saint John City Police on December 2, 1981, gave his name as Ronald John Davis. He was nevertheless detained by the police and the following day, as a result of a fingerprint investigation, it was discovered that his name was Ronald Joseph Northrup. Mr. Northrup has an extensive criminal record and was at the time of his arrest the subject of a Canada wide warrant of arrest. 

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It is to be noted that the offence of personation is included under Part VIII of the Criminal Code which deals with fraudulent transactions relating to contracts. It covers various means of committing fraud including personation. In that context, the definition of personate as it appears in Oxford's English Dictionary is appropriate. It reads: "to assume or counterfeit the person of (another), usually for purposes of fraud". Accepting as I do the definition of "person" as stated by Smith J., in the Cole case, supra, it is my opinion that s. 361 contemplates the assumption for fraudulent purposes of the 

identity of another person now existing or who has existed. In the present case, the accused assumed a false name, a fictitious one as was agreed; in fact, a pseudonym. Whatever his motives, his efforts were in pseudonymity and not in personation.