It seems there was an attempt recently to get the Toronto Police Services Board thinking about reform of policing. It is reported that the board spent $200,000 of public money to have a management consulting firm report on suggestions for reform. It is likely that the money might have been better spent on finding members of the police services board who better understood their role as a board.
But the problem is that policing in Ontario is the responsibility of the provincial government. It is the responsibility of a government that has been ignoring the need for reform in policing for many decades. And the most serious problem is that the appointees to police services boards in our municipalities think they are some kind of super police instead of representatives of the public.
We used to watch an annual ritual here in Barrie when the chair of the Police Services Board brought the police budget to City Council and read them a summary. It is not that our councilors need to have things read to them. It was putting the imprimatur of the board on the police budget request. The Police Services Board would appear before council representing the police.
But who then represents the public? The low-key questioning of the police budget by the council members was always pro-forma at best. There was never an opportunity in that open forum to get at the real problems faced by the police or the opportunities for cost savings for the public. Council members would make their usual comments on the police budget and then forget the problems for another year.
With the technologies available to us today and the changing nature of crime in our society, we need to be challenging the police to find better ways to serve the public.
And it is that service that must be emphasized. With the three greatest blots on policing in Canada being the Winnipeg General Strike, the FLQ affair and the G-20 in Toronto, we need to recognize the fragility of our protection for human rights. And only last year the Conservative’s anti-terrorism bill tried to affix tiers to our citizenship.
Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a basic document that needs constant support and strengthening. Maybe we need a special day every year just to remind us.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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