Glossary
In Income Assistance, Canada Pension Plan (CPP)
Canada Pension Plan (CPP) legislation says that a common-law partner is someone you’ve lived with in a conjugal or marriage-like relationship for at least one year. Your partner does not have to be the same sex as you.
To prove that you’re in a common-law relationship, or that you and your spouse lived in a common-law relationship before you got married, you have to fill out the:
In Immigration Law, Refugee Law
A common-law partner is someone who you’ve lived with, for at least one year, in a conjugal or marriage-like relationship. It does not matter what their sex or gender is.
Common-law also means a conjugal partner that you’ve lived with for less than a year if you could not live together because it was against the law, or because you’d be persecuted.
Common-law is defined differently in other areas of the law, like family law.
In Family Law
A common-law relationship is one where partners of the same or opposite sex live together in a marriage-like relationship, without being married. This is sometimes called “cohabiting”. In family law, you don’t have to live together for a certain amount of time to be in a common-law relationship. But the law gives different rights to common-law partners depending on how long they’ve lived together or whether they have a child together.
People who get Ontario Works (OW) assistance may have to do community placements.
Community placements are sometimes called “community participation” or “voluntary placement”.
People in community placements work at non-profit, community, or public organizations. Examples of these types of organizations are schools, daycare centres, food banks, libraries, and community centres.
In Health and Disability, Mental health
A Community Treatment Order (CTO) is an official order from a doctor that allows a person who has a serious mental disorder to be treated for it while living at home. Without a CTO, that person would be forced to live in a psychiatric facility and be treated there.
In Criminal Law
This is a person who alleges that they are the victim of a criminal offence. For example, in an assault case, the complainant is the person who says they were assaulted.
In Criminal Law
A conditional discharge is a type of sentence. A conditional discharge means that the court found you guilty, but you do not get a criminal record. Part of your sentence will include probation for up to 3 years. Your probation will require you to follow specific conditions. If you do not, you might get a criminal record and a tougher sentence or be charged with another criminal offence. A sentence is the punishment that the court gives you if you’re found guilty. Conditional discharges are automatically removed from the Canadian Police Information Centre computer system 3 years after the court’s decision.
In Criminal Law
A conditional sentence is a type of sentence that you might get if you’re convicted of a crime. If you get a conditional sentence, you do not go to jail. Instead, you serve time in the community on house arrest.
Getting a conditional sentence means that you do not serve your sentence in custody, for example, in jail. You serve your sentence in the community and there are strict conditions that you must follow. Some people call this “house arrest”.
A confirmation of permanent residence is the document that proves you’re a permanent resident. You get this document when you land in Canada as a permanent resident. People who became permanent residents before July 2002 got a document called a record of landing.