In Canada it is illegal to engage in certain types of threatening activity. Uttering threats charges are a very common part of a Toronto criminal lawyer’s trial practice.
 

It is an offence to knowingly utter, convey or cause a person to receive a threat: to cause death or bodily harm to any person; to burn, destroy or damage real or personal property; or to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that is the property of any person.
 

In an uttering threats case the prosecution will have to prove that: the accused uttered or conveyed a threat to another person to cause death or bodily harm to any person. To be criminally liable for “uttering a threat” it is not necessary for the intended victim to be aware of the threat. Telling someone that you intend to kill their friend could be the basis for an uttering threat charge.

The threat can be conveyed in any manner which means personally by voice, email, Facebook message, telephone, etc. Gestures can also potentially be construed as illegal threats (ie. Making a gun pointing gesture at someone depending on the context and circumstances could be considered as a threat for criminal purposes). A threat can be simply defined as a commonly used word with a generally accepted meaning that would considered a declaration of hostile intent or a determination to inflict punishment, loss, pain, injury to another person.

Not every statement of hostile intent, however, represents a threat. A distinction must be drawn between a threat and a promise, and the mere observation that particularly unpleasant events will occur. For example, the phrase "you will die", could either represent a threat or merely an accurate reflection on another's mortality.

Other examples of things that may not be threats:

In one case, an accused had hit his wife, and told her that he had imagined hitting her across her windpipe, thereby killing her, and that she was lucky that he had only punched her on the leg. The judge found that the words were not used in terms of a hostile intention to cause anything to occur, and therefore were not a threat.

Also, words spoken in jest or in the context of a joke are not a threat under Canadian law. This does NOT mean that people don’t get criminally charged for a joke and then have to defend their conduct at trial. 

Potential Defences: