In contrast to the field of civil law and procedure, this branch is unified throughout the country, since, from 1774, the application of English criminal law was extended to Quebec, and the Constitutional Act of 1867 established that questions of criminal law and procedure were the exclusive domain of the federation. The model for Canada’s first Criminal Code of 1892 was the Criminal Code for England, drafted by the great criminologist J. Stephen (it was laid before the British Parliament in 1878 but never became law). The Criminal Code of 1892 was an orderly statement of English and Canadian common law related to the main institutions of the General Part of the Criminal Law and types of crimes (liability for some crimes after the adoption of the Code was determined by the rules of common law, which were not included in it). In 1955 a new Penal Code was issued, which was the result of a fundamental revision of the previous legislation, taking into account the experience of its application by the courts and a comparative analysis of the codes of other states, including the American states. The 1955 CC prohibited the application of criminal penalties for acts not listed in it, but provided only by the common law (the only exception was contempt of court). It did, however, permit the use of common law rules to interpret and apply the rules of the Code.

The Code does not have the formal division of criminal acts into felonies and misdemeanors, which remained in England until 1967 as a remnant of the criminal law of the XVIII century. However, it retained corporal punishment (whipping) for armed robbery, some crimes against the person and sexual crimes. It provides for very severe measures, including long terms of imprisonment, for most crimes, and, for those found to be “habitual criminals” or “sexual psychopaths,” preventive indefinite imprisonment.

Along with the substantive criminal law, the Code includes rules of criminal procedure, including those relating to the determination of the jurisdiction of the courts. A radical revision is in preparation.

In Canadian law, the Canadian Evidence Act (the “Witness and Evidence Act”) of 1927, as subsequently amended, also plays a significant role in regulating not only criminal but also civil proceedings. The death penalty has been abolished in peacetime since 1976, in fact the last execution was carried out in 1962.