Toronto Criminal Negligence Causing Death Lawyer

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A charge of criminal negligence causing death says that someone died because of what you did, or because of what you failed to do while the law imposed a duty on you to act. It is an indictable offence under section 220 of the Criminal Code, it carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, and it turns on two questions that decide almost every one of these prosecutions: did you owe a duty imposed by law, and did your conduct fall so far below what a reasonable person would have done that it stopped being a tragedy and became a crime? Kazandji Law defends criminal negligence cases across Toronto and the GTA. Call 647-588-3234 for a free, confidential consultation.

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

What Section 219 Actually Says

Section 219(1) of the Criminal Code provides that every one is criminally negligent who, in doing anything, or in omitting to do anything that it is his duty to do, shows wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons. Section 219(2) adds one definition that ends up controlling entire cases: for this purpose, duty means a duty imposed by law.

Read that carefully and the architecture of the offence appears. There are two pathways in. The first is an act, something you did. The second is an omission, something you failed to do, and the omission pathway is only open to the Crown if the law had first placed you under a legal duty to act. A stranger who watches a tragedy unfold and does nothing may face moral judgment; criminal negligence requires more. No duty, no omission liability. That is very often the first battleground.

The phrase wanton or reckless disregard for the lives or safety of other persons is the fault element, and Canadian courts assess it objectively. The Crown does not have to prove that you intended to endanger anyone or that you subjectively appreciated the risk. Instead, the question is how far your conduct departed from what a reasonable person would have done in the same circumstances, a modified objective standard, measured against the situation you actually faced, including the emergencies, information and pressures of the moment.

Section 219 does not stand alone. When criminally negligent conduct causes a death, the charge is laid under section 220; when it causes bodily harm, under section 221. Everything on this page concerns the death charge, but the building blocks, duty, departure and causation, are the same, and each of them can be contested by the defence.

The Duty Map: Sections 215 to 217.1

Because omissions are the classic route into criminal negligence, the Criminal Code sets out its own map of legal duties. Section 219(2) speaks of a duty imposed by law generally, other statutes and the common law can also ground a duty, but four Code provisions do most of the work in Toronto prosecutions, and one of them was written specifically for workplace deaths.

Provision	Who owes the duty	What it requires	Classic fact pattern
s. 215, necessaries of life	Parents, foster parents, guardians and heads of a family (for children under 16); spouses and common-law partners; anyone with a person under their charge who cannot withdraw from that charge or provide for themselves because of detention, age, illness or mental disorder	Provide the necessaries of life, food, shelter, care and medical attention	A caregiver who fails to get medical help for a dependent child or adult
s. 216, medical and other dangerous acts	Anyone who undertakes to administer surgical or medical treatment, or to do any other lawful act that may endanger life	Have and use reasonable knowledge, skill and care in doing so, except in cases of necessity	A health practitioner whose procedure ends in death, the duty at issue in R. v. Javanmardi
s. 217, undertakings	Anyone who undertakes to do an act	Do it, if an omission to do the act is or may be dangerous to life	Abandoning a task that someone else’s safety depended on
s. 217.1, directing work (the Westray duty)	Anyone who undertakes, or has the authority, to direct how another person does work or performs a task	Take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to that person, or any other person, arising from that work or task	Supervisors, site managers and directing minds after a workplace fatality

Failing to provide necessaries of life is also a standalone offence under s. 215(2), a hybrid charge with a maximum of five years on indictment. In death cases, though, these provisions matter mostly as the foundation on which a s. 220 count is built. The defence starts by interrogating that foundation: which duty, exactly, does the Crown say you owed? Did it apply to you, on these facts, at that moment? Was there actually a failure to discharge it, or did you do what the situation allowed? Those questions are decided on evidence, not assumptions, and they are where an experienced criminal negligence lawyer goes first.

The Highest Fault Bar in Canadian Negligence Law

Negligence is a word Canadians meet in many settings, and the law grades it. Understanding where criminal negligence sits on that ladder explains both why the charge is so serious and where the defence lives.

Two Supreme Court of Canada decisions anchor that top rung. In R. v. J.F., 2008 SCC 60, a case about a foster father charged after a child’s death, the Court held that criminal negligence required proof that the omission represented a marked and substantial departure from the conduct of a reasonably prudent parent in the circumstances, where the accused either recognized and ran an obvious and serious risk or gave no thought to it. The Court noted that criminal negligence has generally been held to require a marked and substantial departure, while the lesser offence of failing to provide necessaries requires only a marked departure, and on the record before it, the Supreme Court entered an acquittal.

In R. v. Javanmardi, 2019 SCC 54, a naturopath had been charged under s. 220 and with manslaughter after a patient died of endotoxic shock following an intravenous injection. The Supreme Court restored her acquittals. It confirmed the elements the Crown must prove: that the accused undertook an act, or omitted to do anything that it was her legal duty to do; that the act or omission caused the death; and that the conduct amounted to a marked and substantial departure from what a reasonable person would have done in the accused’s circumstances, an elevated degree of fault, above the marked departure that suffices for dangerous driving. Just as importantly for the defence, the Court rejected the idea that an IV injection was objectively dangerous regardless of the training, qualifications and experience of the person administering it. Your competence, your experience and the real circumstances you faced are not background details, they are the case.

The practical meaning of the elevated standard is this: proving that you made a serious mistake is not enough. The Crown must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, conduct so far outside the range of reasonable responses that the criminal law, not the civil courts, not a regulator, is the right answer to it. The distance between those two propositions is where these cases are won.

Penalties: Sections 220 and 221

Criminal negligence causing death is a straight indictable offence. There is no summary route and no provincial-offence off-ramp. The penalty structure is short and severe.

Charge	How it proceeds	Maximum	Mandatory minimum
Criminal negligence causing death, firearm used in the offence (s. 220(a))	Indictable	Life imprisonment	4 years
Criminal negligence causing death, any other case (s. 220(b))	Indictable	Life imprisonment	None
Criminal negligence causing bodily harm (s. 221)	Hybrid. Crown elects	10 years on indictment	None

The four-year minimum where a firearm is used has been part of the Code since 1995, and the Supreme Court of Canada upheld it against a cruel-and-unusual-punishment challenge in R. v. Morrisey, 2000 SCC 39. It survived the 2022 sentencing reforms: Bill C-5 repealed a series of other mandatory minimums, but s. 220(a) was not among them, the provision stands unamended in the current consolidation of the Code (current to May 26, 2026). Modern challenges to mandatory minimums are argued case by case under the Supreme Court’s more recent s. 12 framework, so the state of the law on any given day is a question for counsel, not a webpage.

The absence of a minimum for non-firearm cases does not signal lenience. Sentencing under s. 220(b) runs the entire range up to life imprisonment, driven by the nature of the duty breached, the degree of the departure and the circumstances of the death. We do not quote sentencing ranges here because ranges mislead: these files are fact-driven, and the same section number can produce radically different outcomes depending on what the evidence actually shows.

Criminal Negligence vs Manslaughter: The Charging Choice

Under s. 222(5)(b) of the Code, causing death by criminal negligence is itself one of the two main pathways into culpable homicide as manslaughter, and s. 220 and the manslaughter penalty provision, s. 236, carry the same structure: life maximum, with a four-year minimum when a firearm is used. Manslaughter by unlawful act requires objective foreseeability of non-trivial bodily harm (R. v. Creighton, [1993] 3 S.C.R. 3); criminal negligence requires the marked and substantial departure described above. Which count the Crown lays, and whether both appear on the same information, is a charging choice with real consequences for how the trial is fought, and it is one of the first things defence counsel scrutinizes.

We keep this section deliberately short because the overlap has its own home: our Toronto manslaughter lawyers page covers the murder, manslaughter line, unlawful-act manslaughter and the s. 236 landscape in depth, and our Toronto homicide lawyers page maps the full homicide ladder from first-degree murder down. If your file involves a choice, or a fight, between manslaughter and criminal negligence counts, start there, then call us.

Vehicular Criminal Negligence: When a Driving Death Becomes s. 220

Most fatal-collision prosecutions in Toronto proceed as dangerous operation causing death. Section 320.13(1) targets operating a conveyance in a manner that, having regard to all of the circumstances, is dangerous to the public; where death results, s. 320.13(3) applies and the penalty provision, s. 320.21, carries a maximum of life imprisonment and a minimum $1,000 fine for a first offence. The fault standard is the marked departure from Beatty and Roy, and the Supreme Court has been clear that the departure cannot be inferred from the mere fact that the driving was, in the result, dangerous.

Criminal negligence causing death sits above that. Because s. 220 demands the higher marked and substantial departure, it is reserved in practice for what the Crown views as the most egregious driving files, and charging it means the prosecution has taken on a heavier burden than dangerous driving would have required. One precision worth stating: the four-year minimum in s. 220(a) applies only where a firearm is used in the commission of the offence. It has no application to an ordinary driving case.

For the defence, the gap between marked and marked-and-substantial is working room. Evidence that falls short of the elevated standard can defeat the s. 220 count outright or ground a resolution to a lesser charge; at the far end of the spectrum, the provincial careless driving regime under the Highway Traffic Act, including careless driving causing death, is not a criminal offence at all, which is why the distinction between these regimes matters so much. Our careless driving page explains that lane.

Toronto’s fatal collisions are investigated by the Toronto Police Service’s Traffic Services unit and its collision reconstruction specialists based at 9 Hanna Ave. Their file, scene measurements, vehicle downloads, witness canvasses, is largely built before any charge is laid, which is exactly why defence counsel should be involved as early as possible.

Workplace Deaths: The Westray Duty and Two Parallel Cases

Section 217.1 entered the Code in 2003, enacted after the Westray mine disaster. It provides that every one who undertakes, or has the authority, to direct how another person does work or performs a task is under a legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to that person, or any other person, arising from that work or task. That single sentence is the foundation of workplace criminal negligence prosecutions in Canada, and it reaches supervisors, site managers and anyone else who directs work, with organizations facing potential exposure as well.

After a workplace fatality in Toronto, two proceedings can run at the same time. The police may open a criminal investigation resting on the s. 217.1 duty. In parallel, Ontario’s Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development investigates under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and an OHSA prosecution proceeds in the Provincial Offences Act stream, in Toronto, the provincial offences courts at 92 Front St E, 1530 Markham Rd and 2700 Eglinton Ave W, a different building and a different legal universe from the criminal courthouse at 10 Armoury St.

The criminal charge is the graver exposure, but the two lanes feed each other: interviews, productions and admissions in one can shape the other. A defence that treats the OHSA file and the criminal file as separate problems is a defence built on a mistake. From day one, both must be coordinated, who speaks, what is produced, when, and by whom.

Caregiver and Medical Files: The Other Two Arenas

Outside the vehicle and the worksite, Toronto criminal negligence prosecutions tend to arise in two more settings, and each has its own centre of gravity.

Caregiver files are built on the s. 215 necessaries-of-life duties: parents and guardians for children under sixteen, partners for each other, and anyone with a dependent person under their charge who cannot withdraw or provide for themselves because of detention, age, illness or mental disorder. The allegation is almost always an omission, medical help not sought, a deteriorating condition not acted on, which is why R. v. J.F. matters so much: the Supreme Court measured the foster father’s omission against what a reasonably prudent parent would have done in the circumstances, demanded a marked and substantial departure, and acquitted. These cases are heavy with hindsight. The defence job is to reconstruct what was actually known and knowable at the time, what advice had been given, what resources the caregiver genuinely had, and whether the Crown is prosecuting a tragedy rather than a crime.

Medical and treatment files rest on s. 216: anyone who undertakes surgical or medical treatment, or any other lawful act that may endanger life, must have and use reasonable knowledge, skill and care. Javanmardi is the controlling modern authority, and it cuts in the defence’s favour on two fronts: the fault bar stays at marked and substantial, and the decision-maker must account for the practitioner’s training, qualifications and experience rather than declaring a procedure dangerous in the abstract. For nurses, personal support workers, alternative-health practitioners and physicians alike, the expert evidence on standards of practice usually decides these files, which makes the choice and preparation of defence experts an early, outcome-shaping decision.

In both arenas the investigation typically runs through the Toronto Police Service Homicide and Missing Persons Unit at 40 College St, often alongside a coroner’s investigation into the cause and manner of death. Nothing about those parallel processes obliges you to give a statement. The safest sequence is the simplest one: say nothing substantive, preserve your records, and call counsel before the narrative sets.

Bail and the Toronto Court Path

Criminal negligence causing death is not listed in s. 469 of the Code, so bail is decided in the Ontario Court of Justice under the ordinary s. 515 framework, there is no automatic reverse onus simply because the charge involves a death, though the circumstances of any given case can change the practical picture. In Toronto, every adult bail hearing runs through the Toronto Regional Bail Centre at 2201 Finch Ave W, which also houses the weekend and statutory holiday (WASH) courts. Bail on a homicide-adjacent file is not a formality: the plan of supervision, sureties and conditions presented on day one shapes everything after it.

The prosecution itself proceeds at the Ontario Court of Justice criminal courthouse at 10 Armoury St. Because s. 220 is punishable by life imprisonment, it clears the fourteen-years-or-more threshold in s. 535, which means a preliminary inquiry is available on request, and you may elect trial in the Superior Court of Justice at 361 University Ave, with or without a jury. The election is strategic: a preliminary inquiry can test the Crown’s causation and fault evidence under oath before any trial begins.

Timing is governed by R. v. Jordan: presumptive ceilings of 18 months for a case that stays in the OCJ and 30 months for one that goes to the Superior Court. Delay beyond the ceiling, not caused by the defence, can ground a stay of proceedings.

Depending on the arena, the investigation will have been run by different specialized units: the Toronto Police Service Homicide and Missing Persons Unit at 40 College St handles most death investigations, while Traffic Services at 9 Hanna Ave builds the vehicular files. Ministry investigators build the workplace ones. Understanding who assembled the case against you tells the defence where its weaknesses will live.

Defences: Where These Cases Are Won

No duty, or no breach. For omission-based allegations, the Crown must first establish a duty imposed by law that actually applied to you at the relevant time. Duties have edges, who is under a person’s charge, what an undertaking was, who truly directed work. If the duty fails, the omission pathway collapses.

The degree fight. The elevated fault standard is the heart of most trials. Conduct that was imperfect, hurried, even negligent in the civil sense is not criminal unless it was a marked and substantial departure from what a reasonable person would have done in your circumstances. The defence builds the full context, what you knew, what resources existed, what the moment demanded, because context is what the modified objective standard measures.

Causation. The Crown must prove the act or omission caused the death. Where events intervened between the alleged conduct and the outcome, or where the medical evidence is more equivocal than the synopsis suggests, causation becomes a genuine trial issue, one that expert evidence often decides.

Training, qualifications and circumstances. Javanmardi is authority that a court cannot treat an activity as dangerous in the abstract while ignoring the experience and competence of the person performing it. For professionals, medical, trades, construction supervision, this is frequently the lever that reframes the entire case.

Disclosure and the Charter. R. v. Stinchcombe entitles the defence to the Crown’s full file, scene evidence, expert underpinnings, notes, testing records. Where state conduct breached the Charter, R. v. Grant, 2009 SCC 32 supplies the s. 24(2) framework for excluding the evidence that resulted. Death cases are document-heavy and expert-heavy; the defence that masters the record finds the gaps in it.

Why Kazandji Law for a Criminal Negligence Charge

These prosecutions live at the intersection of doctrine and fact: a duty map, an elevated fault standard, causation science, and, in the workplace arena, a parallel regulatory proceeding moving on its own clock. Kazandji Law defends them with senior counsel attention from the first police contact: we manage what is said and produced, retain the right experts early, test the Crown’s theory at the preliminary inquiry where that serves you, and build toward the fault-standard fight the Supreme Court’s cases invite. Review our recent results to see how we approach serious files.

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Criminal Negligence Causing Death: Frequently Asked Questions

This page is general legal information for people facing criminal negligence allegations in Toronto, it is not legal advice about your situation. Statutory references were checked against the Criminal Code consolidation current to May 26, 2026, and case holdings against the Supreme Court of Canada’s published reasons; the law changes and its application always depends on the facts. Contacting Kazandji Law does not create a lawyer-client relationship until we are retained. Kazandji Law, 180 John St, Unit 320, Toronto, 647-588-3234.