Talk:Criminal Code (Canada)

Latest comment: 8 years ago by EdJohnston in topic Requested move 24 September 2015

Does/doesn't typo in first paragraph? edit

In the first paragraph, I see "It should be noted that the Canadian Criminal Code is not a code in the civil law meaning of the term, because it does present principles in any logical way." Should "does" be "doesn't" there? --Closeapple 01:32, 21 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Consolidation of past law edit

The Criminal Code can only be said to consolidate the law if earlier law need no longer be consulted. Section 9 ("Criminal offences to be under law of Canada") appears to eliminate all offences arising from English law, but begins "Notwithstanding anything in this Act or any other Act". If "notwithstanding" is taken literally, then those English Acts are not withstood and still apply. On the other hand, if it means that the English Acts do not withstand section 9, then this section seems to make subsection 8(2) ("Application of criminal law of England") inoperative. Clarification?

The best sense I can make of it, taking the second interpretation of "notwithstanding", is that the offences are eliminated, but not necessarily other aspects of the Acts. Similarly, common law defences are retained by subsection 8(3).

I used to be confused with the meaning of "notwithstanding" in the exact same way. I always thought it meant that it "could not withstand..." I know now that "notwithstanding" is basically a synonym for "despite" or "irrespective of". Thus, s. 8 means that all English Acts that create criminal offences are eliminated. -PullUpYourSocks 23:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)Reply

class IV controlled substances - when added to code? edit

I just added mention of Class IV controlled substances (anabolic steroids) to the Bodybuilding article, as only US legislation was mentioned until now. I was unable to add the date they were added, although I know it was as a result of parliamentary debate/vote in the wake of the Ben Jonson scandal. Would anyone here know the date, and maybe be able to provide a cite (it's in the "Rise of anabolic steroids" section in that article).Skookum1 (talk) 01:20, 29 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

Name of article edit

I think that the name of this article should be "Criminal Code (Canada)". The reason is that the official title, as cited in the first line of the lead paragraph, is "Criminal Code". The Manual of Style for Canadian articles indicates that the official short title of a statute should be used as the name of an article, followed by the jurisdiction in parentheses. If no-one has any comment, I will do a re-direct in a few days.Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 10:57, 24 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

Requested move 24 September 2015 edit

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. Evidence is mixed on this. The Criminal Code of Canada is not the official name. The official name is 'Criminal Code' (That title would be fine if there were only one country in the world). There is at least some precedent in Category:Criminal codes for a parenthetical disambiguator identifying the country, when the country involved doesn't identify the nation in the code title. Countries that do put their name in the title of their code (such as Russia) are handled in the expected way. There is a published book called "Crankshaws' Criminal Code of Canada" but nobody has found a Canadian government document calling this code the Criminal Code of Canada. The German criminal code is called the Strafgesetzbuch in our Wikipedia, with no parenthetical DAB because (I assume) it's the primary topic, and without including Deutschland in the title. EdJohnston (talk) 18:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)Reply



Criminal Code of CanadaCriminal Code (Canada) – This article should be re-named "Criminal Code (Canada)". The Manual of Style for Canadian articles indicates that the official short title of a statute should be used as the name of an article, followed by the jurisdiction in parentheses. The official title of the statute is "Criminal Code", as cited in the first paragraph of the article. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 11:11, 24 September 2015 (UTC)Reply

  • It's been a week since I posted the move request and there seems to be general consensus. Now how do I "make it so"? Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:38, 1 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Patience!! --Mike Cline (talk) 21:48, 2 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
  • Oppose, naturalness and consistency with similar in Category:Criminal codes. Parenthetical should be avoided, and more so here because "(Canada)" implies that there is a different sort of penal code in Canada, but Canada's penal code is not particularly special alongside other penal codes. Also oppose per WP:TITLECHANGES, there is not driving reason for such a change. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:29, 2 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Per MOS:LAW, article titles are formatted according to the legal citation system of the jurisdiction from which they originate (the guideline discusses titles of "cases", but the guideline has consistently been applied to statutes and regulations as well). Furthermore, there is actually quite a wide variety of titles among Category:Criminal codes, many of which are formatted according to the citation style of that jurisdiction (see, e.g., California Penal Code). The category also contains articles for Völkerstrafgesetzbuch, Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, and Indian Penal Code. As for the assertion that there is no driving reason for the title change, the driving reason here is that the existing article title does not conform to guidelines established in Manual of Style for Canadian articles and MOS:LAW. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 00:50, 2 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
An additional reason for the change is that the current title contributes to inaccurate citations of the Criminal Code elsewhere on the Wikipedia. If you click on the pages identified in "What Links Here", you will see that in other articles, the term "Criminal Code of Canada" is used, as if it is the proper name for the Code. That happens even in contexts where it is clear that the reference is to the laws of Canada, and there is no need for "of Canada" as a disambiguation. That erroneous usage is not surprising, when the main article for the Code suggests that the proper name is "Criminal Code of Canada." Changing the name of this article would encourage the use of the proper name of the Code in numerous other WP articles. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 01:43, 3 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.