Paralyzed and Divided Undergovernance

• Author: Kent Roach
• Pages: 74-98

74 |

five

Paralyzed and Divided

Undergovernance

INTRODUCTION

As discussed in the last chapter, Canadian police are subject to more aer-the-

fact accountability than ever. At the same time, police misconduct persists

and is increasingly captured by cameras. One explanation for repetitive acts

of overpolicing and underprotection is that police are too oen le to govern

themselves without clear or rm political direction. e police defend self-

governance on the basis that they are independent from political direction

in all operational matters. ey rely on legal arguments and their expertise to

fend o what they claim is “political interference.” Nevertheless, as SusanEng,

a former chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, has aptly noted, the

police do not listen to all equally because “the police subculture makes a dis-

tinction between the people they serve and the trouble- makers — the people

they do things for and the people they do things to.”

Politicians have much to lose when they take on the police. Pierre Tru-

deau was able to recover from widespread RCMP illegalities in the wake of

the  October Crisis and the run-up to the  Montreal Olympics with

exaggerated claims that politicians in a democracy should neither know about

nor direct police operations. His son, Justin Trudeau, took a similar approach

when he argued, “we are not the kind of country where politicians get to

tell the police what to do in operational matters” when asked to respond to

nation-wide protests of the Coastal GasLink pipeline in . In February

, he similarly argued that “it is not the place of the government or the pol-

iticians to give directives or orders to the police services. ey do their work

independently” in response to the occupation of Ottawa by those protesting

Paralyzed and Divided Undergoernance | 75

pandemic restrictions. In contrast, John Sewell was a one-term mayor of

Toronto in large part because he wanted to take responsibility for policing

policies. Canadian politicians have emulated Pierre and Justin Trudeau rather

than John Sewell. Hence, “few politicians have been willing to pay the polit-

ical price for challenging police budgets.” Susan Eng wrote this in , but

her comments are still true today even in light of police defunding demands.

Forty years aer the McDonald Commission on RCMP illegalities rejected

Pierre Trudeau’s exaggerated claims of police independence, the proper and

limited ambit of police independence from government direction remains

uncodied in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and many other police

acts. It is more broadly dened in other policing laws to cover “operational”

and “day-to-day” matters. Both the police and elected ocials appear to like

allowing the police to assume responsibility for operational or day-to-day mat-

ters. Such a state of aairs gives the police more autonomy. It also allows elected

ocials to escape responsibility for policing policies, which will almost always

oend someone. e result is well captured in what one Canadian police chief

told two leading scholars of police governance, “Unless I’m looney, I’m okay”

with the police board that is supposed to govern his police service and be his

boss. Another Canadian police leader discussed the possibility of giving polit-

icians “both barrels to the chest” by going to the media and claiming political

interference. ese comments, including the violent imagery in the last com-

ment, sum up Canada’s dangerous democratic decit in policing — one that

essentially allows the police to govern themselves.

Another factor that contributes to the undergovernance of the Canadian

police is divided jurisdiction over all forms of policing. e provinces enact

policing acts. ey set and enforce adequacy standards, whereas local police

boards establish police policies and local councils approve police budgets.

When the now-retired mayors of both Calgary and Edmonton showed

some attraction to policing innovations in , Alberta’s minister of justice

sternly warned them that the province could intervene and even take over city

policing if reallocation of dwindling revenues led to a breach of provincial

adequacy standards. When Toronto City Council tried to inuence the poli-

cies of the Toronto police in June , it had to ask the province to give them

powers to review line budget items in the more than  billion a year that it

provides to the Toronto police. It also unsuccessfully asked the province to

remove the ability of the police to appeal cuts to their budget to the province.

Other than in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, Can-

adian local councils lack the power to make direct changes to policing policies.