Markham Firearms Offence Lawyer

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Canadian gun charges are mostly paper, place and knowledge crimes. The identical pistol is a five year charge if the licence is missing, a ten year charge if the Crown says you knew it was missing, a ten year charge if it sat in a car you were riding in, a fourteen year charge if it was loaded, and a ten year charge if a court order said you could not touch it at all. The object never changes. Your legal position does, rung by rung. This page explains that ladder, what York Regional Police gun projects look like from the defence side, and where these files are actually won. If the item involved is not a firearm, a knife, a baton, a spray, start instead with our Markham weapons offence lawyer page.

By Fadi Matthew Kazandji, Founding Partner, Kazandji Law. Updated July 2026.

Prohibited, restricted, non-restricted: the sorting that writes the charge sheet

Before any Markham gun file makes sense, two definitions have to be on the table. First, what counts as a firearm at all: a barrelled weapon capable of discharging a projectile and of causing serious bodily injury or death, and the Criminal Code definition expressly includes the frame or receiver alone and anything that can be adapted for use as a firearm. Second, which of three classes the firearm falls into under section 84(1), because the class quietly decides which offences are available, which licence was needed, and how hard the file will be fought.

Class	What lands in it	Why it matters
Prohibited	Handguns with barrels of 105 mm or less or in 25 or 32 calibre, rifles and shotguns sawed down below the length thresholds, automatic firearms, and, under recent amendments, unlawfully manufactured guns regardless of how they were made	Highest scrutiny, licensing is exceptional, and the loaded-possession offence reaches 14 years
Restricted	Every handgun that is not prohibited, plus certain shorter-barrelled semi-automatic centre-fire firearms and firearms designed to fire when folded or shortened	Registration certificate and place-specific authorization required; same 14 year exposure when loaded
Non-restricted	Everything that is neither, which covers most conventional hunting rifles and shotguns	Licence still required, but the loaded s. 95 offence does not apply to this class

Two footnotes to the sorting. Firearm parts now count: a barrel or a handgun slide can ground a possession allegation on its own. And section 84(3) deems some things not to be firearms for the main possession offences, including antique firearms, devices designed exclusively for signalling or industrial use, and low-powered barrelled items that cannot push a projectile past set velocity and energy thresholds. That carve-out is where air gun and airsoft questions get resolved, and the details are technical enough that the specific item should always be checked against the current text.

Classification is not a label the police get to assume. It is an element to be proven, usually through examination of the item, and where a class boundary is close, barrel measurements, manufacturing origin and expert reports all become fair game. A charge built on the wrong class is a charge built on sand.

The classification fight in practice

On the ground, classification gets litigated with measuring tapes and expert reports. Is the barrel over or under the threshold. Was the firearm adapted, and by whom. Can the Crown establish that an unmarked gun was unlawfully manufactured rather than merely untraceable. When a file starts with the police description of an item rather than a laboratory examination of it, the class is an assumption, and assumptions are where defences begin. The difference is not academic: class determines whether the loaded-possession offence is even available, what paper was required, and how the sentencing conversation starts.

The paper layer: PAL, safety courses and registration certificates

The licensing system sits under the Firearms Act and is administered by the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program. For an adult, the Possession and Acquisition Licence, the PAL, is the licence, and the path runs through the Canadian Firearms Safety Course before an application can go in. Licences renew on a five year cycle. Acquiring restricted firearms requires the additional restricted safety course, with written and practical testing, producing what most people call an RPAL. Prohibited and restricted firearms also need registration certificates, and the Canadian Firearms Program publishes the rules on storage and transport that lawful owners live under.

Why does a criminal defence page care about the administrative plumbing? Because the possession offences in the next section are, at bottom, paper offences. Sections 91 through 95 all ask the same underlying question: did this person hold the right licence, certificate or authorization for this item, in this place, at this moment? The paperwork defines the crime, and the exceptions written into those sections, supervision by a licensed person, coming into possession by operation of law, the vehicle exits discussed below, define the escapes. A file that looks hopeless as a gun case sometimes dissolves as a paperwork case.

The line between the two possession offences is really a line about honesty of the gap. Section 91 captures the person whose paper never existed or quietly lapsed. Section 92 requires the Crown to prove the person knew they were not the holder of the required licence or certificate, and that knowledge element is why s. 92 proceeds straight indictable with double the ceiling. Files move between the two sections as the evidence about what the person understood comes into focus.

One pistol, five different charges: the possession ladder

Here is the heart of the firearms lane. Five Criminal Code sections, one object, escalating culpability based on paperwork, knowledge and place.

Section	The allegation	How it proceeds and the ceiling	Built-in exits
s. 91	Possessing a firearm without a licence (and, for prohibited or restricted, the registration certificate). Also covers prohibited weapons, devices and ammunition	Hybrid. Up to 5 years on indictment	Possession under the direct and immediate supervision of a licensed person, and related statutory exceptions
s. 92	The same possession, but knowing you were not the holder of the required paper	Straight indictable. Up to 10 years	The same family of exceptions, but the real battleground is the knowledge element itself
s. 94	Being an occupant of a motor vehicle knowing a firearm or other listed item is inside	Hybrid. Up to 10 years	An occupant lawfully holds the paper, you reasonably believed one did, you tried to leave or actually left, or possession arose by operation of law
s. 95	A loaded prohibited or restricted firearm, or an unloaded one with readily accessible ammunition, without authorization for that place	Hybrid. Up to 14 years on indictment	Direct and immediate supervision of an authorized holder
s. 117.01	Possessing a firearm or other listed item while under any court prohibition order	Hybrid. Up to 10 years	Possession authorized under a sustenance or employment lifting order

Read the ladder from the Crown's side and it is a menu. Read it from the defence side and it is a sequence of specific propositions, each of which must be proven: possession itself, which requires both knowledge and a measure of control; the classification of the item; the absence of the paper; and, on the higher rungs, the aggravating circumstances of knowledge, vehicle, load or court order. Every rung has its own weak points, and charges frequently settle onto lower rungs when the higher ones cannot hold.

The passenger problem: what s. 94 demands, and the exits it writes in

Section 94 is the charge that shocks people, because it criminalizes sitting in the wrong car. An occupant of a motor vehicle who knows there is a firearm, prohibited weapon, restricted weapon, prohibited device or prohibited ammunition inside commits an offence unless one of the lawful-possession branches applies. Ten years on indictment, for a passenger.

But look at what the section actually requires and what it forgives. The Crown must prove knowledge: not proximity, not friendship with the driver, knowledge that the item was there. And the statute writes its own exits. There is no offence where an occupant lawfully held the licence and authorizations, or where you had reasonable grounds to believe another occupant did. There is no offence where, on becoming aware of the item, you attempted to leave the vehicle to the extent it was feasible, or actually left. And there is no offence where possession came about by operation of law.

Those words do real work in Markham traffic-stop files. A rear-seat passenger in a car pulled over on Highway 7 is not guilty of anything because a gun was under the driver's seat. The prosecution has to reconstruct what that passenger knew and when, usually from seating position, movement on camera, fingerprints or DNA on the item, and statements. Each of those is contestable, and the tried-to-leave exception means that even proven knowledge is not the end of the analysis. What you said at the roadside, and whether you should have said anything at all, often matters more than everything else in the file.

Two practical notes for anyone reading this after a stop. Silence is not an admission, and the exits in s. 94 do not require heroics, only what was feasible in the moment. What you said in the car, and what you did not, will be parsed later; a lawyer should be parsing it with you before anyone else does.

Loaded, or ammunition within reach: the s. 95 count

Section 95 is the heavyweight possession charge in Ontario courtrooms, and its wording deserves close attention. It applies to a loaded prohibited or restricted firearm, or an unloaded one together with readily accessible ammunition capable of being discharged in it, possessed in any place without both an authorization or licence covering possession in that place and the registration certificate.

Three phrases carry the weight. In any place means the offence is not about public carry; a loaded restricted handgun in a bedroom safe can qualify if the paper does not cover it. Readily accessible is a fact question about geometry and time: a magazine in the same bag is one case, ammunition locked in a different room is another. And for that place is the tripwire for licensed owners, because an authorization that covers a home or a range does not cover a glovebox on Warden Avenue.

The ceiling is 14 years on indictment, raised to that level by the 2023 amendments, and the Crown can still elect to proceed summarily in the right case. That election matters procedurally as well as practically, and it is one of the first things counsel will fight about quietly, before anything happens in a courtroom.

No minimum today: Nur, Bill C-5 and the possession versus use line

People arrive at a first meeting convinced they are facing an automatic three years because a search engine told them so. The law moved. In R. v. Nur, decided in 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the mandatory minimums that then attached to the s. 95 loaded-firearm offence, three years for a first offence and five for a repeat, as cruel and unusual punishment under section 12 of the Charter, while still upholding the individual sentences of the offenders before it. Parliament finished the job in 2022: the Bill C-5 amendments repealed the remaining mandatory minimums for the possession offences on this page, including the escalating minimums that had lived in s. 92 and the using-a-firearm minimums in s. 85.

Do not confuse the absence of a floor with softness. Crown positions on loaded restricted handguns in the GTA remain penitentiary-range positions, and the ceilings are high: 14 years under s. 95, ten under ss. 92, 94 and 117.01. What the repeal restored is the judge's ability to fit the sentence to the person, which makes the sentencing record you build, work, treatment, immigration exposure, background, into live ammunition rather than an afterthought.

Building that record is concrete work, not rhetoric: employment letters, program enrolment, immigration status memos, treatment history, community roots. Judges sentencing without a statutory floor can respond to a person rather than a category, but only if the person is actually put in front of them, documented and early.

Charged while already banned: s. 117.01 and the bail onus that follows

A large share of York Region firearms counts are not about unlicensed owners at all. They are about prohibition orders. Section 117.01 makes it an offence, hybrid with a ten year indictable ceiling, to possess a firearm, a crossbow, a prohibited weapon, a restricted weapon, a prohibited device, a firearm part, any ammunition, any prohibited ammunition or an explosive substance while any court order prohibits it. A companion subsection reaches the wilful failure to surrender licences and certificates when an order requires it, and the section carves out possession allowed under a sustenance or employment lifting order.

Where do these orders come from? Sentencing courts must impose one on conviction for violent offences carrying ten years or more, and they hold a discretionary power in other cases. Weapons terms also ride on release orders and other court orders made under federal law, which is why people are sometimes charged under s. 117.01 without ever having been sentenced to a prohibition at all. The order in your file needs to be read, dated and mapped against the item alleged, clause by clause.

Notice how wide the item list runs. A single shotgun shell in a garage, a stripped barrel in a toolbox, an inherited crossbow: while an order is in force, each is a chargeable file. Defence work here starts with the order itself, exactly what it covered and when it took effect, and moves to possession, knowledge and control of the item.

One more obligation people miss: when an order takes effect, the paper goes back too. Wilfully failing to surrender licences, registration certificates and authorizations that an order requires you to give up is itself an offence under the same section. Cleaning that up proactively is cheap; being charged for it is not.

The bail consequence is the part clients feel first. Where the new offence involves a firearm or other listed weapon and was allegedly committed while under a weapons prohibition, the onus at the bail hearing reverses: it is the accused who must show cause why detention is not justified. That single procedural fact changes the first week of the case, and it is the reason a prohibition-breach allegation in Markham needs a bail plan before it needs anything else.

Project Chatter and the unit that runs York Region gun files

York Regional Police names its firearms enforcement plainly. The force's Guns, Gangs and Drug Enforcement Unit launched Project Chatter in October 2024, and by the time YRP's annual report described the investigation it counted 23 arrests, 330 charges and 32 firearms seized, alongside roughly seven million dollars in drugs, targeting firearms and drug trafficking across York Region and the wider GTA. The same reporting describes other joint operations in the same period, including one that seized 21 firearms in a corruption investigation.

Project files and street files reach the courthouse differently. The project cases are wiretap and surveillance builds that end in coordinated takedowns; the everyday files start with a traffic stop on Highway 7, a domestic call where officers seize what is in the house, or a search warrant on an apartment. In Markham, arrest processing runs through #5 District at 8700 McCowan Road. In both kinds of file the constitutional questions are usually the case: whether the stop was lawful, whether the search that found the gun holds up, whether statements survive, whether the warrant was properly grounded. A firearms file where the search fails is usually a file without an exhibit.

If a warrant team arrives, the playbook is short: comply physically, say nothing substantive, and get counsel moving the same day. Project files assembled over months are defended by taking their disclosure apart over months, affidavit by affidavit, and the earlier that starts the more options survive.

Use is a different lane: where s. 85 and the robbery counts live

Everything above concerns having a gun. Using one while committing an indictable offence is its own offence under section 85, with a 14 year ceiling, no minimum since the 2022 repeal, and one feature that survived every reform: the sentence must be served consecutively to the sentence for the underlying offence. The section has quirks worth knowing. The real-firearm branch expressly excludes a list of offences that already build the firearm into their own penalties, robbery among them, while the imitation-firearm branch carries no such exclusion list. And where a robbery is committed with a restricted or prohibited firearm, the mandatory minimums live inside the robbery count itself.

If your allegation is use rather than possession, an armed robbery, a shooting, a firearm pointed during an offence, the strategic terrain is different enough that it has its own page. Start with our Markham robbery with a firearm lawyer page for the classification fight and the surviving minimums.

From arrest to trial at one address: the Newmarket route

Firearms possession offences are not section 469 offences, so every stage of a Markham file runs through the Newmarket courthouse at 50 Eagle Street West, the criminal courthouse serving York Region: bail in the Ontario Court of Justice, case management appearances that now mostly proceed by video, and trial either in the OCJ or upstairs in the Superior Court. Toronto splits the same journey across a dedicated bail centre on Finch Avenue West and separate trial courthouses downtown; York Region concentrates it at one address, which changes how quickly things can move and how sureties plan their attendance, since the current OCJ bail practice direction lets sureties appear by video.

Bail itself follows the ladder. On most possession counts the Crown bears the onus, and the fight is about conditions, sureties and supervision. The onus reverses where the allegation is possession while under a prohibition order or while on release for another indictable offence, and the seriousness of loaded-handgun allegations means detention arguments get pressed even where the onus never flips. Our Markham bail lawyer page covers preparation in detail.

Election matters too. Most of these counts are hybrid, and the Crown's choice between summary and indictable procedure moves the maximum, the courtroom and the timetable. A preliminary inquiry is available only where the charged offence carries 14 years or more, which on this page means the s. 95 count. And the Jordan ceilings, eighteen months in the provincial court and thirty in the Superior Court, sit over every long investigation file, project cases included.

For Markham clients the geography is friendly: case management is mostly virtual, the courthouse run up Highway 404 is one trip on hearing days, and our Thornhill office at 7191 Yonge Street sits ten minutes from most of the city for everything in between.

What the timetable feels like

Expect the file to move in waves rather than a line. A first appearance and a bail decision in the opening days. Disclosure arriving in instalments, with the forensic examination of the item and any classification report often trailing weeks behind the initial package. Judicial pre-trials where positions get tested quietly. Then the real decision points: election where the count is hybrid, a preliminary inquiry request where one is available, and the scheduling of any Charter application challenging the stop, the search or the statement. Each wave is a chance to move the case, and none of them should pass by default.

The Thornhill advantage: senior counsel ten minutes from Markham

Kazandji Law runs firearms defences across the GTA from four offices: Toronto headquarters at 180 John Street, Unit 320; the Thornhill office at 7191 Yonge Street, Suite 310, the closest to Markham and the base for York Region work; and offices in North York and Oakville. Founding partner Fadi Matthew Kazandji handles these files personally, from the show cause hearing to the Charter voir dire. Gun cases are won in the details, the stop, the search, the continuity of the exhibit, the classification report, and those details need senior attention early, before the paper trail sets. If your matter sits in Toronto instead, our Toronto weapons defence lawyers page covers those courthouses, and the rest of our York Region services live on the Markham criminal defence lawyer hub.

Markham firearms charges: twelve straight answers

This page is general legal information for people facing charges in Ontario, not legal advice about any specific case. Criminal Code provisions summarized here were checked against the federal Justice Laws website in July 2026 and can change, and licensing details are administered by the RCMP Canadian Firearms Program. Speak with a lawyer about your own situation before acting on anything you read here. Kazandji Law serves Markham and all of York Region from its Thornhill and Toronto offices.