Peterborough Criminal Defence Lawyers

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Criminal charges in Peterborough are heard by the Ontario Court of Justice at the Peterborough Courthouse, 70 Simcoe Street. The Superior Court of Justice is a different building on a different street, 470 Water Street, and several directories get that wrong. Which building you end up in is not arbitrary. It follows from one variable, and that variable governs almost everything else on this page: how serious the charge against you is.

Written by the criminal defence team at Kazandji Law, led by founding partner Fadi Matthew Kazandji. Court details were checked against the Ministry of the Attorney General court locations listing for 70 Simcoe Street, the Superior Court of Justice Peterborough page, the City of Peterborough, the Peterborough Police Service, and the Court’s Practice Direction Regarding Bail Hearings.

One variable changes almost everything below: how serious your charge is

People arrive at a first consultation wanting to talk about what happened. That conversation matters, but it is not the one that predicts the next twelve months. The better starting point is a question with a short answer: what class of offence have you been charged with? Classification is not a label. It decides which courtroom you sit in, whether you get to choose your judge, how long the Crown had to lay the charge, whether a preliminary inquiry is even available, and what the maximum exposure is before anyone argues about the facts.

Where the charge sits	Who decides	What follows from it
Straight summary conviction	Parliament, in the section creating the offence	Tried in the Ontario Court of Justice at 70 Simcoe Street. No election. A general maximum set by section 787 unless the offence says otherwise.
Hybrid	The Crown, by its election	Almost everything downstream: the limitation period, whether you get an election, and your maximum exposure.
Indictable, section 553	Parliament	Absolute jurisdiction of a provincial court judge. Tried at 70 Simcoe Street with no election.
Indictable, general	You, by your election	Provincial court judge, Superior Court judge alone, or judge and jury. The last two move your case to 470 Water Street.
Indictable, section 469	Parliament	Superior Court jurisdiction, and bail is heard by a Superior Court judge rather than in the Ontario Court of Justice.

Read the top of that table and the bottom and you are looking at two different legal systems operating in two different buildings in the same city. The sections that follow climb the ladder one rung at a time, and each one asks the same question: what changes when it gets more serious than that? If you want the general framework rather than the Peterborough specifics, our overview of criminal defence in Ontario covers the same ground province wide.

Before anything else, we are a Toronto firm with no Peterborough office. Here is how we act for you at 70 Simcoe Street

This sits second because it is the objection you should raise second, and because the answer changes depending on where your charge sits on the scale described above. We would rather deal with it now than bury it.

Kazandji Law has four offices: 180 John Street Unit 320 in Toronto, 7191 Yonge Street Suite 310 in Thornhill, and offices in North York and Oakville. None is in Peterborough. Peterborough has criminal lawyers of its own, and some of them are good. Any firm implying a Peterborough presence without naming an actual Peterborough office is describing something that does not exist.

The part distance does not touch

A lawyer licensed in this province holds a Class L1 licence from the Law Society of Ontario. It covers all of Ontario. There is no separate licence for the Peterborough courthouse and no local registration step to clear before appearing there.

What the Criminal Code actually says about remote appearances

Section 715.21 sets the baseline: except as otherwise provided, a person who appears at, participates in or presides at a proceeding shall do so in person. Remote attendance is an exception, not a default. Treat any page claiming criminal court is now conducted on video as out of date.

Then two provisions cover two different people, and competitors blur them constantly. Section 715.23 is about the accused. Before allowing or requiring you to appear by audioconference or videoconference under sections 715.231 to 715.241, the court must consider all the circumstances, including your location and personal circumstances, the cost of appearing in person, the suitability of the place you would appear from, the right to a fair and public hearing, and the nature and seriousness of the offence.

Section 715.25 is about counsel. It defines a participant as any person other than an accused, an offender, a witness, a juror, a judge or a justice who may participate in a proceeding, which is where defence counsel sits, and it lets the court allow that person to appear remotely where appropriate. Subsection 715.25(5) puts the technology costs on the party whose participant appears remotely unless the court orders otherwise. If a firm tells you section 715.23 permits their lawyer to appear by video, they have cited the provision that governs you, not them.

The stage rules in sections 715.231 to 715.241 are consent driven and differ for preliminary inquiries, summary conviction trials, indictable trials, pleas and sentencings, and video is barred during a jury trial while evidence is being presented to the jury. Section 715.221 requires reasons on the record when a court refuses a remote request under this Part, and section 715.222 lets the court terminate a remote appearance at any time.

The direction that governs your actual dates

Chief Justice Sharon Nicklas has issued Mode of Appearance for Ontario Court of Justice Criminal Proceedings under rules 1.4 and 5 of the Criminal Rules. Case management appearances may be attended virtually or in person unless a judicial officer directs otherwise, and judicial pre-trials are conducted by video unless otherwise directed. Pleas, sentencings, trials and preliminary inquiries are in person unless a judge orders otherwise. Section B(1) goes further: because private consultation across mixed modes is difficult, counsel are expected to attend proceedings other than case management appearances in person where the accused is appearing in person.

So the honest position is this. Lower down the scale, where a file is mostly administrative appearances and a judicial pre-trial, we can act for you with very little travel and the saving is real. Higher up, where there is a contested bail hearing, a preliminary inquiry or a trial, we are in the building at 70 Simcoe Street or at 470 Water Street with you. We do not promise a remote file, because the Court does not permit anyone to promise one.

The bottom of the scale: charges the Crown may screen out, and what that still costs you

At the lowest rung sit matters the Crown may decide are not worth a conviction. Withdrawal on terms, a resolution built around counselling or restitution, or a peace bond under section 810 of the Criminal Code are all real outcomes, and they happen far more often than the worst case a person imagines on the night of arrest. None of them is automatic. Each one is negotiated, and the currency is material rather than sympathy.

This is where a charge like mischief or a low value theft usually lives. It is also where a peace bond becomes worth understanding properly, because entering into one is not a finding of guilt but it is still a court order with conditions and a breach exposure of its own.

Now the part nobody mentions. A charge that never becomes a conviction does not vanish. Police services hold records of the charge, and non-conviction information can surface in certain categories of record check, particularly the more intrusive checks used for work involving vulnerable people. Employers, licensing bodies, volunteer organisations and border officials do not all ask the same question or see the same answer. The bottom of the scale is still a legal problem worth handling properly, and handling it properly includes asking what the record looks like afterwards rather than only what the sentence is.

Summary conviction matters, and why minor is the wrong word for them

One rung up sit summary conviction offences. They are tried in the Ontario Court of Justice at 70 Simcoe Street, there is no election, and the Criminal Code sets a general maximum under section 787 unless the particular offence provides otherwise. That is the whole of what most people know about them, and it produces a dangerous conclusion: that summary means small.

Two features make that wrong. The first is timing. Section 786(2) requires summary conviction proceedings to be instituted within twelve months of the subject matter of the proceedings, unless the prosecutor and the defendant agree otherwise. That limitation period is a live defence issue, and it is missed on self represented files constantly because nobody checks the date on the information against the date of the alleged conduct.

The second is consequence. A summary conviction still produces a criminal record. It can still attract a driving prohibition, a weapons prohibition, a probation order with conditions, and immigration exposure that operates independently of how short the sentence was. Many driving offences illustrate the point: the courtroom outcome may be measured in weeks, while the licensing and insurance consequences run for years. Minor is a word about procedure. It is not a word about impact.

Hybrid charges, and the Crown election you do not control

Most of the Criminal Code offences that ordinary people face are hybrid. The section creating the offence gives the prosecutor a choice: proceed by summary conviction or by indictment. Until the Crown elects, the matter is treated as indictable. That single decision, made by a lawyer you have not met, reshapes the file.

Elect summarily and the twelve month limitation period applies, the maximum exposure drops, and the matter stays at 70 Simcoe Street with no election of your own. Elect by indictment and there is no limitation period, the maximum rises, your own election rights may open up, and the path to 470 Water Street becomes available. An assault charge and a fraud under five thousand dollars charge both sit in this category, and both can end up looking very different depending only on how the Crown proceeded.

You cannot make the election, but you are not a spectator either. Crown election is a screening decision, and screening decisions respond to what is put in front of the office and when. Counselling already underway with attendance records, restitution already paid, employment and immigration circumstances set out in writing, a defence analysis identifying a genuine evidentiary weakness: these are the things that arrive in month two and change a position. An appeal to fairness on the morning of the first appearance is not one of them.

What changes at bail as the charge gets more serious

Bail for a Peterborough arrest is heard in the Ontario Court of Justice, with the accused appearing by video for bail and first appearances after arrest unless the Court directs otherwise. Two things shift as you climb the scale. First, the onus can flip: in the situations listed in section 515(6), including certain offences committed while already on release, it falls to you to show why detention is not justified. Second, at the very top, bail on a section 469 offence is not heard in the Ontario Court of Justice at all. It goes to a Superior Court judge, which in Peterborough means 470 Water Street.

The Ontario Court of Justice issued a Practice Direction Regarding Bail Hearings under Rule 5.1 of the Criminal Rules, effective 1 June 2026. Most competing pages have not caught up with it, and its most useful feature is that it puts numbers on what the Court expects.

Thirty minutes sounds generous until you try to establish a plan of release, a surety, an address, an employment history and a response to the Crown’s grounds inside it. That is the practical argument for preparation, and it is the same argument at every rung of the ladder. Our page on bail hearings and bail reviews in Ontario sets out what a plan of release has to cover.

The direction also creates a route for cases that genuinely do not fit the time targets. Where a matter has two or more listed features, counsel may identify it to the presiding judicial officer as a Complex Bail Matter. The listed features are two or more proposed sureties where the Crown seeks to cross-examine, matters requiring an interpreter, a section 524 application with two or more existing release orders, and specialized prosecution team matters identified as such at the hearing. A matter determined to be complex is eligible for additional court time, ordinarily not exceeding two hours, and complex hearings are heard the same day they are identified. Knowing that route exists is the difference between asking for it and being rushed.

Indictable charges: the point where you get to choose your court

Higher again sit indictable offences, and here something appears that does not exist lower down the scale: a choice that belongs to you. It is not universal. Two carve outs come first.

Section 553 lists offences within the absolute jurisdiction of a provincial court judge. Those are tried at 70 Simcoe Street and there is no election, whatever the accused would prefer. At the other end, section 469 lists offences within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Superior Court, including murder. Those do not stay in the Ontario Court of Justice at all, and as noted above even the bail hearing moves.

Everything between those two carve outs is elective. When put to the election, the accused chooses trial by a provincial court judge, by a judge of the Superior Court sitting alone, or by a court composed of a judge and jury. Serious drug trafficking allegations are a common example of a file where the election is genuinely live and genuinely consequential.

The mistake made most often is electing early to secure a date. An election made before the disclosure has been read is a guess. The evidence decides whether a jury helps you or hurts you, whether a preliminary inquiry is available, and how long you will wait. The date can wait a few weeks. The election is harder to unwind than people expect, as the next sections explain.

The election that moves your case from Simcoe Street to Water Street

Elect either Superior Court option and your file physically relocates. This is where Peterborough trips people up, because the two courthouses are not only different buildings, they are on different streets, and a number of online directories list the Superior Court at the wrong address.

Address	What sits there	Which matters
70 Simcoe Street, Peterborough K9H 7G9	Ontario Court of Justice	Criminal and criminal youth matters, criminal line 705-876-3846. The Victim and Witness Assistance Program is also at this address. Provincial Offences trials and resolution meetings are held here in Courtroom 5.
470 Water Street, Peterborough K9H 3M3	Superior Court of Justice	Criminal trials, judicial pre-trials, bail hearings and reviews, 90-day detention review hearings, criminal motions and applications, assignment court, and summary conviction appeals. Criminal scheduling runs through 705-876-3823.
City Hall, 500 George Street North	Provincial Offences Act office	Tickets, fines, forms and the paperwork for Provincial Offences matters. The public counter is in the north wing of City Hall, near the Plan-Build Peterborough desk. A Criminal Code charge is not dealt with here.

If your paperwork names the Superior Court and a search result tells you it is at 70 Simcoe Street, the search result is wrong. Follow the document and telephone the court office if the two disagree.

One more geographic trap, and it decides who holds your disclosure. Peterborough Police Service headquarters is at 500 Water Street, which is a different building on the same street as the Superior Court at 470 Water Street. The Service publishes its patrol areas: Areas 1 to 4 cover the City of Peterborough, Area 5 polices the Selwyn Township Lakefield Ward, and Area 6 polices the Township of Cavan Monaghan. The Ontario Provincial Police cover the remainder of the county. So a charge laid just outside the city may still be a Peterborough Police file, or it may not, and that determines which service your disclosure request goes to.

Preliminary inquiry, and which cases still qualify for one

A preliminary inquiry is a hearing at which a justice decides whether there is sufficient evidence to put the accused on trial. For years it was also, in practice, the defence’s best opportunity to hear key witnesses give evidence under oath before trial. Parliament narrowed it, and a great deal of older material online has not been updated.

Section 535 now confines the preliminary inquiry to an accused charged with an indictable offence punishable by fourteen years or more of imprisonment, and only where the accused or the prosecutor requests one. Below that threshold there is no preliminary inquiry at all, whatever the election. So the availability of a preliminary inquiry is itself a marker on the severity gradient, and a charge such as robbery is one of the places where the threshold question becomes concrete.

Where one is available, requesting it is a strategic decision rather than a default. It costs time, and time counts against the ceilings the Supreme Court set for unreasonable delay. What it buys is evidence: a witness committed to an account on the record, a Crown theory tested before trial, and a realistic basis for advising on resolution. Where the Crown case is documentary and the witnesses add little, the cost may outweigh the benefit. Where the case turns on identification or on the reliability of one person, it can be decisive.

Judge alone or judge and jury, and what that choice actually trades

Assume the election is open. The trade is not complicated to describe and it is difficult to make.

A judge sitting alone gives reasons. Those reasons can be examined, and if the law was applied incorrectly the error is visible on appeal. Judges are also, as a rule, less moved by evidence that is prejudicial rather than probative. A jury gives a verdict without reasons, which makes an appeal harder to build, but twelve people apply community standards to a case, and on some allegations that is precisely what an accused wants. A jury trial also takes longer to reach and longer to run, which matters when a person is in custody or living under restrictive conditions.

The choice is not permanently fixed on the day it is made. The Criminal Code provides a statutory right to re-elect within defined periods, and once those periods pass a re-election requires the prosecutor’s written consent. That is the practical reason to resist electing before the disclosure has been reviewed. An election made on instinct in the first month becomes, three months later, a request you have to persuade the Crown to agree to.

One further point that is easy to overlook. For offences within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Superior Court, a trial by judge alone requires the consent of both the accused and the Attorney General. At the top of the scale, even the choice is shared.

If it has already gone wrong: summary conviction appeals and where they are heard

The gradient runs in both directions. A conviction or a sentence in the Ontario Court of Justice is not the end of the process, and the route out is one of the least understood parts of the system in this city.

An appeal from a summary conviction proceeding is heard by the Superior Court of Justice, and in Peterborough that means 470 Water Street. Summary conviction appeals are listed among the criminal scheduling events for that courthouse alongside trials, judicial pre-trials, bail reviews and detention reviews. Someone convicted at 70 Simcoe Street therefore appeals into a different building on a different street, which is exactly the kind of detail that costs a person a morning or, worse, a deadline.

Time is the thing that ends appeals, not merit. Appeal periods are short and they run from the date of the decision, not from the date you decide you are unhappy with it. The moment to ask about an appeal is the afternoon of the result, while the transcript can still be ordered promptly and while an application to extend time is not yet necessary. Our page on criminal appeals in Ontario sets out the grounds that actually succeed, which are narrower than most people assume.

An appeal is also not a second trial. It is a review for legal error, for a misapprehension of the evidence, or for an unreasonable verdict, and on sentence for an error in principle or a sentence that is demonstrably unfit. Disagreeing with the outcome is not a ground.

Where the line sits between handling this yourself and needing counsel

Having set out a scale, it would be inconsistent to pretend that every point on it requires a firm like ours.

At the bottom, for a Provincial Offences ticket or a very minor first matter with no immigration exposure, no licensing exposure and no realistic custodial risk, many people resolve things sensibly with duty counsel or on their own, and that is a legitimate choice. If you are in custody and the realistic path involves repeated attendances at 70 Simcoe Street at short notice, a lawyer already in that building most mornings has an advantage we cannot manufacture from Toronto. We will say so on the first call rather than after a retainer.

The calculation inverts as you climb. Once the Crown has elected by indictment, once an election of your own is on the table, once a preliminary inquiry is available, once the onus at bail has flipped, or once a conviction would carry consequences that outlast the sentence, the question stops being who is closest and becomes who has read the disclosure and built the file. That work does not depend on a postal code.

We take the same position in every city outside Toronto where we act. Our page on criminal defence in Brantford opens with the same admission about distance and the same account of what the Court does and does not permit. Ask us the uncomfortable questions on the first call, and judge the answers.

Why Kazandji Law

We are a criminal defence firm, and when a client is charged in Peterborough we act on the terms set out above. No office in the city, no pretence of one, and a plain account of what our distance changes and what it does not.

Our offices are at 180 John Street Unit 320 in Toronto, 7191 Yonge Street Suite 310 in Thornhill, and in North York and Oakville. Founding partner Fadi Matthew Kazandji leads the defence practice, and the lawyer who speaks to you about your file is the lawyer who carries it. We travel to 70 Simcoe Street and to 470 Water Street for the stages the Court expects in person, and we appear remotely where the presiding judicial officer allows it.

What we offer is not proximity. It is judgement about where your charge sits and what that means: disclosure requested in writing in the first week, a plan of release built before the bail hearing rather than during it, elections made after the evidence has been read, Crown pre-trials supported by material, and honest advice about the consequences that outlast a sentence. If your case needs something we cannot give it, you will hear that before you retain us.

Peterborough criminal defence: twelve questions answered

This page is general information about criminal procedure in Peterborough, Ontario and is not legal advice. Courthouse addresses, courtroom assignments, sitting days and contact details change; confirm anything time sensitive with the Ontario Court of Justice, the Superior Court of Justice or the court office before relying on it. Reading this page does not create a solicitor and client relationship with Kazandji Law. If you are facing a charge, get advice about your own circumstances.