What can Canadians do in these situations if we don't have these protections in place? Ultimately, you should expect that you will be charged. The sad fact is that once you've engaged, once you've used force in that self-defense situation, the police are not necessarily your friends. They may be the people coming to revictimize you. The unsettling case coming out of Lindsay, Ontario, where 44year-old Jeremy Macdonald confronted a dangerous intruder at 3:00 a.m. on August 19th, continues to send shock waves across Canada. New details have surfaced showing Macdonald wasn't wielding some ominous firearm, as reports hinted. No, he's simply alleged to have grabbed a kitchen knife to fend off the threat. The intruder, already known to police and armed himself and now charged with assault with a weapon, ended up with lifethreatening injuries after the intrusion. Yet CBC, our taxpayerf funded state broadcaster, quickly dismissed calls for stronger self-defense laws as misinformation. The case really spotlights the murky realities Canadians face when contending with the rising crime wave gripping our nation. And that's why here at Rebel News, we are supporting Jeremy's fight against the serious criminal charges laid against him by the Cora Lakes police for this self-defense. Jeremy's a regular bluecollar dad. He doesn't have the six-f figureure means to prove his innocence. And if you want to help us crowdfund his legal defense and stay up todate on the happenings in this case, please go to savejeremy.com. That's savejeremy.com. And joining me today to help unpack the Canadian self-defense laws and separate fact from fiction is criminal defense lawyer Ian Wrl, who has over a decade of experience with an interest in criminal defense and firearms law. Have a listen. Just right off the hop, what's your opinion on this case uh given obviously the limited details, but basically weighing the proportionality or the reasonleness of McDonald's alleged response here? The problem is that in this specific case, the police have released very little information. And that makes it very difficult to know exactly what happened here because it could, for instance, be anything from he encounters this person in the dark and, you know, stabs out with a knife. Maybe he grabbed a kitchen knife, you know, because he hears intruders. That's a very common response when people hear intruders. They go to the kitchen, they grab a knife. But um we don't know if that's the case or maybe he you know maybe he hit him and then while the guy was passed out he decided to stab him. Those are two very different scenarios in Canadian law and it would be really nice if we had a system that actually provided that information to the public. But instead the Canadian model keeps the public um in the dark. That said, I find that uh our system right now is not a good system for this because the reasonleness standard really applies to somebody who doesn't who never wanted a confrontation and had no role in choosing the confrontation. The only person who could prevent this interaction is the home invader. The homeowner never had that choice. And so maybe the homeowner knows they're not a reasonable person. And so they just don't want to interact with the public. The public has decided to come into his home. And we're saying, "Oh, well, even when you are being attacked in the night by, you know, a stranger or wanted criminal, you are required to be the better person." And I think no, if you don't if you I think our law should recognize that if you don't really want to encounter somebody who might be unreasonable, stay out of their house, right? Key takeaway here right off the bat, don't break into people's homes. It's sad that we have to say that, but uh that seems to be the world that we're living in these days. In terms of the legal threshold there, you mentioned, you know, two very different scenarios that would be seen differently in the eyes of the law. What kind of legal thresholds need to be met for a homeowner to be able to claim self-defense in a home invasion scenario like this? One of the key things is that um people talk about castle law and at the very basic level, castle lodge simply means that there is no duty to retreat from your home and that is the law in Canada. you don't have to flee your own home, especially because fleeing your own home is inherently risky. You know, how do you know that you're not running directly into the arms of Confederates? Um, you are most secure in your home. It is sort of where you're going to feel and it's really where you've got a bit of a tactical advantage because you know the house probably an intruder doesn't. So, there is no requirement to flee the house. We have castle law to that extent. But beyond that, the law simply says that you must be using reasonable force and that considers a whole lot of factors. It is including but not limited to a list that is in 34 sub 2 of the criminal code which includes the nature and force of the threat. So um at the very basic level like is this a lethal threat? Is this a non-lethal threat? And how would you ever know that in the event of a home invasion, right? How do you know that this person intends to, you know, steal your wallet versus there are cases where people have been tied up and tortured for hours, including sometimes to death. There are cases where people have been assaulted in the worst ways. And I don't know how you can tell that from, you know, from this scenario. But the law will say, well, this person was just there to to steal your TV, so maybe not so uh so keen. um the extent to which their the the threat was imminent. Um that's usually going to be fairly imminent if they're actually in your house and whether there were other means to respond to the use of force. So here they'll say things like, "Well, did you call 911?" Notwithstanding that even in the city where I am, a 911 response time for like a top level issue is probably around 10 minutes. And if you're out in the the countryside, it's probably hours. You know, even if it's I am literally being murdered right now, it'll be okay, we'll get somebody there and they'll be there in 45 minutes. Uh person's role in the incident. So, homeowner is going to be in the better position there. uh whether anybody had a weapon or threatened to use a weapon, whether um the size difference, age differences, gender is specifically mentioned, physical capabilities, like if you're in a wheelchair, it might be a lot more reasonable to go to a shotgun right away instead of But all of this is kind of its own, you know, this is reasonable in the eyes of the law. um any prior history like is this somebody maybe this person who's broken into your house is your ex who has threatened to kill you in the past. The court will consider that too. Um nature and proportionality of the response to the uh use or threat divorce. I've seen a lot of people including people who should know better saying that the Canadian law requires proportionality. It is actually one part of the consideration. It's not determinative. and whether the act was uh committed was in response to a use or threat of force that the person knew was lawful. So, the obvious example here is if the police have a warrant for your arrest, you're probably not entitled to like, you know, to use probably any force against the police when they're coming in. So, um, there there's all these considerations and I can tell you that if I stop the average person on the street, you know, during their day when they've got some time to think about it, they've had their coffee, they probably couldn't tell me that accurately. And if certainly if I woke them up at this incident happened at 3:20 a.m., if I broke into somebody's house, roused them awake at 3:00 a.m. and said, "What are the factors for self-defense?" I can guarantee you they would go, "I have no idea." Right? If you find someone in your home in the middle of the night, I mean, that's absolutely ridiculous that they'd even charge this gentleman. Let's say he couldn't defend himself. Let's say he didn't have money. Is there a potential he could go to prison? Absolutely. Because he didn't have a fair defense. It's not the Canada from 10 years ago. It's not the Canada from 20 years ago. Um, it's there's not a day that doesn't go by that say, "I don't recognize this country anymore." So we expect people to be able to be within this confines, but very few people are actually going to be able to act to know what those confines are and what you know what your mindset is at 3:00 a.m. when you are panicked, terrified, and still half asleep. Um, all sorts of things. Um, how are they going to be able to follow that? Well, and I especially appreciate that you brought up the the imminent threat part of all of this because it is being said that there was some sort of weapon brandished by the intruder. And so that said, could these charges be dropped once this is actually tried in court? Well, you know what often happens is that the police will lay charges initially sort of out of out of caution, right? And so sometimes they'll lay charges and later on those charges will be dropped. There was a case of a woman who stabbed her boyfriend who was actually in the process of he nearly killed her and she stabbed him to get away and then it was discovered that he died because she stabbed him in the leg. You'll also see some commentators saying, "Oh well, you know, maybe it's appropriate to shoot somebody in the leg instead of the chest." Leg is a very lethal area of the body. It's not the wild west. Just because someone breaks in doesn't mean that it's open season on that intruder. There's so many factors that the criminal code says needs to be considered to make a decision whether self-defense exists or not. So if someone comes comes in with a 2x4, you don't get to shoot them. At least if they're not doing anything with the 2x4. And maybe you get to shoot them once in the leg. you don't get to shoot them four times in the leg and once in the back. It's it's really um depending on on what's happened all the way along. But for the premier to say you can do whatever you want or you should be able to do whatever you want, I don't agree. Everyone hear about the story in Lindsay? So this criminal that's wanted by the police, breaks into this guy's house. This guy gives him a beating and this guy gets charged like and the other guy gets charged. But like something is broken. I know if someone breaks into my house or someone else's, you're going to fight for your life. This guy has a weapon. You're going to use any any force you possibly can to to protect your family. I'm telling you, I know everyone would. They laid charges against this woman and then some months later, they dropped the charges with a statement saying that it was one of the clearest cases of self-defense that they had ever seen. And I think, okay, that's fantastic. But in this clearest case of self-defense that you'd ever seen, she spent months in jail because, you know, it was charged as a homicide. So, I would love to see police maybe slow down and say, "Okay, well, the homeowner used force. Maybe we don't need to press, you know, to launch charges now. There's no limitation period in Canada for indictable offenses, the more serious ones. So maybe we could wait and see. Do we think that this could be self-defense before we lay the charges? Because laying the charges already has tremendous impacts. Once he's charged, he's got to make sure he's got a lawyer. His bills start racking up. He might get fired from his job because his name's been reported in the paper. He might um you know, he's probably going to be under bail conditions, and one of those bail conditions will almost certainly be not to have any weapons. Well, if the attacker and his friends have a grudge, now the courts have said, "You're not allowed to have any weapons, Mr. Guy who was possibly, you know, operating in self-defense. If his friends want revenge, we've said, "Okay, you we're just going to make you a soft target." All of these things to me are a bit of a problem. So, I would love to see more more thoughtfulness, more delay in that because it's um it's potentially life ruining for these when this happens. So, right. And and any protections in place, you know, if you could expand a little bit, you know, if it were up to you, how could this be remedied? Would there be more stringent protections perhaps on self-defense closets? I would I sort of proposed um and I'm still sort of working on it. I'm still kind of thinking it out, but a possible model for it, which would essentially say something along the lines of if an intruder has broken into a house or obtained access by fraud because um you might have somebody who for instance says, "Oh, I'm with the power company. We need to go and you know see something." And you let them into your house and then suddenly they pull a weapon and it's a robbery, right? I would say those people are also people you should be entitled to defend yourself against. But essentially say something like the the the crown must establish on a balance of probabilities. So 50% plus one that the force used was not only excessive but I'd put it as like grossly excessive to a degree that shocks the conscience. I.e. We're going to give tremendous leeway to like this is what I would like to see is just say tremendous leeway to the victim, you know, the innocent victim of a home invasion just to say, "Okay, um, you don't have to get it right. You don't even have to get it close to right. You just can't get into like active sadism or active like, you know, acts of torture and so forth. But short of that, you've got all the leeway for wrong. And the person who shouldn't have um you know, who should who should have made better choices is ultimately the person who um who broke in. That's the person who had the choice to avoid the conflict in the first place. Yeah, exactly. Just in wrapping things up, what would your advice be to Canadians who are really increasingly in similar situations like this, especially in the GTA, especially in Ontario? Um, we hear multiple reports, people, you know, awoken in the night from a dead sleep to an intruder or even multiple intruders who are armed with some form of weapon. What can do in these situations if we don't have these protections in place? Ultimately, you should expect that you will be charged. And um it's always there's sort of you can never give like here's how to avoid being charged, here's how to avoid being convicted, but you can give better principles. Um I sort of generally recommend that to the extent you can be avoiding a conflict and making it apparent that you're avoiding a conflict, do so. So, it's always best if you're moving backwards rather than forwards. Um, I do recommend people call 911 so they can be shouting things like, "I don't want to fight you into the, you know, so it's getting recorded." You know, that way it's clear you're not pursuing it and it's going in. None of these are iron ironclad protections, of course, because everything comes down to this sort of fuzzy assessment of reasonleness that'll be decided later. But the other big thing is immediately if you have had a self-defense situation, contact a lawyer immediately and get legal advice, which will almost certainly include not to talk to the police. Because the sad fact is that once you've engaged, once you've used force in that self-defense situation, the police are not necessarily your friends. They may be the people coming to revictimize you because you've just been attacked. you've just been terrified. Um, you know, you see people who may have been so scared they've soiled themselves and the police are saying, "Well, let's see if we can lay a charge against you." That, you know, they're not necessarily your friends and it's not it's not necessarily true that they're coming to help you. It might be that they're coming to u to make your day worse. So, you have to plan for that. You have to prepare for that. And that is a terrible um indictment of our system. Our system really should be that you should know that the police will be there on your side in the event that you are, you know, you are the innocent homeowner who's had to react, even if you reacted badly, even if your reaction was um was was not ideal. So, well, that's great. Thanks so much again, Ian, for joining me and um hopefully we can stay in touch and stay tuned as this case unfolds. I will definitely be following this case because it's uh it's going to be interesting. Yeah, that's for sure. I think a lot of Canadians are really taking a keen eye as to what happens here. Jeremy's legal battle is just beginning. He's an ordinary Canadian facing serious criminal charges after defending himself from a home invader. If you're able to, please consider supporting his legal defense by contributing whatever you can at savejeremy.com. Your help could make all the difference in ensuring he gets the fair treatment that he deserves.