Canadian Policing: Why and How It Must Change is a comprehensive and critical examination of Canadian policing from its colonial origins to its response to the February 2022 blockades and occupations. Police shootings in June 2020 should dispel any complacency that Canada does not face similar policing problems as the United States, and a vicious circle of overpolicing and underprotection plagues many intersecting disadvantaged groups. Multiple accountability measures — criminal investigations, Charter litigation, complaints, and discipline — have not improved Canadian policing. What is required is more active and proactive governance by the boards, councils, and ministers that are responsible for Canada’s police. Governance should respect law enforcement independence and discretion while rejecting overbroad claims of police operational independence and self-governance.

Even before pandemic-related deficits, the costs of the public police were not sustainable — these budgets require fundamental change without expansion. Such change should include greater service delivery by more expert and cost-effective health, social service, and community agencies. Indigenous police services — unfortunately, Canada’s only chronically and unconstitutionally underfunded police services — can also play a positive role. To that end, Canadian Policing: Why and How It Must Change offers concrete proposals for reforms to the RCMP, use of force policies, better community safety plans, and more democratic policing.

À propos de l'auteur

Roach, Kent

Kent Roach, CM, FRSC, is a professor of law at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Prichard-Wilson Chair in Law and Public Policy. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada by his fellow academics and in 2015 was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. In 2013, he was awarded a Trudeau Fellowship and in 2017 the Canada Council awarded him the Molson Prize for his contributions. He has taught criminal law since 1989 and been editor-in-chief of the Criminal Law Quarterly since 1998. He is the co-editor of Cases and Materials on Criminal Law and Procedure, numerous collections of essays and thirteen books, including Constitutional Remedies in Canada (winner of the 1997 Walter Owen Book Prize); Due Process and Victims’ Rights: The New Law and Politics of Criminal Justice (shortlisted for the 1999 Donner Prize); The Supreme Court on Trial: Judicial Activism or Democratic Dialogue (shortlisted for the 2001 Donner Prize); (with Robert J. Sharpe) Brian Dickson: A Judge’s Journey (winner of the 2003 Defoe Prize); The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter-Terrorism (co-winner of the 2012 Mundell Medal); and (with Craig Forcese) False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism (winner of the 2016 Canadian Law and Society book prize). Professor Roach has served as research director of the Commission of Inquiry into the Bombing of Air India and the Goudge Inquiry into Forensic Pathology and was volume lead on the Truth and Reconciliation’s Commission volume of the legacy of Residential Schools for Indigenous children. Acting pro bono, he has represented civil liberties and Indigenous groups in interventions before the Supreme Court, including in Golden and Ward on strip searches; Khawaja on terrorism; Latimer on mandatory sentencing; Gladue, Ipeelee, and Anderson on sentencing Indigenous offenders; and Sauve on prisoner voting rights.