Terms of Use

Last updated: October 29, 2026.

These terms apply when you use crimecanada.ca, Crime Canada's news, guides and legal information site. In short, our pages are general public information, not legal advice, and people named in the news are presumed innocent. You may quote and cite us with a link, and you agree to use the site lawfully and respectfully.

1. About these terms

Crime Canada is an independent Canadian public-information project. It is not a police service, not a government body and not a law firm. By using crimecanada.ca, including its pages, newsletter, RSS feed, phone line and forms, you accept these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the site.

Our statistics site has its own terms page. Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information and forms part of these terms.

2. Not an emergency service

If you or someone else is in danger, call 911. For police help that is not an emergency, call your local police non-emergency line. Our phone line (+1 778 900 3008) and our forms are not emergency services.

We do not forward tips to police. To share information about a crime anonymously, contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (1-800-222-8477) or through Canadian Crime Stoppers. Never put yourself at risk to get information.

3. General information, not legal advice

Our news, guides to Criminal Code offences, “what happens next” guides for people charged, data articles and criminal lawyer information pages explain how the law and the justice system generally work. They are not legal advice about your situation. The law changes, and the outcome of any case depends on its own facts.

If you are charged with an offence or under investigation, speak with a lawyer licensed in your province or territory. Your provincial or territorial legal aid plan or law society may be able to help you find one. Our legal resources page lists places to start, and the Criminal Code itself is on the Justice Laws website.

4. Consultation requests and no lawyer-client relationship

• Crime Canada is not a law firm, gives no legal advice, does not recommend a particular firm and has no partner firm.
• Sending a request through our free consultation form, a form on a legal page or our phone line does not create a lawyer-client relationship with Crime Canada or with any lawyer.
• Your request may be passed to an independent criminal lawyer only with your consent, so that the lawyer can contact you. Any arrangement you make is between you and that lawyer.
• A lawyer-client relationship begins only when a lawyer agrees to act for you. Keep your description short and leave out details you would not want to share before speaking with a lawyer.

5. Accuracy of news and data

Each news article is based on one official police release and links to the original. Our statistics come from Statistics Canada's police-reported crime data. We work to report accurately, but we cannot guarantee that every page is complete, current or free of errors.

• Police can update a release after we publish it. Charges can be changed, stayed or withdrawn, and cases can end in an acquittal.
• We mark missing and wanted appeals as found, located or arrested when police update them, but the police service's own release is the official record.
• Crime statistics count only crimes reported to and recorded by police. Statistics Canada revises its data, and rates for small populations can swing from year to year.
• Older articles from the site's previous version (2025-2026) are kept with their dates and may not reflect later developments.

Check the original source before relying on our pages for an important decision or for publication. Our data methodology and corrections and data accuracy policy explain more. To report an error, use the “Report a problem” form on any article or write to [email protected].

6. People in the news are presumed innocent

Under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, anyone charged with an offence is presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law. A charge is an allegation. Being arrested, charged or named in a wanted appeal is not proof of guilt.

We use neutral, attributed wording such as “police say” and “is charged with”. We do not name youths or victims who are not named by police, and we respect publication bans. See our editorial policy.

If you see a person named in a wanted appeal, do not approach them. Call 911 or your local police.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• use the site for any unlawful purpose, or to harass, threaten, defame, stalk or expose anyone, including people in the news, victims and their families;
• share names or details in breach of a publication ban or of the Youth Criminal Justice Act;
• send false or misleading information, spam, or another person's personal information without the right to do so through our forms or phone line;
• try to get around our rate limits, spam traps or security measures, gain unauthorized access, or interfere with the site or its servers;
• upload or send malware or other harmful code;
• crawl or download the site at a rate that places an unreasonable load on it;
• pretend to be Crime Canada, claim to be affiliated with us, or present our pages as official police or government statements.

We may refuse or delete submissions, and block access, that break these terms.

8. Reuse, quotation and citation

You may quote and cite our statistics pages and articles with a link to the page you use. A good citation names Crime Canada, gives the page title and link, and states the data year or the date you viewed the page.

• Statistics Canada data are used under the Statistics Canada Open Licence. When you reuse the underlying figures, credit Statistics Canada as well.
• Police releases belong to their police services, and photos in missing and wanted appeals come from the police release itself. Contact the police service about reusing them.
• Do not present our content as your own, change a quotation in a way that alters its meaning, or remove the attribution of an allegation to police.

Our original text, guides and tables remain protected by copyright, except where these terms or the law allow their use. For larger reuse, see our data licensing page or write to us.

9. Search engines and AI assistants

Search engines and AI assistants are welcome. Our robots.txt file allows all crawlers and declares “Content-Signal: search=yes, ai-input=yes, ai-train=yes”. We also publish /llms.txt and an MCP server for AI agents.

We ask that AI tools, and the people who use them:

• link to the page the information comes from;
• keep the presumption of innocence and present charges as allegations, not facts;
• state the data year when quoting statistics;
• crawl at a reasonable rate.

Answers produced by AI tools can be wrong or out of date. Check the page itself before relying on them.

10. Advertising and sponsorship

We publish no sponsored articles, and the site shows no ads at present. Our criminal lawyer information pages are general information, not a recommendation of any firm. See our advertising and sponsorship page.

11. Third-party links

We link to police services, Statistics Canada, courts, government bodies and other outside sites. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, availability or privacy practices. Your use of them is governed by their own terms.

12. Disclaimer and limitation of liability

The site is provided “as is” and “as available”. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Crime Canada and its service providers are not liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, arising from your use of the site, your reliance on its content, or your inability to use it. We do not promise that the site will always be available or free of errors.

Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under consumer protection or other laws that cannot be excluded by contract, including in Quebec. See also our disclaimer.

13. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, if you break these terms or the law while using the site and someone makes a claim against Crime Canada as a result, you agree to cover the resulting losses and reasonable legal costs.

14. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Disputes will be heard by the courts of British Columbia, subject to any right you have under the law of your province or territory to bring proceedings where you live.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. When we do, we change the “Last updated” date at the top of this page. Using the site after a change means you accept the updated terms.

If any part of these terms is found invalid, the rest stays in effect. Not enforcing a term at one time does not mean we give up the right to enforce it later.

16. Contact

• Email: [email protected]
• Phone and text: +1 778 900 3008, answered in English or French by our phone service, which takes your details and a short summary and emails them to us. It is not an emergency line.
• Mail: North Vancouver, BC V7M 2J7

You can also reach us through our contact and tip form. To learn more about how the site works, see About Crime Canada and our trust page.