Ontario police chiefs call for more power to fire or suspend officers without pay

Ontario’s police chiefs are calling for an overhaul of the province’s “archaic” officer discipline system, a move that would give police services greater ability to fire or suspend officers without pay.

Saying Ontario’s discipline system “simply no longer instills public trust,” the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police is urging the provincial government to make “substantive” changes that would include granting chiefs more latitude to stop paying officers accused of serious misconduct — or in extreme cases, fire them.

“We need to find a happy medium, but one thing’s for certain: it needs to change,” said Chatham-Kent Police Chief Gary Conn, president of the OACP, which passed a strongly worded resolution at its annual general meeting last month urging the province to change a discipline system that has “arguably devolved.”

Ontario’s police discipline system is among the most rigid in Canada, and all but guarantees a police officer suspended from duty will receive a full paycheque even while facing serious criminal charges.

Under Ontario’s Police Services Act, police chiefs can only cut off pay to a suspended officer if they are convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail time — a bar the OACP has for years decried as far too high.

The system can leave officers suspended from duty for years awaiting a criminal trial or a disciplinary hearing, prompting embarrassment for police chiefs and public outrage at egregious cases, including a Toronto officer suspended with pay for over a decade.

A Star survey earlier this year found more than 120 police officers were suspended with pay across Ontario, the bulk of them from the OPP (37) and Toronto (31).

The current setup is “procedurally laden” and “can take far too long to complete,” Conn said, noting the OACP first called for changes to suspension with pay in 2007.

“And quite frankly, it doesn’t meet normal labour law standards currently in place in Ontario,” Conn said.

The OACP’s resolution calls for the creation of a new “grieve and arbitrate model” that would allow for disciplinary action to be taken swiftly — independent of any criminal proceeding — and would initiate a process where officers could then grieve the decision of an employer and have the case heard by an independent arbitrator.

For more serious penalties including termination, an arbitration process would happen automatically, Conn said. He stressed the system would apply only to a small fraction of officers and be used “only in the cases that are extremely egregious.”

“I just think it’s time for modernization, it’s time for a much broader perspective,” said Bryan Larkin, chief of the Waterloo Regional Police Service, who initiated the OACP resolution to address the “archaic” discipline system.

Larkin stressed that officers in the lawful execution of their duties “must be afforded fair judicial process” but said the most challenging cases for chiefs often concern off-duty conduct.

Ontario policing laws have been in a state of flux for years, after the Liberals’ omnibus police legislation was paused in 2018 and rewritten by Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative government after dubbing it “anti-police.” In 2019, the Ford government passed the Community Safety and Policing Act, but the law has not yet come into force and the regulations are still being written.

The new legislation will grant police chiefs some additional suspension powers, allowing them to cut off the paycheque when officers are facing a “serious” criminal charge. What, exactly, counts as serious will be spelled out in forthcoming regulations — but Conn said that may only apply to offences carrying a possibility of five years in jail or more.

Stephen Warner, spokesperson for Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones, said in a statement that the province is reviewing feedback on the regulations following public consultation earlier this year. He did not directly respond to a request for comment on the OACP’s resolution calling an arbitration model and did not provide a timeline for when the new law will come into effect.

Mark Baxter, president of the Police Association of Ontario, acknowledged there are circumstances where suspension without pay may be appropriate but stressed that there’s also a presumption of innocence. Baxter said he’s concerned about the chiefs’ criticism that the current discipline system is procedurally laden and “takes too long.”

“What that means to us is due process, and respecting of officers’ rights,” Baxter said, adding his association was “surprised” by the OACP’s call for an arbitration model, saying he hadn’t heard it come up in recent meetings on the police legislation regulations.

Kent Roach, a University of Toronto law professor whose expertise includes policing, said the proposed system would be a step toward improved police oversight and public trust. But he’d like to see policing move toward a licensing system akin to what’s already in place for professions such as teaching and nursing.

“The police are paid like highly skilled professionals, they are highly skilled professionals, but they should be disciplined like highly skilled professionals,” he said.

Roach noted that in his broad review of police oversight in Ontario, Court of Appeal Justice Michael Tulloch recommended Ontario give “serious consideration” to establishing a professional body for policing — a college of policing that would, among other things, establish licensing standards and requirements.

“I think this is a start. But I think that there needs to be a much broader sort of conversation, and I worry that we’re not going to have that conversation,” Roach said.

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