Restraining Orders in Canada: The Provincial, Territorial, and Federal Ladder Explained

"Restraining order" is the term people searching from a US background look for, but Canada has no single national restraining order law; what actually exists is a ladder of provincial, territorial, and federal tools, so which instrument applies to you depends entirely on where you live and how urgent your situation is.

Information last verified on 2026-08-15. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

If You Are in Danger Right Now

Call 911. Every instrument described on this page, a provincial emergency order, a family court restraining order, a federal peace bond, or a criminal no contact condition, works the same way: it is a legal document that becomes enforceable once granted, and police act on it after someone breaks it, not before. None of them is a physical barrier that stops a person from showing up at your door. If you already have an order in place and it is violated, the standard advice across every jurisdiction covered on this site is the same: call the police and report the breach. Nothing on this page is a substitute for getting to safety first.

"Restraining Order" Is an American Term, Not a Canadian One

Searching "restraining order Canada" assumes Canada has one instrument by that name, the way many US states do. It does not. Canada's own Department of Justice makes this explicit in its current legal-adviser guidance: "Depending on your province or territory, civil protection/restraining orders can be sought under family law or family violence legislation." The same guidance adds a second point that matters just as much: "While protection/restraining orders are civil matters, a breach can result in charges for a provincial/territorial or criminal offence, depending on the jurisdiction." In other words, both which tool exists and how a breach is punished vary by where you are, and neither is standardized nationally. This page exists to translate the American search term into the actual Canadian tool for your specific province, territory, or federal situation.

The Ladder: Four Layers of Protection

Canada's protection tools stack into four layers, from fastest and narrowest to slower and broader.

Layer one: a provincial or territorial emergency order. Every province and territory except Ontario runs its own emergency civil order, granted the same day or within about 24 hours, usually without notifying the other person first, by a justice of the peace, an adjudicator, or a judge depending on the jurisdiction. This is the fastest layer and the one most people searching "restraining order" actually need.

Layer two: a family court restraining, protection, prevention, or assistance order. A slower, broader civil process, heard with notice to the other side, that can add remedies an emergency order cannot, such as monetary compensation, property arrangements, or a longer duration.

Layer three: a federal Criminal Code peace bond. Sections 810, 810.1, and 810.2 create a criminal court process, started through a report to police rather than a family court application, and available against any person regardless of relationship, not just a family member or partner. It runs through Provincial Court's criminal division, not family court, and it does not require the applicant and respondent to have any prior relationship at all. This page does not re-explain the peace bond mechanism in depth; see peace bonds in Canada for the full breakdown of who can apply, the reasonable-grounds standard, the up-to-12-month or up-to-2-year recognizance periods, and what happens if someone refuses to sign.

Layer four: criminal no contact conditions. These only arise once someone has actually been charged with or convicted of a separate criminal offence; they are conditions attached to bail, probation, or a sentence, described in the federal section below, and they run on their own track independent of the civil orders in layers one and two.

What Your Province or Territory Calls It: A 13-Jurisdiction Comparison

The instrument names below are exactly as each jurisdiction's own governing statute uses them; they are not interchangeable, and using the wrong name when searching for help can send you to the wrong government page.

Fees Vary Just as Much as Names Do

Several jurisdictions confirmed their emergency order is free to apply for: British Columbia's Provincial Court route, Ontario's restraining order under either section, Manitoba's protection order, Nova Scotia's EPO (no fee provision found in the Act or its regulations), New Brunswick's EIO (no fee found in a full text search of the Act and its Regulation), and Prince Edward Island's EPO (the applicant pays nothing; the court can shift fees onto the respondent instead). British Columbia's Supreme Court route costs $80 if a case is already open there, or $280 if not, as of February 3, 2025. Two jurisdictions are genuinely unresolved rather than confirmed either way: Alberta's official application booklet does not state a fee for the King's Bench protection order application itself, and Quebec's current court fee regulation does not clearly resolve whether its rebuilt protection order carries a fee, since the tool moved out of the general injunction category that used to be taxed. Do not assume free in either of those two cases; confirm with the court directly.

How a Breach Is Punished Also Varies by Jurisdiction

This is one of the sharpest differences in the whole ladder. Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador each wrote their own escalating penalty scale directly into their family violence statute, so a breach in those provinces is prosecuted under that province's own Act, not the Criminal Code. Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba took the opposite approach: their restraining, protection, or prevention orders carry no penalty clause of their own, so a breach falls to the Criminal Code's general backstop, section 127, disobeying a lawful court order, an offence punishable by up to two years in prison unless some more specific provision applies instead. British Columbia's own official materials confirm a breach can lead to arrest and criminal charges but do not name a specific Criminal Code section; treat any claim naming "section 127" for a BC breach as an inference, not a confirmed fact, since no BC government source states it outright. Quebec's rebuilt protection order expressly removes contempt of court as the enforcement route and tells applicants a violation is a criminal matter to report to police; section 127 is the most likely mechanism there too, reasoned from the statute's structure rather than confirmed by a Quebec specific source. Nunavut is the outlier: a full search of its Act found no standalone offence for simply disobeying an order's terms at all. Instead, police have a warrantless arrest power for a suspected breach, with separate offences only for obstruction and for breaching a publication ban, a structural difference that is itself an inference from the absence of a bare breach offence in the Act's text, not an independently confirmed enforcement pathway. A peace bond breach is a different mechanism entirely from all of the above: it is prosecuted under Criminal Code section 811, not section 127, and carries up to 4 years in prison.

The Federal Layer That Applies Everywhere

The tools above are provincial and territorial. Underneath and alongside every one of them sits a federal layer that applies no matter where you live in Canada.

Peace Bonds: The Criminal Court Backstop Available Against Anyone

Criminal Code sections 810, 810.1, and 810.2 create the peace bond, a criminal court recognizance available to anyone with reasonable grounds to fear injury to themselves, their property, or, under the two extended sections, fear of a sexual offence against a person under 16 or fear of a serious personal injury offence. Unlike every provincial and territorial tool above, a peace bond does not require any family, spousal, or dating relationship between the applicant and the person they fear. It starts with a report to police rather than a family court filing, and its own breach provision, section 811, is separate from and harsher than the general section 127 backstop used for most civil order breaches. The full mechanism, including the reasonable-grounds standard, the up-to-12-month or up-to-2-year recognizance periods, background-check visibility, and what happens if someone refuses to sign, is covered on peace bonds in Canada; this page does not repeat that detail.

Bail, Probation, and the Criminal Code's General Backstop

Once someone is actually charged with a separate criminal offence, a third federal layer attaches independent of any civil order. Under section 515, a justice releasing an accused pending trial can attach conditions including abstaining from communicating with a victim or witness and abstaining from going to a specified place. Critically, section 515(4.1) makes a firearms or weapons prohibition condition mandatory, not merely available, when the accused is charged with an offence involving violence, criminal harassment, intimidation of a justice system participant, a weapons involved offence, a terrorism offence, or a specified drug offence, unless the justice records written reasons for not imposing it (this list follows the statute's own categories and is not exhaustive of every triggering circumstance). Under section 732.1, a probation order carries the same no contact and no go template as an optional condition, section 732.1(3)(a.1), once someone has actually been sentenced. And underneath both of those, section 127 is the general offence of disobeying a lawful court order, up to two years in prison, but it is explicitly a backstop: it applies "unless a punishment or other mode of proceeding is expressly provided by law," which is exactly why it yields to peace bond breaches (section 811), release condition breaches (section 145), and any province's own Act specific breach offence, as described in the comparison above.

A Genuinely Federal Protection Order: Reserve Lands Under FHRMIRA

One protection order in Canada is not provincial or territorial at all. The federal Family Homes on Reserves and Matrimonial Interests or Rights Act allows a designated judge to grant an Emergency Protection Order excluding a spouse or common law partner from the family home on reserve, on an urgent basis, for up to 90 days, in situations of family violence. This exists specifically because provincial and territorial family property law generally does not apply on reserve land, a gap this Act was created to fill. Once granted, the order is forwarded to the provincial court for review within 3 working days, the same reviewbuilt-in structure used by several of the territorial Acts described above, and there is a 21-day window to apply to vary or revoke it. A follow-on Exclusive Occupation Order under section 20 can extend the arrangement further, with its own list of factors similar to the "interests of persons residing in the home" language used in some territorial Acts.

The Divorce Act's Family Violence Definition

Separately from any protection order, the federal Divorce Act's own definition of family violence, at section 2(1), shapes how a family court weighs safety once a divorce or parenting matter is before it. That definition expressly includes a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour, and it applies without requiring a criminal conviction or the criminal standard of proof. For how that plays into custody and parenting decisions specifically, see parenting time and decision-making, and for the criminal-law side of family violence generally, see domestic violence laws in Canada.

Will a Protection Order Follow You Across Provinces? The ULCC Model Act

A genuine national mechanism for recognizing a civil protection order across provincial lines exists, but it is easy to overstate. The Uniform Law Conference of Canada's Uniform Enforcement of Canadian Judgments Act (2023) defines a "Canadian civil protection order" broadly enough to cover both a provincial family violence order and a Criminal Code peace bond, and it creates a fast track where a recognized order is deemed to be an order of the receiving court and directly enforceable by local police, with no registration required. The catch: this is a uniform model act published by the ULCC. It has no legal force anywhere until an individual province or territory enacts its own statute adopting it. Whether every province has actually done so was not independently verified jurisdiction by jurisdiction; do not state "Canada has adopted uniform protection order recognition" as settled fact. How an individual province or territory actually treats an out-of-province civil protection order also varies, and this page did not independently confirm any specific province's recognition statute against primary source text this session, so no particular statute is asserted here for any jurisdiction. If you are moving between provinces or territories, do not assume your existing order transfers automatically or on any set timeline; contact the destination province's or territory's victim services office or courts directly and ask what recognition, if any, applies before you rely on it. Whatever the mechanism, it is Canada-only; nothing described on this page extends to a US or other foreign order.

Will Canada Recognize a US Restraining Order?

No province's or territory's official materials, across every jurisdiction covered on this site, describe a mechanism for recognizing or enforcing a restraining order issued by a court in the United States or any other country. Whatever recognition mechanism an individual province may have for an out-of-province order, discussed above, is limited to other Canadian provinces and territories, not foreign orders. The ULCC's model act, discussed above, defines a "Canadian civil protection order," not a foreign one. If you are moving to Canada from the United States with an existing restraining order, do not assume it carries over; the honest answer, based on what every provincial and territorial government source actually says, is that no jurisdiction covered here describes a path for that specific situation. A new application under the province or territory you are moving to would be the realistic route, not an automatic transfer of the US order.

Province-by-Province Guides

Each of the following covers its own jurisdiction's instrument names, eligibility, application process, fees, duration, and breach consequences in full detail.

• Ontario
• British Columbia
• Alberta
• Saskatchewan
• Manitoba
• Quebec
• Nova Scotia
• New Brunswick
• Prince Edward Island
• Newfoundland and Labrador
• Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut

Related Topics

A protection order addresses safety; it does not resolve the underlying family law questions on its own. If the relationship is ending, see divorce in Canada or, for couples who were not married, separation agreements in Canada and the national common-law relationships overview. Where children are involved, a protection order can run alongside, but does not replace, a parenting time and decision-making arrangement. For the criminal-law side of family and intimate-partner violence, see domestic violence laws in Canada, and for the federal peace bond mechanism on its own, see peace bonds in Canada.

Disclaimer

This article is informational only and is not legal advice. Several points across this page are genuinely hedged rather than confirmed: the actual provincial and territorial adoption status of the ULCC's uniform protection order enforcement mechanism was not independently verified jurisdiction by jurisdiction; whether and how any specific province or territory recognizes an out-of-province civil protection order was also not independently confirmed against primary statute text, so no particular recognition statute is asserted for any jurisdiction on this page; British Columbia's specific breach section, Quebec's specific breach section, and Nunavut's post-2013 breach structure are reasoned inferences, not directly confirmed citations; Alberta's own general "Restraining Order" outside PAFVA has an unconfirmed statutory basis; and Nunavut's entire legal picture rests on a consolidation current only to February 5, 2013. Ontario's 2025 amendment broadening who may apply for a restraining order has passed but is not yet in force. Laws, fees, and procedures change; confirm current requirements with the relevant province, territory, or a licensed lawyer before relying on this page. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. Most of the province-by-province guides linked above include that jurisdiction's specific victim-services contact information; where one is not yet listed, contact that province's or territory's victim services office or the police directly.