Opinion | Doug Ford either doesn’t know what self defence means — or he doesn’t care
Aug. 28, 2025
2 min read
Premier Doug Ford has undermined the police for applying the law to the facts as they came to understand them through their investigation, Reid Rusonik writes.
Carlos Osorio The Canadian Press
By Reid Rusonik, Contributor
Reid Rusonik is a defence lawyer practicing in Toronto
So Premier Doug Ford has had enough with the law against excessive force in self defence, has he?
He believes the Lindsay man facing charges of aggravated assault and assault with a weapon after an intruder broke into his home should not have been charged for his having “(given) him (the intruder) a beating.” People are done” with criminals being treated leniently and leaving punishment up to “some bleeding heart judge,” Ford has said.
With his comments, Ford has indirectly undermined the police for laying the charges — for applying the law to the facts as they came to understand them through their investigation.
In doing that, he not only undermines his supposed ‘tough on crime’ agenda — something he has already done by grossly underfunding the criminal justice system — he demonstrates either a shocking ignorance of the law or a contempt of it.
The reality in Canada is that you can defend yourself in your home. You can use force. You can even do so with weapons, including knives and legally possessed firearms. We already have a ‘Castle Law’.
What you cannot do is use excessive force to defend your home, although the law is pretty lenient in that regard by not requiring the person defending themselves to measure the force they employ “to a legal nicety.” The only thing the law will not tolerate is excessive violence on the part of the homeowner, where their actions move from self-defence and defence of home to gratuitous punishment.
At this point, no one other than the intruder and the accused and the police know what force the accused employed here, although the charges suggest he used something like a knife and that he wounded the intruder and that he did so in a manner that, beyond any legal nicety, was gratuitous. Ford did not know the facts when he made his comments, nor should he have, nor should anyone else until the police provide their investigation to the Crown and the Crown to the accused’s lawyer.
The only thing Ford knew was that he did not know the facts, but that apparently did nothing to stop him from trying to make cheap political points with a base either equally unaware of the law or equally in contempt of it.
As for his attack on the judiciary, what Ford does know is that the bench must either be full of his kind of judges and justices of the peace — his government has been appointing them for the last seven years — or he does not believe his criticisms of the judiciary are well-founded.
All of his remarks in regard to this case are those of the worst kind of political opportunist and of the poorest kind of leader for a constitutional democracy.
Free societies guaranteed by constitutional democracy are not easy because society is not easy. The rule of law is the only thing that makes them possible. Leading them is a job for honest, thoughtful, intelligent people who know the law and wait for and act on the facts, regardless of how unpopular that may be for a time, and regardless of the chance to score cheap political points.
What’s next for Ford? Calling for the police and members of the public to be allowed to use excessive force to make arrests? A little “street justice?” That would mark the end of our society in anything but name.
Ford might consider instead looking at the damage his cuts to education, addiction treatment and other social programs have done in leading people to untreated drug addiction, far and away the number one cause of break and enters and the most common characteristic of the perpetrators of the crime.
