Police Chiefs and Their Political Bosses: Discussions in Ontario

In this article, I review debates about relations between police chiefs and their governing authorities in Ontario over the last 70 years, beginning with the enactment of the Ontario Police Act in 1946, through its replacement by the Ontario Police Services Act in 1990, to the enactment of a new Police Services Act in 2018. I discuss how the respective roles and responsibilities of municipal and regional police chiefs and their police governing authorities, and the relationships between them, have evolved and changed over this period. I also discuss comparable developments in the relations between commissioners of the Ontario Provincial Police and provincial ministers responsible for policing in the province during the same period. The arguments and justifications that have been advanced for these developments by politicians, commissions of inquiry, police scholars, and representative bodies of police chiefs and police governing authorities, as well as in key court decisions, are reviewed, and their implications for the concept of 'police independence' are discussed. I conclude that although that concept has been the subject of much critique during these years, it so far remains intact as the key principle underlying police governance and accountability in Ontario.