Some of the toughest critiques you can ever witness happen in places you might not expect.

Classrooms and studios in art, design and even writing schools are places where critique is built into the process of creating. Critique sessions aren’t always gentle: ideas and work are torn down in an effort to make them better. It’s a process that carries on into professional practice.

A few years ago I was able to sit in on a class on laneway housing for a semester at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design taught by architects Brigitte Shim and Donald Chong. We went on tours of laneway houses, looked at examples from other cities and the students set off to design their own wee houses.

When the critique sessions rolled around the students pinned their work to a wall and I was happy to just be an observer as the designs were poked and prodded, questions were asked about the fundamental creative assumptions they made and sometimes it was concluded the design just wouldn’t work or was even wrong.

The instructors asked questions of and commented on student work, and the students did the same to each other. It was professional but tense, harsh but at the same time collegial. Students then went and produced better work for their final projects, sometimes dramatically redesigning their houses.

These critiques prepared them for what they could expect when they became full-fledged architects, both within their office and when presenting work publicly. If you’ve ever gone to a public meeting where architects or urban designers show their work it’s routinely torn apart, for better and for worse, and they come back with new or altered designs.

I think about those architecture students whenever I hear people suggest that critiquing police is somehow “anti-police.” Nobody would say that telling architects their work could be better is somehow “anti-architect.” Nor would anyone suggest that a dedicated art critic is “anti-artist.”

Yet just last week Sylvia Jones, the minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, said the oversight reforms the previous Liberal government established with the “Safer Ontario Act” was “the most anti-police legislation in Canadian history.”

This kind of rhetoric is often applied to any criticism of the police, as if the very act of critique means those doing the critiquing are anti-police. This framing has long been a tactic of police associations and others who want less accountability.

It’s a curious sentiment coming from a government minister whose boss, Doug Ford, is alleged to have went on a swear-filled tirade over his distrust of Ontario Provincial Police officers assigned to his security detail, according to court documents filed by Brad Blair, the OPP deputy commissioner. Was that tirade “anti-police”? Who’s to tell when rhetoric has been so torqued and when independent police oversight can be so easily cast as anti-police?

All of this comes at a time when Toronto’s LGBT community and the Church-Wellesley neighbourhood desperately need police accountability. Though spared a long trial when convicted serial killer Bruce McArthur pleaded guilty, these communities are still reeling from what many see as neglect by the Toronto Police Services with this and other missing persons cases in the area.

Currently, Sgt. Paul Gauthier has been charged with neglect of duty and insubordination in connection to the McArthur investigation, though he has claimed he’s being set up as a “fall guy” and “scapegoat” in the face of widespread criticism of police.

Without knowing the outcome of Gauthier’s case, there is a precedent for this kind of thing. Consider that after the G20 in 2010, one of the largest mass violations of civil liberties in Canadian history, complete with officers removing their name tags, considerable police violence and lasting scars, only two members of the Toronto police were really punished.

Const. Babak Andalib-Goortani was convicted of assault with a weapon while Superintendent Mark Fenton was found guilty of unlawful arrest and discreditable conduct at a police disciplinary tribunal. Apart from these token punishments and some other general reports on the event, there was no large-scale provincial inquiry into what happened that weekend, nor any widespread punishment.

Last week, Ontario’s attorney general, Caroline Mulroney, said her office is not considering a public inquiry into the handling of the McArthur case either, instead asking that Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Gloria Epstein’s ongoing review of missing persons cases be expanded to include McArthur too.

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It’s critical this happen if there won’t be a proper inquiry. If lives could have been saved had police acted differently, knowing what went wrong could prevent future tragedies.

Beyond this, a built-in, public oversight process is hardly anti-police. They have incredible powers and responsibilities. If architects and artists embrace robust critique, why is it always such a struggle to hold police up to high standards too?