After vowing to “fix” policing laws in the province, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government proposed new legislation Tuesday that would limit the mandate of the police watchdog, impose time-limits on its probes and roll back efforts to promote independent investigations into public complaints about officers.

The move comes less than a year after the previous Liberal government passed Bill 175 — a massive overhaul of policing that strengthened police oversight — and will “restore respect for police,” community safety minister Sylvia Jones said at a news conference in Oakville.

“Make no mistake, the Liberals’ Bill 175 was, quite frankly, the most anti-police legislation in Canadian history. It was a disaster,” Jones said, before later introducing the 350-page legislation at Queen’s Park, dubbed the Comprehensive Ontario Police Services Act.

While critics decried a weakening of police accountability — former Attorney General Michael Bryant said the proposed legislation would “gut” police oversight — others noted the new legislation still draws heavily from the omnibus Liberal police laws, despite the PC “rhetoric.”

“On first reading, its bark may be worse than its bite. It is more a rebranding than a total gut of the Liberal legislation,” said Kent Roach, a University of Toronto law professor and policing expert.

The proposed legislation still acts on some of the key recommendations made by Ontario Court of Appeal judge Michael Tulloch in a recent sweeping review of police oversight, many of which were already present in Bill 175. That includes that Ontario’s police watchdog, the Special Investigations Unit, automatically be called in every time a police officer fires their gun at a person, as well as enshrining into law the expectation that the SIU director release detailed reports on investigations when no charges are laid.

“This has become SIU’s practice since the Tulloch report, and in my opinion, this is important to help promote transparency of investigations to the public,” said Kate Puddister, a University of Guelph assistant professor who focuses on police accountability.

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The new legislation proposes changes to both the SIU — which probes deaths, serious injuries and allegations of sexual assault — and to Ontario’s police complaints watchdog, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director.

Citing lengthy investigations that “waste time and energy,” Attorney General Caroline Mulroney announced lowered expectations around SIU notification — an issue that has long been contentious between police services and the watchdog.

Currently, police services are expected to over-notify, meaning they call in the SIU when it’s reasonable their mandate could be invoked, including deaths and serious injuries incurred in the presence of police, such as a heart attack or a suicide. This means the SIU, not the police service, makes the decision on whether to launch an investigation.

Mulroney said the proposed new legislation would remove the expectation that the SIU be called in for deaths such as a suicide, unless the police chief “reasonably believes” that an officer’s conduct may have been a contributing factor in the incident.

Notification of the SIU would still be mandatory in cases of death or serious injury caused by police use of force, incurred in detention, or as the result of a car chase, as well as for allegations of sexual assault.

Mulroney also said the proposed law would put a 120-day time limit on the watchdog’s probes, with the expectation that the SIU provide justification if it couldn’t wrap up probes in time.

Ian Scott, a former SIU director, said in an interview Tuesday that he worries about sending the message that police don’t have to call in the watchdog — “if they think they don’t have to call, they won’t,” he said.

“Clearly, the way they’ve worded it, will give the discretion to the police to decide when to call the SIU, and that in my view is not desirable,” Scott said, adding that police should ideally subscribe to the thinking of “if in doubt, call.”

According to the SIU’s most recent annual report, in 2017 the watchdog closed 367 cases, with the average number of each investigation taking 167 days. In 2016, when there were 296 cases, the average length of each probe was 111 days.

There are, however, some cases that stretch out for months, including the investigation into the death of Danforth shooter Faisal Hussain, who killed two and injured 13 others in July’s mass shooting. Hussain exchanged gunfire with two Toronto police officers but died by suicide; the SIU investigation lasted six months.

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Jeff McGuire, the executive director of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, said the time limits would shorten the “unfathomable” length of time for SIU investigations.

“The trauma and victimization that officers underwent for responding to 911 calls and trying to do what was right was not fair,” he said.

Monica Hudon, spokesperson for the SIU, said the watchdog “will abide by whatever legislation is in place, as we have always done.” Asked whether additional resources will be required to meet the 120-day time limit, Hudon said it was too early to speculate.

The proposed new police laws would also make changes to the OIPRD, the police complaints body, which would become the Law Enforcement Complaints Agency. Part of its mandate would be to then assign the investigation of the complaints back to a police service — possibly the employer of the officer the complaint relates to — or an agency investigator.

That’s a departure from the police complaints system created under the previous Bill 175, which had required that the province’s police complaint watchdog become fully independent within five years. That meant it would no longer refer any complaints back to the police service where the complaint originated.

Liberal MPP Nathalie Des Rosiers (Ottawa-Vanier), a lawyer and former law dean at the University of Ottawa, said she was concerned with the change to the complaint mechanism.

“It is concerning to me that this office is being folded into a new body. We need to ensure that a robust complaint mechanism is maintained in Ontario, so that if an individual feels their interaction with a police officer wasn’t acceptable, they can have confidence that that type of behaviour doesn’t happen again.”

Roach said that although the complaints agency won’t investigate all complaints it can still decide what complaints to investigate and consider appeals.

“This is not the type of gutting of police complaints that was done by the Harris government despite the rhetoric of the Ford government’s announcement,” Roach said.

Another change proposed in the new law is a lowering of the penalties imposed on officers who fail to co-operate with SIU investigations, setting the fines at $5,000 for a first offence and $10,000 for a subsequent offence. Bill 175 had set the fines at $25,000 for a first offence, $50,000 for the second.

Puddister said that for many, the proposed legislation “will not go nearly far enough,” noting that it has, for example, removed the ability for the SIU to lay criminal charges outside of its mandate, a feature that had been in the Liberals’ Bill 175.

“Many believe that SIU’s exclusive criminal law mandate is both too narrow and the bar for substantiating a criminal charge is too high,” she said.

In a statement, Police Association of Ontario said it welcomed the announcement, saying front-line personnel are “are optimistic that this act will restore fairness and respect for professional policing in the province, make oversight more effective, and improve governance, training, and transparency for the profession.”

With files from Robert Benzie

Wendy Gillis is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and policing. Reach her by email at wgillis@thestar.ca or follow her on Twitter: @wendygillis

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