Is Spitting on someone considered an assault in Ontario?

Is spitting on someone considered to be an assault in Canada under our Criminal Code? That’s a great question. Well, first of all, under Section 265 of the Criminal Code, any intentional application of force on someone else without their consent is an assault. This by definition, spitting is definitely an assault. And this becomes particularly concerning or vexatious or pernicious, whatever word you want to use, especially during the COVID pandemic because there was a lot of these incidents where people were threatening to spit on someone or threaten to cough or someone. Coughing by the way intentionally on someone that’s an intentional application of force as well. It’s a really, I mean, a lot of people would prefer to be almost punched in the face rather than spit on. It’s a very disrespectful offence, especially if someone’s got a disease and they’re threatening to spit on you or cough or they had COVID. It happened a lot and this happened a fair amount to the police and other people during the pandemic. So it became quite concerning. And look at it this way, under the Criminal Code under Section 266 if the Crown elects summarily a person could face up to a two year plus a day sentence, or up to $5,000 fine. Now, would someone really face a jail term for spitting? Well, you could if you have COVID and you’re doing this in this context of intentionally coughing or spitting on someone, but in most instances this is considered on the more minor end of the scale. You might even avoid a criminal record. Obviously, tempers got flared, but look at it this way, if you spit on someone you can appreciate it’s not the nice thing to do and you can appreciate a pretty severe reaction. A lot of people would feel very disrespected and start punching you or attacking you back. It became very more prevalent during COVID. I recall reading a lot of articles about it. I recall a police officer or many police officers who were split on or threatening to be coughed on and this was going on. So, the short answer yes, coughing and spitting intentionally on someone is an intentional application of force and there’s no question that a charge is getting laid and the Crowns were taking these types of charges seriously in terms of disrespect towards people and in terms of potentially someone having a disease that they’re intentionally spreading. But that intent it would have been proven. I mean, the person could perceive this spitting by saying, Yeah, I’ve got COVID I’m going to do this and it turns out they had COVID. Well, that’s pretty concerning, isn’t it or coughing as well or some other communicable disease.
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