Conrad Black: Lindsay Case Highlights Public Backing for Homeowners’ Right to Defend Property

A Kawartha Lakes Police Services vehicle is seen in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Doug Ives

Commentary

The controversy generated around charging a man for injuring an armed intruder who broke into his home in Lindsay, Ont., has ricocheted loudly and raised important questions that every citizen would wish to have answered clearly. The homeowner, Jeremy McDonald, was physically present when the alleged intruder, Michael Breen, damaged a screen and window in a forced illegal entry in the early hours of Aug. 18, and was allegedly carrying a crossbow, a potentially deadly weapon. He has been charged with related offences.

The resident, Mr. McDonald, successfully resisted the intrusion and was, it is rumoured, armed only with a knife. In the ensuing scuffle, the intruder was so severely injured that he had to be evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Toronto where his wounds were treated successfully. He remains in custody pending a bail hearing, but has already made a court appearance.

The ensuing debate has raised a number of vexed police-related issues that frequently arise, but rarely all in the same case. Nobody seems to defend the right of a person to make an illegal, forced entry into someone else’s home. The principal issue arises in the legal formulation that a person has a legitimate right to defend his home and, if applicable, his family, and the debate is conducted on the issue of the permissible level of force engaged to repulse the illegal entry or subdue the intruder. The facts in the Lindsay case have not been adduced in court and it wouldn’t be appropriate to speculate about them.

But ultimately, the key principle is the sanctity of the rights of the individual in his defence of his home, any persons in his home, whether related or otherwise, and his property. A large number of Canadians would agree with the concept that generally prevails in the United States, that when a person illegally enters someone else’s property, residential or otherwise—with an illegal purpose and especially when armed with a dangerous weapon and with implicit prior intent to exercise whatever level of force he judges necessary to succeed in his illegal purpose—he effectively forfeits any right to expect moderation in response from the person whose rights he is violating.

I dimly recall, but cannot cite accurately, media reports of a case in one of the southern U.S. states about 40 years ago of a person who repelled an intruder, ultimately by shooting him in the head with a handgun after apprehending him in the dead of night within his house. There was a racial element in the case, but it did not appear to influence the verdict of the inquiry that followed the death of the intruder.

The homeowner was a medical doctor, and when asked at the inquest if he deliberately intended to kill the intruder, he said that he did not but that he had difficulty aiming his firearm because a scuffle was in progress, and after the discharge of his gun his initial hope was that the intruder had survived, although he had apparently been subjected to “an unorthodox method of frontal lobotomy.” The doctor’s conduct was not held to be culpable in the circumstances, which included that the intruder himself had a firearm that he had already discharged and wounded the doctor lightly.

Canadian law generally attempts to temper the absolute right of a person to his own home and property, and such protection as he can provide for family and guests on his property, with the concept that excessive force should not be used. Almost everybody would agree that if someone is aggressively shoved and responds by killing the person who has shoved him, it would be an excessive use of force and a culpable act. I think most Canadians would feel that someone intruding in someone else’s house armed with a deadly weapon for illegal purposes beyond simple trespass retains very few rights that even a compassionate state should be obliged to consider.

In the Lindsay case, apparently the two protagonists had known each other for some years, and the background of the relations may well be relevant to determining the outcome of the case. The intruder’s legal position is not helped by the fact that he was at the time of the alleged break-in out on bail pending trial for another alleged felony.

The whole concept of rights is under siege in Canada, with the B.C. Supreme Court recently determining that the 5 percent of the Canadian population that claims to be descended from indigenous people has a prior right over the ostensible owners of real property in British Columbia, and by the same reasoning, possibly throughout the country. The court muddied the waters by not pretending that ostensible owners who have paid for their property and occupied it have no right over it, merely an inferior right to that of the descendants of the indigenous.

When Pierre Trudeau organized the patriation of the Constitution of Canada in 1982, he required the support of the NDP for the ratification process. However, this was withheld by the then leader of that party, Ed Broadbent (a moderate and reasonable man), in respect of property rights, because some of his partisans mistakenly thought it would entrench unjust rights. The regrettable consequence was that property rights have at best had an under-nourished constitutional status, as not being in the premier federal documents, though they are well-recognized in the vast jurisprudence of legal precedent.

All of this has to be resolved. Of course, genuine owners of real property enjoy uncompromised rights, and to the extent that the indigenous people deserve more compensation than the vast munificence that they have already received in recent years—more than $7 billion—that is a liability of the entire population of Canada through their federal and provincial governments, and not one to be assessed individually against good-faith fee simple owners of real property.

Of course, private property legally acquired and held must absolutely be recognized as a constitutional right accruing to everyone who has legally acquired and retains it. And the rights of illegal intruders on other people’s property must be restricted to anything that is egregiously and obviously excessive to every person’s right to self-defence, defence of other innocent people who are threatened, and defence of property. Acts of sadistic cruelty to lawbreakers who become unthreatening are an offence, but the threshold for establishing the offence is high.

In all of the contemporary circumstances, the widespread concern over the laying of charges against Jeremy MacDonald in the Lindsay case is justified. The forces of wokeness, arbitrary interpretations of diversity, equity, and inclusion, social justice, corporate governance, affirmative action, political correctness, and related authoritarian and arbitrary standards that, though imposed on behalf of creditable instincts and causes, often tend to be oppressive, have seriously threatened the fundamental freedoms of Canadians.

The public support for Mr. McDonald is a reassuring indication of the desire of the people of this country to retain and defend their rights, their property, and public safety.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.