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 ...
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