RCMP neck-hold review ‘ongoing’ four months after Lucki’s promise
The RCMP has not yet completed its review of the controversial carotid neck hold used by its officers to subdue people, four months after Commissioner Brenda Lucki pledged to reassess the use of a technique that can sometimes render those on whom it is used unconscious, and five months after George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black […]
‘Ping-pong’ gun politics continue to divide voters, as O’Toole courts GTA seats
Even during the worst health and economic crises in recent memory, gun politics are inescapable in Canada. A petition to Parliament calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) to reverse his May 1 decision to ban a list of guns that he described as “military-grade assault weapons” has garnered more than 230,000 signatures from […]
‘Like a criminal’: Canada-U.S. asylum agreement has a human cost, refugee says
Five years ago, a woman fled her home in central Africa, arrived in the United States, and days later headed for the Canadian border to seek asylum. A political activist who’d witnessed election fraud, she feared for her life after the militia killed her cousin and another activist. The 29-year-old thought that was the worst […]
Software likely to blame for CSC’s ‘unfortunate’ failure to report solitary confinement data, says watchdog
Technical issues and a new “Cadillac” software system to track inmates likely explains the Correctional Service of Canada’s failure to provide promised data to an independent panel monitoring the new system meant to end solitary confinement, says Canada’s prison watchdog. The challenge rests primarily with a new tracking technology the Correctional Service of Canada picked […]
What else is happening while we worry about COVID?
CHELSEA, QUE.—The pandemic, the WE controversy, and ongoing problems with the RCMP have given higher-than-usual profiles to a number of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet ministers—notably Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Health Minister Patty Hajdu, Treasury Board President Jean-Yves Duclos, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, and, for all the wrong reasons, Finance Minister Bill Morneau. But there […]
Deem Indigenous policing essential, boost support for Northern communities to help scrap racism in policing, committee hears
Demilitarize the police, defund or divert their resources, adopt nationwide data collection to track race and use of force, adopt true and transparent civilian oversight, and make Indigenous policing an essential service. These are just some of the calls to action repeatedly raised by witnesses during last week’s parliamentary study on systemic racism and policing […]
There couldn’t be a better time than now to cancel the Safe Third Country Agreement
It’s not often that a major court decision about a highly politicized topic turns out to be a gift to both the Liberals and the Conservatives. The trouble is that it is a gift in disguise and that neither party seems to know it. That was the case when Federal Court Judge Ann Marie McDonald […]
Where are the alarm bells after the armed incursion at the PM’s residence?
OTTAWA—Maybe it’s because of the COVID-19 emergency or summertime or the lack of information supplied by the RCMP, but the magnitude of the Corey Hurren episode on July 2 appears to have been overlooked. Hurren, a heavily armed 46-year-old Canadian Armed Forces reservist from Manitoba, was arrested by police after crashing through the Rideau Hall […]
RCMP report 62 per cent uptick in mental health, wellness call response as critics demand better data
The RCMP have seen a 62 per cent increase in mental health and well-being calls over the last five years—worrying but incomplete results that have critics demanding better data and redoubling calls for an inquiry into police-involved deaths for those in crisis. In 2019, the RCMP responded to 149,986 mental health and well-being checks, up […]
Race-based reporting for crime data could become mandatory for police, says cop, as group eyes boosting efforts by 2021
Six years after police in Canada began reporting the Indigenous identity for victims and people accused of homicides to the country’s statistics agency, some officers are hoping to get buy-in from their colleagues to similarly enhance crime data on a wider scale by early next year. But beefing up efforts to collect such race-based data […]
