Short answer. No, unless the date is a material ingredient of the offence. Rule 110, Section 11 says it is not necessary to state in the complaint or information the precise date the offense was committed; it is enough to allege a date as near as possible to the actual date of commission.
What the law says
It is not necessary to state in the complaint or information the precise date the offense was committed except when it is a material ingredient of the offense. The offense may be alleged to have been committed on a date as near as possible to the actual date of its commission.
Rule 110, Section 11 — Date of commission of the offense. Read the full provision →
The rule and its logic
The section is short: It is not necessary to state in the complaint or information the precise date the offense was committed except when it is a material ingredient of the offense. The offense may be alleged to have been committed on a date as near as possible to the actual date of its commission. The logic is that a charge exists to tell the accused what act is being prosecuted — what was allegedly done, by whom, against whom. For most offences the calendar date identifies the incident but does not define the crime, so the law does not demand a precision that witnesses and records often cannot supply.
When the date is a material ingredient
The exception applies where time is part of what makes the conduct criminal — where the law defining the offence attaches significance to when the act was done, so that the same act on a different date would be a different offence or no offence at all. In that situation the date is not background detail; it is an element the prosecution must allege and prove like any other. Whether a particular charge falls inside the exception depends on the statute creating the offence, which is precisely the kind of question to put to counsel with the information in hand.
What an approximate date means for the defence
An allegation that the offence occurred on or about a stated date, or within a stated period, is ordinarily enough under this section — which cuts both ways. It spares the prosecution from collapse over a witness who cannot recall an exact day, but it also means an accused should not build a defence solely on a discrepancy of dates, because a variance between the date alleged and the date proved will rarely matter where time is not an ingredient of the offence. What the defence should probe instead is whether the charge identifies the incident clearly enough to be answered at all.
If the vagueness genuinely prevents you from defending
There is a difference between an approximate date and a charge so indefinite that you cannot tell which incident you must meet — for instance, where an alibi is your defence and everything turns on when the act allegedly happened. Raise that problem through counsel before trial, while the framing of the charge can still be addressed, rather than saving it for later. Bring the information itself to the consultation: whether the date is material, and whether the allegation as written is sufficient, are judgments a lawyer makes from the precise wording of the charge, not from a summary of it.