In the hailstorm of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s mission to find efficiencies in government and to provide Ontario with the first ever government that exists “for the people”—as opposed to every other one, which was for the cats—we’ve seen him tear apart everything he can from the previous administration.
In repealing the dreaded sex-ed curriculum and liberating us from oppressive measures to combat global warming, Ford has led Ontario forward into the 1990s. But, one of his first achievements requires a second glance—the repeal of Bill 175.
Dubbed the “Safer Ontario Act,” Bill 175 introduced a variety of measures to increase police accountability within the province, particularly by giving expanded powers to the Special Investigations Unit (SIU). The SIU would have been able to investigate the behaviour of on-duty police officers, to suspend officers without pay, and to fine officers for non-compliance in investigations.
Ford has gone on to describe this part of the legislation as both hurting police efforts and undermining confidence in the police, stating that police officers need to be “treated with respect.” As Canada has now legalized cannabis, ending a part of the war on drugs—something that resulted in disproportionate amounts of Black Canadians in prison—the legacy of cannabis prohibition sheds light on a serious problem in Canadian society. Right now, policing in Ontario is broken in such a manner that it perpetuates systemic discrimination against the province’s Black population. Consequently, to state that increased accountability and transparency undermines confidence in the police suggests a lack of understanding of why we have such measures. This sets Ontario on a dangerous path.
Black people in Ontario are stopped and searched by the police at a disproportionate rate. According to Toronto police stop-and-search records, although Black people make up 8.3 per cent of Toronto’s entire population, they accounted for 25 per cent of stop-and-searches in the city. A study by researchers at the University of Toronto found that being Black is actually the strongest factor in determining whether you’ll be stopped by police.
This is then reinforced by the fact that Canada’s Black population is drastically overrepresented in the prison population. Although the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System clearly stated that crime is committed at equal levels across different racial groups, Canada’s Black population is overrepresented in prison by 3.4 times their population in Canada. The reason for this overrepresentation is the increased attention that Black people are given on the streets by police.
Moreover, this systematic racism in Toronto’s police force is reinforced by the proportion of Black people killed by the police compared to other racial groups. A report by the CBC tracked 460 deaths through encounters with the police. In Toronto, Black deaths at the hand of police accounted for 36.5 per cent of fatalities with the police—despite only accounting for 8.4 per cent of the city’s population. Although these examples come from Toronto, issues with policing in Ontario span across the entire province and severely impact the Indigenous population in Canada as well.
The bottom line is, policing in Ontario is systematically geared against Ontario’s Black population, and for this reason more than any other, we desperately need increased transparency and accountability. Rather than “undermining confidence in the police,” when the system is geared against certain groups, increased accountability does what it’s supposed to do—increase trust in the police. Perhaps someone in Ford’s administration can understand that truth has to come before trust—and because of that, we need Bill 175 now more than ever.
Graphic by Paloma Callo
