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← Back to Law ExplorerLast verified: June 2026 · Source: laws-lois.justice.gc.ca
Homicide & RelatedIndictable
§222

Homicide

Homicide
Maximum Sentence

Life imprisonment (murder) / Life imprisonment (manslaughter)

Classification: Indictable
🍁 Immigration Impact

Culpable homicide (murder, manslaughter, infanticide) is among the most serious offences in Canadian law. Serious criminality under IRPA s.36(1). Creates permanent inadmissibility with virtually no pathway to overcome except royal prerogative of mercy.

🍁 In Simple Terms

The umbrella definition covering every death one person causes another, including deaths the law does not punish at all. The versions that are offences, murder, manslaughter, and infanticide, carry life imprisonment. That puts them at the extreme end of serious criminality, where almost no route back to admissibility exists.

Legal Text, Criminal Code s. 222

(1) A person commits homicide when, directly or indirectly, by any means, he causes the death of a human being. (2) Homicide is culpable or not culpable. (3) Homicide that is not culpable is not an offence. (4) Culpable homicide is murder or manslaughter or infanticide. (5) A person commits culpable homicide when he causes the death of a human being, (a) by means of an unlawful act; (b) by criminal negligence; (c) by causing that human being, by threats or fear of violence or by deception, to do anything that causes his death; or (d) by wilfully frightening that human being, in the case of a child or sick person. (6) Notwithstanding anything in this section, a person does not commit homicide within the meaning of this Act by reason only that he causes the death of a human being by procuring, by false evidence, the conviction and death of that human being by sentence of the law.

Amendment History (1)
R.S., c. C-34, s. 205
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