Criminal Code

Marginal note:Intimidation

• 423 (1) Every one is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years or is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction who, wrongfully and without lawful authority, for the purpose of compelling another person to abstain from doing anything that he or she has a lawful right to do, or to do anything that he or she has a lawful right to abstain from doing,

  • (a) uses violence or threats of violence to that person or his or her spouse or common-law partner or children, or injures his or her property;

  • (b) intimidates or attempts to intimidate that person or a relative of that person by threats that, in Canada or elsewhere, violence or other injury will be done to or punishment inflicted on him or her or a relative of his or hers, or that the property of any of them will be damaged;

  • (c) persistently follows that person;

  • (d) hides any tools, clothes or other property owned or used by that person, or deprives him or her of them or hinders him or her in the use of them;

  • (e) with one or more other persons, follows that person, in a disorderly manner, on a highway;

  • (f) besets or watches the place where that person resides, works, carries on business or happens to be; or

  • (g) blocks or obstructs a highway.

• Marginal note:Exception

  (2) A person who attends at or near or approaches a dwelling-house or place, for the purpose only of obtaining or communicating information, does not watch or beset within the meaning of this section.