Dennis Baker
Dennis Baker spoke 62 times across 1 day of testimony.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Commissioner, and good morning, everyone. My name is Dennis Baker, and I'm an Associate Professor of Political Science and Acting Director of the Criminal Justice Programs at the University of Guelph. It is my honour to be moderating this roundtable this morning. We have an impressive array of experts here, and I am going to introduce them briefly. Going around the table, Malcolm Thorburn is Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto. Next to him is Michael -- is Professor Michael Kempa, who is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Kate Puddister is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph. Ryan Teschner is Executive Director and Chief of Staff on the Toronto Police Service Board; and James Ramer is Chief of the Toronto Police Service. And joining us online is Christian Lepreucht, who is the Class of 1965 Distinguished Professor of Leadership at Royal Military College, and Director of the Institute for Intergovernmental Relations at Queen's University. So our topic here this morning is the relationship between police and governments. As Professor Puddister and I can attest, having taught many Guelph students over the years in a class called Governing Criminal Justice, this is a relationship that is fraught with challenges and does not lend itself to easy answers. We know that neither extreme is appealing. The idea of government-directed police force, where the police become an arm of the government of the day, is repugnant to our commitment to the rule of law and threatens our democratic right to express our displeasure with the government. The other extreme, fully independent police, risks allowing those police services to be a force unto themselves, disconnected from civilian control and legitimate democratic authority. The relationship must be somewhere in the middle. But that middle, as my students know, and Professor Puddister's students know, is sharply contested and often difficult to operationalise. So today, we're going to talk in some detail about the capacity of governments to direct police, the sharing of information, and the relationships between different police services and the multiple levels of government. My hope, Commissioner, is that even if we cannot provide you with definitive answers today, we can at least assist you by outlining the contours of the debate and where some of the reasonable disagreements may lie. With that, I'm going to turn the session over to our panelists for opening statements. I've asked each panelist to speak for about five minutes, introducing their approach to the topic, and then we're going to have rounds of questions focussed on different aspects of the relationship. One final reminder to everyone on the panel, speak slowly, something I'm going to have to struggle with, and always identify yourself when speaking for the benefit of our translators and transcribers. So Professor Michael Kempa, I have you in alphabetical order, so you are up first.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Professor Kempa. So next up is Professor Leuprecht, who's on Zoom.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Professor Leuprecht. I'm going to remind the panel to please try and speak slowly for the benefit of our transcribers and translators. Professor Puddister?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Professor Puddister. I’ll call on Chief Ramer.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Chief Ramer. Mr. Teschner?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Mr. Teschner. Professor Thorburn?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, everybody. It's tempting just to let you all ask questions of each other right now, but we're going to have slightly more structure than that. Our first set of questions relates to directions from police -- to police from government. And we've already heard a little bit about that in many of the statements. So the questions we're going to specifically look at are what direction a police boards and governments legitimately provide to police? And in particular, I know this Commission is interested in whether, specifically, may governments provide directions, establishing priorities for which a region's police resources should be deployed during a major event that impacts multiple locations. So that question is before us. What decisions in relations to managing protests should be made by police alone? Is the policy operations distinction, that we've already heard about, meaningful and can it be usefully applied? So with that, I'm going to ask Professor Kempa to start us off.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Professor Kempa. So Professor Puddister, I know that we’ve had lots of discussions about the policy operations distinctions, and Professor Kempa is already breaking it down, the plans, policies, and power, which I think is an interesting way of looking at it. But would you share your thoughts on some of these questions?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Mr. Teschner?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Mr. Teschner. Professor Thorburn?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. So I knew when I budgeted 20 minutes for operations versus policy, that would be too limited and we could probably do another hour on that, and we won’t, I’m sad to say. But I did want to just make sure -- because I haven’t been looking closely at our online component -- whether Christian, or Professor Leuprecht wants to make any comment here, or Chief Ramer because you haven’t been in this discussion. Or can we move along to information sharing? Oh, Christian’s got the hand up function. Yes, Professor Leuprecht, please speak slowly.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. That’s very useful. Chief Ramer?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. So now we’re going to turn to information sharing between police and government, and some of these discussions ,I think, will overlap. But we’re going to focus more particularly on the following questions: What information would -- may police boards and governments legitimately request from police? How can requests for information be distinguished from direction; is there a danger of it being taken as an implicit direction? In what circumstances, if any, may the police decline to provide information as requested by police boards and governments? Is a problem for departmental officials to speak directly to police below the Chief Commissioner level to get that information, and what about elected officials doing that, making those kinds of communications? What report should police routinely provide to public authorities about their plans, activities in relations to protests? So there’s a lot there but Mr. Teschner is going to give us the first attempt at answering those questions.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. I’m going to let Professor Thorburn in in a second, but I just wanted to allow, Chief Ramer, if you wanted to have any comments about the Toronto information sharing?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Do you have any comment on the question about whether a police chief may decline to provide information? Mr. Teschner gave us an example of where it’s statutorily barred, ---
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
--- but do you have any reservations about other types of ---
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Chief. Professor Thorburn, thank you for being patient.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Professor Kempa, briefly, please.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Professor Leuprecht, very quickly?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. And actually, that’s a good segue to our next set of questions, Professor Leuprecht, where we're going to talk about different police services and different relationships, because right now we've been talking about kind of the police and the government, right, but we actually know it's much more complicated. Some of the issues arising from this Commission are much more complicated because we have the RCMP, the OPP, municipal police force, the Ottawa Police, the Parliamentary Protectory Service. So we've got all these relationships going on, so we want to probe that a bit. Does it -- does the RCMP's relationship with the government and the Minister change when it's in a contracting role as it might be in other provinces other than Ontario where we have the OPP and we don’t contract with the RCMP? What role does the provincial government play in those situations? And thinking more about police services boards, particularly when we have one force, the RCMP, that doesn’t have a police services board, right, so we don’t have that model. So we've got all these different forces with different institutional arrangements. How does that complicate everything we've been discussing? Professor Leuprecht?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Anyone else want to comment on that set of questions? Oh, Malcolm?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Oh, Mr. Teschner? Sorry.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
In the interests of time, I'm going to collapse some of our questions and I'm going to turn now to the related issue with respect to the varieties of different police forces, and that’s about collaboration. So Chief Ramer, I wonder if you could give us some insights about how collaborations between police organizations should be managed? Particularly, I know this Commission is interested in the deployment of multiple police agencies' resources, how they can be coordinated during a major event, and especially one that affects multiple locations through the province?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Mr. Teschner, briefly, please.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Chief Ramer, I wonder if we could -- we talked a lot about police independence pretty vaguely and generally, basically, the police as a whole independent from government. Could you comment on police independence within the force? So Incident Commanders might be -- have some independence, right down to the line officer, every police officer has a scope of independence. I wonder if you could tell us more about that?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Do any of the academics want to probe that a bit? We've talked a bit about police independence. Does that complicate any views on that? No? Okay. Everybody's happy. So we're nearing the end of our time. We've got about 15 minutes left, and we've got a big section of questions next. I'm going to call a little bit of audible here and restrict us just to the first two questions on the list, which are what changes to legislation might be appropriate, and what laws, regulations, policies or norms governing powers of responsibilities of police in relation to public processes and their relations to public authorities, boy this is a long one, should be revisited? So this is really the question, to think about the rules we have in place, the legislation, what would your prescriptions be if a Commissioner was to make such recommendations? Professor Puddister.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Professor Puddister. Professor Kempa?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Professor Thorburn?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Professor Thorburn. Professor Leuprecht, do you ---
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. We only have two minutes left, and the Toronto model has received so much praise today, but if you want to capstone it off by some comments, it'd be ---
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Chief. Mr. Teschner?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for a very enlightening discussion. And I said at the beginning there are no easy answers, but there was lots of consensus and I think lots of things that the Commissioner can use and draw upon.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, Commissioner. You’ll be all pleased to know that your comments generated lots of questions, and I’ve got a whole list of things that we probably won’t be able to get through in a half an hour. But let’s try and move through them as quickly as we can. We talked a lot about prohibited direction. So when we talked about police independence we said you can’t interfere with investigations; everyone basically has that kind of understanding. But how does that apply in the public order policing context? So what would constitute a prohibited direction in specifically that context? So not in investigations but in public order. So the Commission would -- the parties would like to know about a sharper definition of that. So some examples that were proposed were whether -- should you negotiate with the protesters or enforce -- or act? Should you enforce provisions or not? What if the priority is established as Ottawa first, Windsor second? When does timing become an operational concern? So what are the types of prohibited directions you would see in the public order context? Professor Kempa.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Okay. Any other comments on that?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
So could I just follow-up? And Professor Leuprecht, I’ll get with you -- to you in a second. If the -- would we say it is a policy matter or an operational or planning matter to say, “You have to enforce -- we want you to start enforcing the law,” right? Instead of -- I accept, Mr. Teschner, that you don’t want to say you have to charge person X; like, that would be clearly an operational ---
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
--- or a prohibited kind of a direction. But what about saying, “We want you to enforce the law”? Like, you’re not taking as proactive an approach; ---
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
--- would that be prohibited?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Okay.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Professor Leuprecht.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, yeah, Chief Ramer.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Professor Thorburn?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Any -- Mr. Teschner?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
There were some questions actually related to the request for other forces to assist, and section 9 of the Police Services Act being invoked, and there seemed to be some, perhaps, reluctance to do so in certain cases. And this got back to a comment you made, Chief Ramer, about all or nothing. Right? The Police Services Act, sometimes interpreted as all or nothing. Is section 9 a kind of all or nothing -- this is for the panel as well -- an all or nothing request? So once you invoke section 9, suddenly the OPP is in charge of the operation and there’s a kind of take over of the operation? Is that the best way of looking at that section?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Okay. Professor Leuprecht?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Any additional comments? So we have about 15 minutes remaining. Let’s shift a little focus to the role of -- to being a little more concrete about the role of the chiefs and the board in situations where there’s a combined effort with multiple police forces and a whole bunch of other actions. So we talked a lot about some of the informal discussions and the trust and mature relationships, which is great. But what happens when that breaks down? Not just within a single police service, chief, and the board, but also when there can be competing boards, politicians of different levels, all those sorts of things. How do we deal with that? And in particular, how would we describe the role of the chief and the board with respect to the declaration of emergency, whether that was done at the provincial level or the federal level? Should the -- either of those parties communicate with the decision makers? Should they go -- or should it only be through the Board? Should the Chief be talking to the decision makers when it comes to the declarations of emergency? That was a bit of a rambling question. Putting it together. Professor Kempa?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Comments on that?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Mr. Teschner?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Okay. Is the board then the exclusive conduit in that situation? Or if an elected -- the person responsible, the parties responsible for declaring the emergency want to phone up the chief of the police and have a conversation with him, is that appropriate?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Any other -- oh, Professor Leuprecht.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. So one of the places we’ve seen consensus today is on the idea of an intermediary, right? Having a police board seems to serve important purposes and helps us reconcile some competing demands. So the RCMP doesn’t, but -- and Professor Leuprecht noted that only four -- he described it as kind of an aberration that there were these four that don’t have the intermediaries, right? But another way of saying that is that the provincial forces and the RCMP don’t have it, right? So are there other things, like ministerial responsibility and the RCMP being at Cabinet, right? They’re not -- they play a role there. Does that change the relationship such that you might not need that intermediary, or does it suggest that those types of forces that are perhaps closer to ministerial control don’t warrant that intermediary? That’s a wide open question. Professor Puddister, you’re smiling, though, which I mean ---
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
--- you have an answer?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Okay. Professor Kempa, you’re nodding along. Anything to add?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Professor Leuprecht.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you. Just being mindful of the time. Would the panel have any comments with respect to the appropriateness of police involvement or participation, or even information and negotiation between government actors and the protesters? So in a public order context where the government is -- or actors in the government are seeking to have negotiations with the protesters, talking about mediating the problem, do the police play a role there, the police chief, or intermediaries lower in the police?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Sure.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Chief Ramer.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Okay, thank you. So we did have a specific question for professor Puddister. You spoke early on about the significant challenges faced by police oversight agencies, and there was a question about whether you could elaborate on those challenges.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Any other comments?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Sure, yeah. Mr. Teschner.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
In our final minute, does the panel have any concerns about -- so we've been very -- suggesting that police services boards do provide an important function. Are there any problems with that where we might be -- have some reservations about having that kind of model at the federal or provincial level? Or is it all goodness and light?
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Any other comments? No. We're one minute over time. Oh, sorry, Professor Leuprecht. Briefly.
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Dennis Baker, Prof. (Political Science – University of Guelph)
Thank you, that's a good point to end on.