Ontario is in the midst of a once-in-a-generation opportunity as the provincial government cracks open the laws governing policing. With an exclusive look at submissions for change from Ontario’s human rights watchdog, the Toronto Star begins a series looking at the future of policing.

Ontario’s human rights watchdog has laid out a bold blueprint for policing during the “critical moment” when the province’s rule book is being rewritten.

The recommendations are contained in the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s recent submissions to the province on its Strategy for a Safer Ontario, essentially a rewriting of the Police Services Act, the law governing policing in the province.

Last revisited more than 25 years ago, the law is being rewritten at a time of unprecedented scrutiny of policing throughout North America, enhanced technology, and shifting ideas about who and what a modern police force should be.

“The moment is ripe to have a broad-ranging discussion about policing,” Renu Mandhane, Ontario’s chief human rights commissioner, said during a recent meeting with the Toronto Star’s editorial board. “This is a vision for policing into the future.”

The commission’s proposed changes deal with racial profiling, mandated race-based data collection and body-worn cameras, disparities in the use of force on people with mental illness and addiction, over-policing of indigenous peoples, and a lack of human-rights accountability.

Those changes are backed by 16 community and advocacy groups, including the Law Union of Ontario, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, African Canadian Legal Clinic, Campaign to Stop Carding, Black Action Defence Committee and Metro Toronto Chinese & Southeast Asian Legal Clinic.

Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Yasir Naqvi says he hopes to have legislation tabled by the end of this year.

“This is a critical moment — and an important opportunity — to clearly articulate a framework for policing that puts human rights at its centre,” says the introduction to the commission’s submissions.

Accountability

Police Canada-wide have shown an aversion to establishing permanent race- and human rights-based data collection practices.

The commission wants the province to require all police services to collect human rights-based data on stops of civilians, use-of-force incidents and police inquiries about immigration status.

Echoing the calls of criminologists and some progressive police figures, the commission says the data “should be standardized, disaggregated, tabulated and publicly reported by each police service.”

Once publicly available, the data could be closely monitored by civilian police boards, which could then demand change if necessary. “It would be very hard for police boards not to hold their police accountable,” said Mandhane.

This kind of data collection was something the commission, in a past partnership with the Toronto Police Service, had pushed for. It never came to be. This time, the commission wants the province to write it into law.

Although it expressed concerns about privacy in regard to body-worn cameras, the commission is calling for an independent study into the feasibility of equipping every officer in the province with one.

It also wants the province to ensure that officers are disciplined, up to and including dismissal, when their behaviour is consistent with racial profiling or discriminatory use of force on people with mental health disabilities and/or addictions.

And it calls for the addition of interveners in police disciplinary tribunals.

Police boards should be required to “address systemic discrimination by directing chiefs of police with respect to policy or practices informed by policy governing the carrying out of duties and responsibilities of the police,” it says.

In other words, follow board policy when it comes to practices such as carding, which became so publicly toxic in Toronto that former police chief Bill Blair, who refused to write procedures in keeping with a more restrictive policy, instead suspended the practice.

Racial profiling

The province has attempted to entrench policing in charter rights by trying to curb racially skewed arbitrary stops with new regulations on “carding” or “street checks.”

But the commission says systemic racial profiling extends beyond carding to all kinds of police interactions, including arrests, use of force and DNA sampling.

It wants Ontario to adopt strict directives to “address and end racial profiling” and give officers “clear guidelines” on when and how they may stop people.

It is also calling for a ban on checking the immigration status of “victims, witnesses or individuals under investigation, unless there are credible, non-discriminatory” reasons for the check.

Training

An understanding of human rights needs to be at the heart of all police training — and not just for officers, but also their boards and other oversight agencies.

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The commission recommends providing detailed human rights training at least every three years, with everyone from new recruits to supervisors required to participate.

That training should address racial profiling, mental health, de-escalation techniques and unconscious bias — and be developed in conjunction with affected parties, such as “local racialized and marginalized communities.”

“We think that that would mean that the training would be responsive to the local needs in the community,” said Mandhane.

Besides teaching officers that racial profiling violates the law — including the charter and the Police Services Act — they should be told that engaging in it could result in discipline, including dismissal.

“Training on bias and stereotyping may better equip officers to distinguish ‘real’ threats based on objective evidence or criteria from assumptions about dangerousness based on bias and stereotypes,” the commission writes.

Vulnerable people

People with mental health issues and addictions are more likely to come into contact with police and are “more likely to be subject to officer use of force because of behaviours and responses to police instructions that are interpreted as unusual, unpredictable or inappropriate,” the report says.

“As well, some officers rely on stereotypical assumptions about dangerousness or violence when deciding whether to use force. Both can have disastrous results, including serious injury and death.”

Amid a rising death toll involving police and vulnerable people, the report echoes recommendations that have mounted over the decades, only to be shelved or only partly addressed.

The province, says the commission, should require officers to use de-escalation techniques and effective communication, and avoid force for as long as possible. It should also be a rule that a mobile crisis intervention team or officers with special training and skills are “available at all times.”

The commission also weighed in on potential privacy concerns over what is known as the community hub model, or “situation tables” — innovative diversion programs that bring support workers, service providers and police together to devise alternatives to criminal charges.

It said having the individual’s consent to be part of this is important. Without it, personal information could be shared that would end up stigmatizing the person by leaving details in a searchable database, not unlike that developed through “carding.”

The commission is asking the government to adopt recommendations from the Information and Privacy Commissioner on this issue.

Indigenous communities

“The over-representation of indigenous people in jail starts with policing,” Mandhane said.

And inequity in funding for First Nations police services has a “clear impact on public safety in affected communities.”

Amnesty International has raised concerns over Ontario’s failure to fully implement recommendations stemming from the Ipperwash inquiry in 2007.

In a coming federal inquiry, there are “particular concerns about racism and sexism through under-policing in investigations of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls,” notes the commission, which wants Ontario to ensure the inquiry examines cases from the province.