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Criminal - Orders, Disobeying
COMMENT:
The Criminal Code's CCC 127 - 'Disobeying order of court' provision creates broadly-applicable punishments responding to the disobeying of both court and tribunal orders, and applicable to the legislative Acts of all federal and provincial legislatures, including Ontario.
Unlike it's parallel CCC provision at s.126 ['Disobeying a statute'] - which applies only to federal statutes - s.127 applies to orders issued by "a court of justice or by a person or body of persons authorized by any Act to make or give the order", ie. effectively all courts and administrative tribunals. Further, under the CCC s.2 definition of "Act" - it applies to all of federal and provincial statutes, those that create those federal and provincial courts and tribunals. In short, it's application is to most all 'orders' that can be issued geographically in Canada (I haven't researched the territories yet).
Section 127 provides for a generic "without lawful excuse" defence, which - candidly - will be interpreted quite generously given the defendant-generous nature of criminal law defences overall. It reminds me of the nebulous 'colour of right' defence for animal cruelty provisions [CCC s.429(2)] (which see in the sidebar).
Section 127 is further limited by an "unless a punishment or other mode of proceeding is expressly provided by law" exception, of which the term "expressly" is key. Most enforcement of civil court orders is the subject of further (and highly discretionary) common law Contempt orders [also, in Ontario, RCP R60 'Enforcement of Orders']. Administrative orders (at least in Ontario) piggyback on the same civil court system on the filing of such order in the civil Superior Court [via Statutory Powers Procedure Act (SPPA), s.19].
My present statutory interpretation of this phrasing is that (at least in Ontario) since RCP 60.11 ['Contempt Orders'] ultimately governs most enforcement orders "other than the payment of money", then most order enforcement - both court and tribunal - is procedurally governed by it. And while most of the substantive case dicta addresses common law 'contempt doctrine', the CCC s.127 phrasing relates to the procedures already used [ie. "unless a punishment or other mode of proceeding is expressly provided by law"], which would (logically in turn) adopt the common law contempt doctrine.
The upshot (again, at lease in Ontario civil and administrative law) is that CCC s.127 would have little to no default application to Ontario court and tribunal orders. I have not researched the broader federal context, but on initial glance the Federal Court Rules [at FCR s.467 'Contempt Orders - Right to a hearing'] serve the same procedural role of R60.11 in Ontario as thus the result may be the same.
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