Assault Charges in Ontario: Defence Lawyers for s.266, s.267 and s.268 Cases

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Assault in Ontario is defined by section 265 of the Criminal Code: intentionally applying force to another person without their consent. Nobody needs to be injured. A shove, a grabbed wrist, spitting, or a raised fist backed by the apparent ability to use it can all support a charge. From there the law climbs a ladder, from simple assault under s.266, to assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm under s.267, to aggravated assault under s.268, and the penalties climb with it. Kazandji Law defends people on every rung of that ladder, in courthouses across Ontario, every week of the year.

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

What counts as assault in Ontario

Start with the statute, because most of the panic people feel comes from not knowing what the charge actually means. Section 265(1) creates three routes to an assault charge. The first is the obvious one: applying force to another person intentionally and without consent, directly or indirectly. The second surprises people. Attempting or threatening, by an act or a gesture, to apply force is also assault if the other person reasonably believes you have the present ability to carry it out. No contact required. The third route covers accosting or impeding someone, or begging, while openly wearing or carrying a weapon or an imitation of one.

Three things follow from that wording. Injury is not an element, so a charge can rest on a push that left no mark. Intent is an element, so genuinely accidental contact, the crowded streetcar bump, the elbow thrown while catching a fall, is not assault. And force can be indirect, which is why throwing an object or setting something in motion can qualify.

Section 265(2) says this definition applies to every form of assault, including sexual assault. Those cases run under their own sections with their own consequences, and we cover them separately on our Ontario sexual offence lawyers page.

Consent does the heavy lifting in many defences, but s.265(3) limits it: submission because of force, threats or fear of force, fraud, or the exercise of authority is not consent in law. And under s.265(4), where an accused says they honestly but mistakenly believed the other person consented, the judge tells the jury to weigh whether reasonable grounds supported that belief.

Here is what you should take from all of this. The charge is easy to lay. Police called to a chaotic scene rarely sort out who did what, and they charge on reasonable grounds, not proof. The gap between an allegation that meets s.265 on paper and a case the Crown can prove beyond a reasonable doubt is where defence work lives.

The assault ladder: how s.266, s.267 and s.268 differ

People hear assault and picture one offence. Ontario courts see a ladder with three main rungs, and the rung you are on controls the maximum penalty, the Crown's options, and whether a discharge can keep a conviction off your record.

Two notes on that table. First, s.266 and s.267 are hybrid offences: the Crown chooses to proceed summarily, which usually signals a lower-end case, or by indictment, which raises the ceiling and changes procedure. When the Crown goes summarily, the maximum comes from s.787 of the Code: two years less a day in jail, a fine of up to $5,000, or both. You will still find Ontario law firm pages quoting an 18-month ceiling. That number has been wrong since the 2019 amendments.

Second, the discharge column comes from s.730. A discharge, absolute or conditional, is a finding of guilt without a conviction, and it is only available where the offence carries no mandatory minimum and is not punishable by 14 years or life. Simple assault and s.267 assaults qualify. Aggravated assault, with its 14-year maximum, does not. That single line explains a lot of charging and resolution strategy.

The ladder does not stop at aggravated assault. Where the Crown says the intent was to kill rather than to injure, the charge moves up to attempted murder, and the sentencing range changes completely. That is a different file to run, and we set out how on our page for clients facing an attempted murder allegation.

Which assault charge am I actually facing?

The paperwork you were handed lists a section number. Here is how the facts map onto it.

If nobody was hurt, or the contact left nothing more than fleeting redness or a scratch, the charge is usually simple assault under s.266. That covers most pushing matches, most first domestic arguments that turned physical, and most bar incidents where everyone walked away.

Section 267 has three branches, and only one of them requires injury. Carrying, using or threatening to use a weapon, or an imitation weapon, during an assault is enough on its own, and a weapon can be anything from a bottle to a phone thrown across a room. Causing bodily harm is the second branch. The third is choking, suffocating or strangling, added to s.267 in the 2019 amendments. Police and Crowns treat any allegation of hands near a neck seriously, and in domestic files the choking branch now appears constantly. An allegation that would have been simple assault a decade ago becomes a 10-year-maximum charge when a complainant describes being grabbed by the throat.

Aggravated assault under s.268 requires wounding, maiming, disfigurement, or endangerment of life. Broken orbital bones, stab wounds, injuries needing surgery. These cases are straight indictable, carry a 14-year maximum, and get built around medical evidence.

The relationship between the people involved does not change the section, but it changes everything else: how police charge, how the Crown screens the file, what bail looks like. If the complainant is your partner or a family member, read the next section closely.

And the label police pick at the start is not final. Crowns upgrade charges when medical records come back worse than expected, and defence counsel push charges down the ladder when the evidence does not support the branch alleged. Where the file sits on the ladder is often the first fight. It is worth having, because the difference between s.266 and s.267 is the difference between a 5-year and a 10-year maximum, with immigration consequences to match.

Why was I charged when my partner does not want to proceed?

It is the most common first question in domestic files: my partner does not want this to go ahead, so why is it going ahead?

Because the decision was never the complainant's. In Ontario, once police attend a domestic call and form reasonable grounds, charging is the norm rather than the exception. After that, the prosecution belongs to the Crown. Crown offices screen intimate partner files under policies that favour prosecution, and a complainant's wish to withdraw is a factor the Crown weighs, not an instruction it follows. Complainants who recant are often met with skepticism, sometimes with suggestions they are being pressured, and the file keeps moving.

Parliament has reinforced this in the sentencing provisions. Under s.718.2(a)(ii) of the Criminal Code, evidence that an offender abused an intimate partner or a family member is deemed an aggravating circumstance. Not may be treated as aggravating. Is. Related provisions do the same where the victim is under 18, where the offender was in a position of trust or authority, and where the offence had a significant impact on the victim. On top of that, s.718.201, added in 2019, directs sentencing courts in intimate partner cases to consider the increased vulnerability of female victims, with particular attention to Aboriginal women.

The practical consequences arrive well before sentencing. Bail conditions in domestic files almost always include no contact with the complainant and no attendance at the home, which means people find themselves locked out of their own house, seeing their kids through third-party arrangements, living out of a suitcase while presumed innocent. Getting those conditions varied becomes an early priority, and it takes Crown consent or a court application.

None of this means the case cannot be won or resolved sensibly. It means the file will not go away because the two of you made up. We handle these cases across the province, including through our Markham domestic assault practice, and where the allegations shade into repeated texts, following or watching, the file often travels together with the charges covered on our Ontario criminal harassment lawyers page.

This is the part clients find hardest to accept, so it helps to see the whole machine at once. We wrote a plain language walkthrough of who decides what in a domestic violence case, from the officer at the door through to the Crown who ends up with the file.

I was held for bail. What happens now?

Most people charged with assault in Ontario are released by police on an undertaking with conditions. If police hold you instead, you go before a court for a bail hearing, normally within 24 hours.

Where that happens depends on geography. Adult bail hearings for Toronto charges run at the Toronto Regional Bail Centre, 2201 Finch Avenue West. York Region files, which is where Markham, Vaughan and Richmond Hill charges land, are heard at the Newmarket courthouse, 50 Eagle Street West. Weekend and holiday courts sit too. The system does not pause because it is Sunday.

Three things decide how a bail hearing goes. The plan: where you will live, who supervises you, what conditions you propose. The surety, if one is needed: a person, often family, who promises the court an amount of money and agrees to supervise you. And the presentation: bail is about managing risk, so the hearing is won by showing the court a structure that answers the Crown's concerns about further offences, contact with the complainant, and showing up to court.

Expect conditions. No contact with the complainant, directly or indirectly. No attendance at their home, school or workplace. Sometimes no alcohol, sometimes a curfew, and in weapons cases no weapons. In domestic matters the no-contact terms bite hardest, because they often bar you from your own home.

Conditions are not carved in stone. They can be varied later, on consent if the Crown agrees or by application if it does not, and variations to allow counselling-based contact or child arrangements are a routine part of our work in these files.

One warning we give every client: breaching a bail condition is its own criminal charge, and it converts a defensible assault file into a two-front war. If a condition is unworkable, we fix the condition. You do not get to quietly ignore it.

Which courthouse will hear an assault case in Toronto or York Region?

Assault charges follow the incident, not your address. The charge is prosecuted where the event allegedly happened.

For Toronto incidents, appearances in the Ontario Court of Justice run at 10 Armoury Street, and Superior Court of Justice matters are heard at 361 University Avenue. For York Region incidents, including Markham, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Aurora and Newmarket itself, the courthouse is 50 Eagle Street West in Newmarket.

Which level of court tries your case depends on the charge and, for many indictable matters, on your election: the choice between trial in the Ontario Court of Justice or in the Superior Court, with or without a jury. Simple and mid-ladder assaults prosecuted summarily stay in the Ontario Court of Justice from start to finish. Aggravated assaults and serious s.267 indictments are where elections and Superior Court trials come into play. Election strategy is real strategy, driven by the evidence, the timing and the defence theory, and it is a decision to make with counsel, not at the counter on a first appearance.

We appear in these courthouses constantly, and local texture matters: how a given Crown office screens domestic files, what resolutions a courthouse will entertain, how far out trials are booking. If your charge arose in the city, our Toronto assault lawyers page covers the city-specific process. Charged in Markham or elsewhere in York Region? Our Markham assault lawyer page speaks to Newmarket practice directly.

Does self-defence still work after R v Khill?

Self-defence in Canada is one rule with several moving parts. Under s.34(1), you are not guilty if three things line up: you reasonably believed force, or a threat of force, was being used against you or someone else; what you did had a defensive purpose; and your act was reasonable in the circumstances.

That third requirement is where cases are won and lost, and s.34(2) gives courts a list of factors to weigh: whether the threat was imminent and whether other options existed, whether anyone had a weapon, the parties' relative size, age, gender and physical capabilities, the history between the people involved including prior violence, the proportionality of the response, and the person's own role in the incident.

The Supreme Court sharpened that last factor in R v Khill, 2021 SCC 37. Mr. Khill shot an intruder breaking into his truck and was acquitted at trial on self-defence. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial because the jury was never told to consider his role in the whole incident: leaving the house armed, loading the shotgun, confronting the man rather than calling 911. The Court held that a person's role in the incident means their conduct from the beginning of the event to the end, so far as it bears on whether the final act was reasonable. Self-defence survived Khill. What changed is that courts now examine the entire movie, not just the final frame.

Two practice points follow. First, the story of the whole incident has to be built early, while memories are fresh and video still exists, because the Crown will comb through every choice you made before the punch. Second, s.34(3) closes one door: force used against police or others acting lawfully is not self-defence unless you reasonably believed they were acting unlawfully.

Where the elements are there, self-defence remains a complete answer to an assault charge. We have run it in bar fights, domestic allegations and neighbour disputes, and the preparation starts at the first meeting.

Can consent be a defence if we both agreed to fight?

Two people square up, both willing, one gets hurt, one gets charged. Does consent answer the charge?

Sometimes. Consent is baked into the definition of assault, because the Crown must prove the force was applied without it, and genuinely consensual physical contact, from sports to horseplay, is not assault. But the defence has statutory limits. Under s.265(3), submission is not consent where it results from force, threats or fear of force, fraud, or the exercise of authority. A person who goes along because they are scared has not consented to anything.

Then there is the practical reality in Ontario courtrooms: judges and prosecutors do not treat consent as a licence for serious harm. As the injuries move up the scale, from trifling contact toward bodily harm and beyond, a consent argument gets less and less traction, and Crowns prosecute fist fights every week on exactly that footing. Anyone leaning on we both agreed as a complete answer to a s.267 charge is being set up for disappointment.

Where consent arguments genuinely work: contact sports within the expected conduct of the game, mutual pushing and grabbing that produced no real injury, horseplay that went slightly wrong. Where they struggle: weapons, significant injuries, big mismatches in size or sobriety, and almost anything domestic.

If consent is on the table in your case, treat it as one piece of the defence, usually paired with self-defence or a straight credibility contest about what actually happened and who started it.

What sentence do people actually get for a first assault charge?

Sentencing for assault in Ontario runs from an outcome that leaves no record at all to penitentiary time. Where a file lands depends on the rung of the ladder, the injuries, the relationship, your record, and the quality of the resolution work done before anyone talks numbers.

For first-time charges at the lower end, the realistic outcomes, roughly in order of preference, look like this. Withdrawal: the Crown pulls the charge, sometimes after counselling or other steps, and there is no finding of guilt at all. A peace bond under s.810: you acknowledge the complainant had reasonable grounds to fear you, accept conditions for up to a year, and the charge is withdrawn. It is not a conviction and involves no admission that the offence happened. Diversion, where the local Crown offers it, works in a similar way: complete the steps and the charge goes. None of these is automatic, and availability varies by courthouse and by file.

After a finding of guilt, discharges under s.730 keep a conviction off your record: absolute, with nothing further, or conditional, with probation terms to complete first. Discharges are legally available for s.266 and s.267 assaults but not for aggravated assault, because s.268 carries a 14-year maximum. Above discharges sit suspended sentences with probation, fines, conditional sentences in some cases, and jail where the violence or the record demands it.

What pushes a file up that scale? The statutory aggravating factors do real work here: abuse of an intimate partner or family member, a victim under 18, abuse of a position of trust or authority, and a significant impact on the victim are all treated as aggravating under s.718.2. Choking allegations, weapons, visible injuries, prior findings for violence, and breaches committed while on release all push in the same direction.

We do not quote average sentences on this page, because averages are how people get misled about their own file. The honest answer is that first-offence outcomes are heavily shaped by early defence work, and the window for that work is the first few months, not the trial date.

Will I face a weapons prohibition even without a firearm charge?

A weapons prohibition can follow an assault case even though no firearm was involved and no firearms charge was ever laid. People are routinely blindsided by this.

Section 109 makes a prohibition mandatory on conviction, or even on a discharge, for an indictable offence involving violence with a maximum of 10 years or more. That description captures s.267 and s.268 assaults prosecuted by indictment. It also applies, separately, to indictable violence against an intimate partner, your or their child or parent, or anyone living with either of you. On a first order, the ban runs at least 10 years from release for non-restricted firearms, and for prohibited and restricted firearms, weapons, devices and ammunition it is for life. A second qualifying offence makes everything life.

Where s.109 does not apply, s.110 usually can. For other offences involving violence, which is where summary assault convictions land, the court must consider a discretionary prohibition of up to 10 years, and if it declines to make one it has to give reasons. In intimate partner and household violence cases, s.110 carries an extra edge: the order can be made for life.

For hunters, farmers, security professionals and anyone who holds a firearms licence, the prohibition can be a bigger life event than the sentence itself. We build it into resolution strategy from the start, including how a charge gets elected and what findings a plea actually admits.

What does an assault charge mean for immigration status and your record?

If you are not a Canadian citizen, the assault charge and the immigration file are the same file. Treating them separately is how permanent residents end up in removal proceedings over a provincial court sentence.

The trigger is s.36(1)(a) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act: serious criminality. A permanent resident becomes inadmissible on conviction for an offence punishable by a maximum of at least 10 years, or where the sentence imposed is more than six months in jail. Assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm and choking under s.267 carry a 10-year maximum on indictment, and aggravated assault carries 14, so those convictions can meet the definition on the maximum alone. Simple assault under s.266 does not reach the 10-year branch, but a jail sentence over six months on any assault will do it.

The Supreme Court's decision in Tran v Canada, 2017 SCC 50, matters here in two ways. It held that a conditional sentence order, jail served in the community, is not imprisonment for the six-month branch of that test. And it held that the relevant maximum penalty is the one in force when the offence was committed. The combined effect: how a sentence is structured, jail versus conditional sentence, six months versus seven, can decide whether a permanent resident keeps appeal rights or faces removal. We plan sentencing positions around those lines in every file involving a non-citizen.

The record side matters for everyone. Fingerprints and photographs are taken when you are processed on a hybrid or indictable charge. A conviction goes onto a criminal record that employment and volunteer screening will find. A discharge is a finding of guilt without a conviction, and withdrawn or diverted charges are not convictions at all, though records of the arrest can persist and cleanup steps are sometimes needed. What shows up on which check depends on the type of search and on how the case ended, and that is worth a specific conversation rather than a guess.

How Kazandji Law defends assault charges across Ontario

Assault files are usually credibility files. There is rarely a document trail, often no independent witness, and the complainant's account is the case. So the defence starts with the cross-examination: inconsistencies between the 911 call, the police statement and the testimony, motive to fabricate in custody and separation disputes, sobriety, sightlines, and the physics of the story being told.

Identification fights arise in bar and street files, where lighting, chaos and stranger identification give courts real pause. Charter issues arise everywhere: arrests made without proper grounds, statements taken in breach of the right to counsel, searches that overreached. Evidence that gets excluded changes cases.

On the injury-driven charges, the medical records are a battlefield of their own. Whether an injury is more than transient or trifling separates s.266 from s.267. Whether life was endangered separates s.267 from s.268. We read those records line by line, and where it matters we have them reviewed by people qualified to push back.

In parallel with all of it, resolution positioning: putting the counselling, the context and the weaknesses in the Crown's case in front of the prosecutor early, so that withdrawal, a peace bond or a discharge becomes the sensible outcome on their side of the file too. You can see how this approach has played out for past clients on our case results page.

The through-line is speed. Video gets overwritten, witnesses scatter, and the version of events on paper hardens. The best assault defences we have run were built in the first month, not the last one.

Why people across Ontario call Kazandji Law

Kazandji Law is a criminal defence firm built for exactly these files. Fadi Matthew Kazandji and the defence team appear regularly in the courthouses named on this page, and the firm runs four offices so clients are never far from counsel:

• Toronto, head office: 180 John St, Unit 320, minutes from the Ontario Court of Justice at 10 Armoury Street and the Superior Court at 361 University Avenue.
• Thornhill: 7191 Yonge St, Suite 310, serving Markham, Vaughan, Richmond Hill and the York Region files heading to Newmarket.
• North York: covering the northern parts of the city and bail matters at 2201 Finch Avenue West.
• Oakville: for Halton and the western GTA.

Consultations are free, and the first conversation is about your options, not a sales pitch. Beyond assault, the firm defends the full range of criminal allegations, including theft and fraud charges province-wide, and our criminal defence hub collects everything we handle.

Assault charges in Ontario: frequently asked questions

This page is general legal information for people facing assault charges in Ontario, not legal advice about your specific case. Every file turns on its own facts. Criminal Code and IRPA references are current to July 2026. If you have been charged, get advice on your own situation. Kazandji Law, 180 John St, Unit 320, Toronto, Ontario. Free consultations: 647-588-3234.