Skip to main content
editorial

After raising the minimum wage, after providing pharmacare for people under 25, after political financing reform and rent controls and a generous offer to give Ontarians more time to pay off the massive hydro debt ineptly accumulated on their behalf, the government of Kathleen Wynne is going to reform the police. The transformation of the Ontario Liberal Party from self-sustaining Borg outpost to deeply caring nurturer of the human voter may now be complete.

The Safer Ontario Act will, among other changes, give citizens better ways to lodge a complaint about police actions, make police oversight more transparent and independent, and allow departments to stop paying officers who are suspended after being charged with serious offences. It also opens the door to changes that could reduce police costs.

It's tempting to write off the bill as just one more attempt by the Liberal government to ward off its probable defeat in the 2018 general election, which is now no more than seven months away.

The Liberals are desperately trying to shrink the lead that the Progressive Conservative Party, under rookie leader Patrick Brown, is believed to enjoy going into the election.

Their discovery of a progressive conscience, combined with a steady stream of feelgood announcements, is clearly a strategy designed to prove that they are flesh and blood like the rest of us, and to wipe voters' memories clean of the government's many scandals, including its arrogant defence of cash-for-access fundraising.

But while the Wynne government deserves all the skepticism that can be thrown at it, its police reform is actually pretty good. Whatever the political motivation behind it, it takes a serious stab at fixing the two most pressing problems related to policing: endlessly rising costs; and a deficit of public trust in an oversight system that is perceived to be weighted in favour of police officers.

The cost issue is particularly pressing. Just look at Toronto: For the past two years, it has budgeted more than $1 billion for police services.

The majority of that staggering amount is used to pay the salaries of its 5,440 sworn members, three-quarters of whom earn more than $100,000 per year, and its lower-paid 2,230 civilian employees.

Police budgets across Canada have ballooned at the same time that crime rates have been dropping steadily.

According to Statistics Canada, there were 188 officers per 100,000 Canadians in 2003, compared to 192 per 100,000 in 2015, after a peak of 202 per 100,000 in 2012. At the same time, the police-reported crime rate dropped 29 per cent between 2006 and 2016, StatsCan says.

Those who oversee police departments across Canada have been struggling with this for years, but have always run into political resistance to cutting the number of officers in uniform. The truth about policing, however, is that much of the work done by highly trained and highly paid sworn members could be done by less expensive special constables, or by civilian employees trained to do tasks that routinely take officers away from their main role of keeping order.

The proposed Ontario law addresses this by allowing the municipal boards that oversee individual police departments in the province to hire private companies to provide a number of less critical services.

These include things as straightforward as bylaw enforcement and crime prevention programs, and as complicated as crime-scene analysis, forensic identification, canine tracking, collision investigation, breath analysis, physical surveillance, interception of private communications, polygraph testing, explosives disposal and assistance to crime victims, according to the proposed bill.

The bill would also allow police departments to hire special constables provided by a private service to transport prisoners. Special constables can be armed but would not have full police powers and could never be used to replace sworn members on a part-time basis.

If adopted, and depending on the regulations that ensue, the reform could lead to smarter policing in Ontario. Highly trained officers would no longer hold a monopoly on all policing functions, which means their numbers could be reduced safely, and costs could be better controlled.

The proposed act will also force more sunlight into police oversight. It broadens the mandate of the Special Investigations Unit, which looks into cases where a person has been killed or injured during a police operation, and requires the SIU to be more transparent about its findings. Among other things proposed in the law, the SIU will investigate whenever an officer fires his or her weapon at a person.

As well, all public complaints about police behaviour will be handled by a single, independent body. In the past, only the most serious cases, such as corruption, were handled independently, while police departments looked into the rest – not a good recipe for inspiring public trust.

The proposed bill is a serious and ambitious reform that could set an example for other provinces, especially in the costs department.

Along with the Ontario government's plans to reform solitary confinement and the bail system, and to unclog the courts, the police reform could also be seen as part of a broader effort to fix the justice system and to increase public confidence in it. Even if this doesn't contribute to Premier Wynne's political salvation, it will have been worth it.

Interact with The Globe