Chief Angela Levasseur of the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation in northern Manitoba has a big knife problem. Machetes – foot-long, bush-clearing knives popular with Canadian outdoorsmen – have become the weapon of choice for young gang members terrorizing the 3,500-member reserve she oversees as its elected chief.
“Over the last two years we have seen a really high level of machete crimes committed by youth and on youth in our community,” she says in an interview from her office in Nelson House, 850 km northwest of Winnipeg. “I have personally witnessed horrifying injuries related to machete assaults on my citizens. Sometimes I couldn’t figure out how they survived – how do you get hit in the head with a machete and live?”

In one incident this past June, Levasseur recounts that a woman in her mid-20s intervened when she saw two teenaged boys threatening a young girl. “They then turned around and started attacking her,” Levasseur explains in horror. One thug pulled a machete out from under his jacket and struck the young woman several times, leaving her with a bloody gash above her left eyebrow that required medical attention. “What was really upsetting to me,” says Levasseur, “is that here was someone trying to help a child and she ended up taking a machete to the head. That creates fear in people. Others may now think twice before helping out because of it.” Another attack a few weeks later saw two male residents hospitalized with serious machete wounds, one of whom needed 50 staples.
The violence is not limited to remote northern communities. Winnipeg is also experiencing a troubling rash of machete crimes, often at the hands of young offenders. In March, a 19-year-old woman waiting at a suburban bus stop was attacked and robbed of her cellphone by a 13-year-old boy with a machete, leaving her with “life-altering injuries” according to the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS). During one troubling week in October, two Winnipeg schools and a youth drop-in centre experienced three machete-related incidents, including an attack in which two students had to use their backpacks to fend off thrusts from a 17-year old girl wielding a large knife. And last month, a WPS officer was stabbed in the neck with an unidentified “edged weapon” by Jordan Charlie, a 24-year-old Iqaluit man with a long record of violent knife crimes; police shot Charlie dead at the scene.
According to the WPS, 1,637 violent crimes involving knives of all sizes were reported in the city last year, up by 22 percent over 2022 and far exceeding the five-year average. And while there’s no data on crimes committed specifically by machetes, the large, threatening-looking knives have become a main point of concern. “There are so many machete-related serious injuries,” says Levasseur wearily. “It’s just too easy for anyone to possess a machete.” Starting in the new year, that’s going to change in Manitoba.
The Long-Bladed Weapon Control Act
In November Premier Wab Kinew’s NDP government passed Canada’s first machete law. The Long-Bladed Weapon Control Act regulates the sale of any knife with a blade at least 30 cm long in an effort to limit their use in gang violence. “Our government is committed to getting tough on crime and this new legislation [will] help keep communities safer by restricting access to weapons such as machetes, knives and swords,” Manitoba’s Minister of Justice, Matt Wiebe, said in announcing the bill. The law will take effect in the new year, once regulations providing a more detailed description of what constitutes a “long-bladed weapon” have been approved.
“This legislation is long overdue,” says Levasseur, whose advocacy played a key role in pushing the provincial government to take action. It also has the support of law enforcement. WPS Deputy Chief Scot Halley, who also serves as president of the Manitoba Association of Chiefs of Police, said in a press release that his organization “strongly supports provincial legislation that restricts the purchase of long-bladed machetes or knives by those who are acquiring them with the intent to use for an unlawful or violent purpose.”
Despite the acclaim and national precedent-setting, however, on closer inspection Manitoba’s crack-down on big knives seems disarmingly modest. It does just three things: purchasers of machetes will be required to show photo ID, retailers must keep a record of all machete sales for at least two years, and sales will be restricted to those 18-years-old and over. While the law is written in a way that allows for the addition of further restrictions, as it stands now it will still be perfectly legal for an 18-year-old to buy every machete on the shelves of his local Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire stores and pass them out to fellow gang members. Tougher measures, such as banning machetes altogether, is a federal responsibility under the Criminal Code of Canada. The most any province can do is regulate their sale.
Many large chef’s knives have blades longer than 30 cm. Will the Victorinox 12-inch Chef’s Knife with Rosewood Handle ($118 plus tax and shipping online) be subject to the new law?
“Making laws for knives is very difficult,” observes Yvon Dandurand, a professor emeritus of criminology at the University of Fraser Valley (UFV) in British Columbia. Beyond the constitutional issues, focusing on the length of a blade, as Manitoba does, is fraught with practical problems. “You can kill someone with any ordinary kitchen knife,” says Dandurand in an interview, pointing out that a large proportion of knife crimes are domestic assaults in which the attacker simply grabs the nearest sharp object. “And large knives have all sorts of legitimate and useful purposes,” he adds, “from harvesting to hunting to cooking.”
Many chef’s knives, Dandurand points out, have blades longer than 30 cm. Will the Victorinox 12-inch Chef’s Knife with Rosewood Handle ($118 plus tax and shipping online) be subject to the new law? Beyond the obvious bother for cooks, Dandurand also worries about the not-so-insignificant enforcement burdens the new rules will place on small businesses that must soon track sales and examine photo ID.
While teenager gangs are drawn to knives because they are cheap and easy to get, putting an age limit on sales is unlikely to have a noticeable impact on crime, Dandurand worries. Beyond the fact 18-year-olds will still have unencumbered access, the ubiquity of knives of all shapes and lengths in Canadian kitchens, backyard sheds, tackle boxes and junk drawers means anyone denied access at a store can simply steal one. He also points to several TV shows that celebrate backyard blacksmiths who make their own – entirely unregulated and often quite imposing – knives or swords as further evidence of the vast difficulties in cracking down on sharp weapons in any comprehensive way.
Yet there is no denying the fear a spate of unpredictable knife violence can cause in the general public, he admits. Distinct from shootings, stabbings require the attacker to be within an arm’s-length of his or her victim. “There are no ‘drive-by’ knifings,” Dandurand quips. All knife violence is intentional, and therefore deeply personal. This fact, combined with the intimidating appearance of big knives such as machetes, can be terrifying for many people. In response, he observes the new law “creates the impression that a government is doing something.”
What knives are legal in Canada?
In Canada, certain knives are listed as prohibited weapons under the Criminal Code, including switchblades, butterfly knives, and any knife that opens automatically by gravity, centrifugal force or a spring-loaded mechanism. Under federal law, it is a crime to own, sell, import, or carry any prohibited weapon. Knives that are not classified as prohibited weapons are legal in Canada.
“It’s gotta stop”
Despite the many obvious obstacles involved in regulating knives, discussing such policies has long been popular with Canadian politicians. In the 1950s, concern about young hoodlums and their penchant for deadly blades led countries around the world to ban switchblades, butterfly knives, push daggers and other easily-hidden edged weapons. As Ian Runkle, an Edmonton criminal defence lawyer and star of the popular Runkle of the Bailey YouTube series, points out, these bans remain on the books in Canada even as knives that technically meet the definition of a switchblade – a blade that flips out at the push of a button – are readily available at many Canadian hardware stores. (As he explains in this video.) It is also illegal in Canada “to carry anything concealed that is intended to be used as a weapon,” he explains. However, the onus is on the Crown to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person carrying a knife is doing so in a manner “dangerous to the public peace”. In other words, it is generally legal to carry a knife in your pocket or on your belt anywhere in Canada.
An apparent outbreak of knife crime in the early 2000s – including a grotesque beheading on a Greyhound bus outside Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in 2008 – sparked widespread interest in new regulations on sharp objects. Edmonton mayor Stephen Mandel, for example, called for a bylaw banning knives throughout his city. “Way too many people have knives in their pockets, and it’s gotta’ stop,” he said following a spate of stabbings in Alberta’s capital. A private member’s bill introduced in the House of Commons around the same time sought to increase jail sentences for anyone committing a crime with a knife. Both efforts eventually came to naught.
In response to growing public concern about knife violence, in 2010 Statistics Canada produced a detailed study of national trends in knife crime. It found the prevalence of stabbings (including with broken bottles, screwdrivers and scissors as well as knives) was quite stable over time, despite occasional random spikes. Statcan also found that knife crimes were most prevalent in urban Western Canada, particularly Winnipeg, Regina and Edmonton. And that knives are the weapon of choice for young adults. “In general, the use of knives to commit crimes decreases with increasing age,” it reported.
More up-to-date statistics reveal a surprising decline in the relative significance of knife killings, despite all the recent attention. Between 2000 and 2015, among all homicides committed in Canada, the most popular type of murder weapon flipped back and forth between guns and knives. Out of 625 homicides nationwide in 2004, for example, there were 205 fatal stabbings and 173 fatal shootings. Since 2016, however, shootings have solidified their hold on top spot, as the accompanying graph shows, pushing knives firmly down to second place.
While the available evidence suggests no recent trend towards greater knife crime, individual events can quickly become embedded in the public mind. One such example is the horrific massacre on the James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan in June 2022 that saw Myles Sanderson stab to death 11 people on the reserve and in a nearby community. According to Saskatchewan Coroners Service reports, many of his victims died from a single stab wound to the neck or head. While the coroner’s office and local RCMP declined to reveal to C2C Journal the type of knife used in the murders, Levasseur notes that a local Indigenous chief told her Sanderson had taped a machete to his hand to facilitate his rampage. In another terrible incident this past September, a deranged man in downtown Vancouver killed one elderly man and attacked another such that his hand was severed, presumably while armed with a knife long enough to sever a hand with a single swing. Following yet another stabbing last week, a National Post headline declared Vancouver “Canada’s capital of random stabbings”.
‘Just like how gun owners have to safely store their rifles, I think people who buy machetes should have to lock them up as well,’ Levasseur states. Echoing B.C.’s Sharma, she adds, ‘I would fully support an all-out ban on machetes.’
With such incidents in the news, renewed calls for stricter knife laws come as no surprise. Coincident with Manitoba’s efforts, B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma wrote to her federal counterpart in September lamenting “multiple random attacks involving machetes and similar weapons wielded by youth” across the country. Sharma asked Ottawa to consider declaring machetes a “prohibited weapon” under the Criminal Code alongside switchblades, brass knuckles, blowguns and nunchaku. Outlawing their possession would enable police to seize large knives and criminally charge anyone found carrying them.
Demands for further action on machetes are coming from inside Manitoba as well. Building on her success in pushing the provincial NDP government to regulate machete sales, Levasseur is already calling for additional restrictions. “I hope as time goes on it evolves to become even stricter,” she says. Specifically, Levasseur would like the age limit on machete purchases raised to 25. She is also looking for a way to require every machete sold in the province to come with a serial number, which would allow for a central knife registry that tracks knives used in crimes as well as to keep a record of stolen knives. And she wants rules on storing knives.
“Just like how gun owners have to safely store their rifles, I think people who buy machetes should have to lock them up as well,” Levasseur states. Echoing B.C.’s Sharma, she adds, “I would fully support an all-out ban on machetes,” a move that would require federal cooperation. Referring to the James Smith Cree massacre, Levasseur says Ottawa’s participation is crucial: “More needs to be done before more people get killed.”
The Problem with Weapons Laws
Federal laws that track, restrict or possibly ban certain kinds of knives draw obvious comparisons with federal gun laws and trigger a similarly strong, negative reaction among critics. In 2023 the Canadian Sport Shooting Association (CSSA) put out a tongue-in-cheek press release calling on Ottawa to create “a national knife registry” to combat the worrisome number of knife homicides in Canada – a dig at the fact knives can be just as deadly as guns in the hands of a determined criminal.
Given that the new Manitoba law will soon require retailers to keep track of all machetes sales, the idea of a national registry no longer seems entirely satirical. Calling Manitoba’s new law “ludicrous,” CCSA executive director Tony Bernardo observes that “gun control and knife control have a lot in common. They are just feel-good promises that are intended to soothe people worried about crime” with little practical impact. As Bernardo observes in an interview, “There are a million and one things that can kill you dead. The problem is never the tool, it’s the wielder of that tool.”
Are machetes illegal in Canada?
Machetes are not classified as a prohibited weapon in Canada, making them legal to own and carry as tools in all provinces. However, concealing a knife (or other device) that is intended to be used as a weapon can result in criminal charges. Under federal law, the context and intent of a concealed weapon is crucial to determining potential criminal charges.
His organization is well-aware of the disproportionate and lasting impact a single, terrible incident can have on federal weapons legislation. Part of the Justin Trudeau government’s response to the 2020 Nova Scotia massacre that left 22 people dead at the hands of shooter Gabriel Wartman was to prohibit 1,500 different variants of semi-automatic “assault-style rifles” such as the popular AR-15. Last week, Ottawa moved to add even more guns to the list. (Fully automatic rifles have been prohibited in Canada for decades.)
As Bernardo points out, every handgun and rifle used by Wartman was already illegal at the time of the shootings. The only significant outcome of recent bans and other federal action on gun control, he says, is that the 38,000 sport-shooting enthusiasts the CSSA represents now have a much harder time pursuing their preferred hobby. “There are 26 Olympic shooting sports [editor’s note: including both Winter and Summer Olympics] and Canadians can no longer train or compete in a whole bunch of them,” he complains, pointing to handgun events specifically. “We are talking about law-abiding, legitimate, licensed gun owners.”
Runkle, who has taught weapons law at the University of Alberta’s law school, also sees a parallel between the futility of Canadian gun laws and new efforts to regulate knife owners. “The long-gun registry solved no crimes,” he states, referring to an equally intrusive but ultimately quixotic attempt by an earlier Liberal government (that of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien) to locate and register every rifle and shotgun in the country in response to the deadly 1989 École Polytechnique shooting in Montreal.
The controversial, expensive, problem-plagued and ineffectual registry was finally put out of its misery in 2012 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. “Registries don’t work, but the idea keeps coming up again and again,” Runkle complains. The same goes for the prospect of requiring knife owners to lock up their machetes when not in use. “The only people that will affect are ordinary law-abiding homeowners and farmers with knives in their sheds, garages and barns,” he snaps.
The overarching problem with gun laws in Canada, Bernardo and Runkle agree, is that more is never enough. New laws “are always incremental, and subject to creep all the time,” says Bernardo. Runkle similarly refers to a “perpetual treadmill of legislation” in which reactionary but ultimately useless gun laws are followed by further useless gun laws in an effort to fix problems unsolved by the earlier effort.
The UK’s law is essentially a public prohibition on anything other than small folding pocket knives and has led to numerous legal absurdities. This includes a High Court ruling in 2005 that found a harmless butter knife could be considered an offensive weapon.
Despite all this backstory, however, is it realistic to expect that Canada might one day follow Levasseur’s advice and impose the same sort of comprehensive restrictions on knives that gun owners face today? The utility of knives far outweighs that of guns for most people. Every house in the country likely contains at least a few potentially-deadly cutting tools. (The September 11, 2001 hijackers, after all, wielded box cutters.) The prospects for banning, regulating or curtailing their use seem boggling at a purely practical level. Surely no Canadian government would dare go so far. As absurd as that may seem, however, experience in Great Britain reveals what is possible when politicians focus on knives to the exclusion of other more important considerations.
Drop that Butter Knife!
Beginning in the 1980s, Britain has enacted a wide range of progressively stricter laws covering knives of all sorts. Since 1988, for example, public possession of any fixed-blade knife longer than 3 inches has been outlawed unless the bearer has a “good and lawful reason” for carrying it. This places an awkward reverse onus on knife owners, requiring them to prove they don’t intend to commit a crime – a far stricter standard than current Canadian law requiring the Crown to prove bad intent.
The UK law is essentially a public prohibition on anything other than small folding pocket knives and has led to numerous legal absurdities. This includes a High Court ruling in 2005 that found a harmless butter knife could be considered an offensive weapon. (A similar ruling occurred in California in 2018, although American knife owners have more recently used the Second Amendment to defend private knife ownership.) In the 1990s, age limits were slapped on knife purchases and razor blades outside of fixed shaving cartridges were also made illegal. And it is now forbidden to market any knife as “suitable for combat” – even combat knives.
In 2016, the Conservative government of David Cameron kept the trend going with a prohibition on “zombie knives”. These are gruesome-looking machetes inspired by apocalyptic television shows such as The Walking Dead that often come with slogans such as “Head Splitter” etched on the blades. Then in 2022 the short-lived Rishi Sunak Conservative government announced it was also banning “zombie-style” knives.
The UK has imposed a comprehensive ban on fixed-blade knives since the 1980s. In 2016, the UK went even further and banned “zombie knives”, as inspired by television shows such as The Walking Dead. Shown, West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson campaigning against zombie knives in July 2016. (Source of photo: west midlands)
This escalation was necessary because it turned out the earlier zombie knife law only applied to machetes with words actually printed on the blade, a sloppy loophole easily circumvented by machete sellers. The new law makes up for this oversight with an achingly-precise official definition of what constitutes a zombie-style knife, including size, cutting edge style, “tangent of the curve” of the blade and the presence of various grooves, serrations or hooks.
And yet despite all this legislative action against knives, Great Britain still seems to be plagued by knife violence. The British press even has a specific word for a dangerous knife-wielding attacker – knifeman, a term unknown in Canadian media. Putting a point on this fact, in August the lobby group Action On Armed Violence (AOAV) released a report titled “Knife crime on the rise in the UK: analysing the data and exploring solutions.” The data reveals a 7 percent rise in knife violence in 2023 over the previous year and 20 percent growth in robberies involving knives since 2019. “This increase reflects a troubling trend that has reignited national debate, particularly following the tragic deaths of three young girls in Southport,” the report states. In July, 18-year-old British citizen Axel Rudakubana stabbed to death three young participants (aged six, seven and nine) at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, England.
“I don’t think knife crime is going to go away anytime soon,” says Iain Overton, executive director of AOAV, in an interview from his office in London. As necessary background for his prediction, Overton offers a brief history of Britain’s long record of knife violence. The early knife laws of the 1980s, he says, were spurred by concerns about soccer hooliganism involving violent clashes between supporters of rival teams. The ghastly “Chelsea smile” (also known as the “Glasgow smile”) refers to deliberate slash wounds on either cheek that leave a victim with scars reminiscent of a grotesque smile and was a calling card for certain soccer gangs. Before that, there was the famous Peaky Blinders gang in Birmingham with a penchant for smart-looking newsboy caps and (possibly) razor blades.
Overton observes that knife crime in the UK has habitually been the domain of “young men with a lot of time on their hands and a lot of pent-up rage.” Knives are an entry-level weapon with a fearsome reputation that suits this demographic. Today, public concern about violent knife-wielding soccer hooligans has been largely supplanted by concern over immigrants from Africa, and in particular Somalia.
In London and elsewhere, gangs of young black men are often associated with violent street fights and the drug trade, with knives being their weapon of choice. “This presents some really thorny issues in dealing with why these young black men are drawn to violence,” Overton says, with matters of status, culture, poverty and economic opportunity at play. “Some problems are just so enormous that they seem insurmountable,” he laments. “So what does the government do? It says ‘let’s ban knives.’”
Overton’s AOAV is best known for high-profile anti-violence lobbying efforts aimed at encouraging governments to ban weapons of all sorts. Yet the UK’s recent knife law additions are a prohibition too far even for the progressive-minded AOAV. “I absolutely applaud measures to ban the proliferation of IEDs and percussive chemicals. The same goes for gun control and arms trade treaties,” Overton says. “But I cannot support measures to ban zombie knives because I’ve seen no evidence that they will work. This is just performative politics without addressing the real challenges at the root of the issue.”
Can a machete be seized in Ontario?
Machetes are legal in Ontario and can be owned and carried for non-criminal purposes such as clearing brush and gardening. Under the Criminal Code of Canada, however, peace officers are given the authority to make warrantless seizures of any items deemed “a possible danger to the safety of that person or any other person”, including a legally-owned knife.
On a Knife’s Edge
The same sense of cynicism and despair surrounds Manitoba’s new law. Indigenous youth confined to a remote northern reserve with nothing to do and plenty of anger about their situation will inevitably look for ways to rebel and cause public havoc. Knives are simply the easiest means to achieving that end, not the cause of the violence itself. “It is never a ‘knife’ problem. It is always a kids/youth problem,” insists Dandurand, also making reference to Britain’s current fixation with young black men committing knife crimes. “No one really expects these knife laws to have any major impact. But to satisfy the public, you have to adopt policies that show you are taking it seriously.”
It is certainly easy to have sympathy for Levasseur’s situation. Her community is plagued by violent youth gang culture for reasons far beyond her control. But reliable evidence suggests her claim that expansive knife laws will make things better seems mistaken. Decades of knife bans in Britain have done nothing to address gang violence among white soccer fans or black immigrants in that country. The same null outcome can be expected among Indigenous youth in northern Manitoba, or by any other group elsewhere in Canada.
This country’s current bout of machete criminality is not due to knives suddenly becoming bigger, cheaper or more deadly. It’s the result of a variety of social, economic and legal conditions that have led young males to join gangs and engage in criminal activity. While large bush knives may be the weapon of choice today, in their absence, smaller knives will do just as well. As will baseball bats, brass knuckles, vials of acid, sharpened crowbars or anything else with deadly implication. Remember, despite decades of aggressive gun control measures, gun homicides hit an all-time high in Canada in 2022. Criminality lies in the inclination and behaviour of the criminal, not their methods or tools.
Ordinary, safety-minded citizens could someday face a vast array of administrative burdens and costs impeding their ability to cut back troublesome brush, butcher a deer, peel a potato, cut a rope, open a package or any of the other myriad and necessary tasks knives do on a daily basis.
It is worth noting that Levasseur has a few other, more practical, ideas on how to fix the violence problem in her community. Foremost among these are tougher penalties for lawbreakers. “Catch-and-release really doesn’t work,” the chief says bluntly, referring to the federal Liberals’ much-derided justice reforms that have made it more difficult to keep violent criminals in jail. “There is no deterrent effect, especially for young offenders. They commit serious crimes, get charged, get released, get charged, get released,” she says. “It is frustrating for law enforcement and First Nations leadership.”
It is good solid advice that Ottawa would be well-advised to heed, even as Lavasseur dutifully laments the large numbers of Indigenous people in jail. Also of note, she has a tool at her disposal that other governments lack: she has banished some violent offenders from her community permanently, forcing them to live in nearby Thompson or farther-off in Winnipeg. A greater focus on law enforcement and the legal system, instead of specific weapons, is a far more promising path.
Yet with a national precedent being set in Manitoba, the prospect of problematic new restrictions loom over all law-abiding Canadians like the proverbial Sword of Damocles (or perhaps, more accurately, like a deadly butter knife). Regardless of the effect on crime, ordinary, safety-minded citizens could someday face a vast array of administrative burdens and costs impeding their ability to cut back troublesome brush, butcher a deer, peel a potato, cut a rope, open a package or any of the other myriad and necessary tasks knives do on an everyday basis. The same goes for businesses that sell legal and useful knives.
As lawyer Runkle observes, Manitoba’s new law “will do nothing for public safety, but it will make life more annoying and inconvenient.” In what could be considered a peek into the future, Runkle notes his home city of Edmonton recently banned the sale of machetes in corner stores, “So now if you want to buy a knife, you have to walk a few blocks more to Home Depot.”
And for politicians seduced by the idea that doubling down on knife laws offers a popular and easy solution to a variety of much-larger and more-vexing social ills, UFV criminologist Dandurand has a final warning. “Tread carefully,” he says. “This has the possibility of becoming a totally useless and very divisive public policy. There are Canadians who will say ‘don’t touch my knife’ the same way others might say ‘don’t touch my gun.’ It could be seen as a symbol of freedom.” Never bring a knife to a gun fight, the old adage goes. But knife fights can be plenty dangerous all on their own.
Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor of C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.
Source of main image: fineartamerica.