SIU ready for reform but is government?

Before Justice Michael Tulloch delivered 129 suggestions on improving oversight of police in this province, Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit was already busily working away at several reforms that, as it happened, ended up being among his recommendations.

Other reforms need new legislation and money — which haven’t yet materialized.

The information the SIU provided the Citizen offers insight into the way the agency, which investigates incidents of serious injury, death or sexual assault involving police officers, is grappling with the recommendations Tulloch unveiled in April. His review was launched in 2016, the culmination of concerns that police oversight was insufficiently transparent and that the public didn’t think officers were being held properly accountable in some violent encounters.

The SIU had already been working on changes to the way it operates, developing antibias training, looking to hire from more diverse groups, doing outreach to indigenous communities and including more robust information in its end-of-investigation reports.

But many of the other major changes envisioned quite simply cannot happen until politicians step up. For example, Tulloch said the SIU should investigate all “discharge(s) of a firearm by a police officer at a person” — not just those ending in injury or death — but that would need a legislative change to the agency’s mandate.

Or, were it to beef up its “affected persons” response — essentially a victim services branch that meets with families of those police hurt or kill — it would need more staff, which in turn costs money. This is one of the areas in which families say the SIU falls badly short, and it is, theoretically, rather uncomplicated compared to some of the other improvements Tulloch suggested.

Which is another way of saying, it’s with the politicians to come up with new laws and more money not just for the SIU but for two other oversight agencies as well. (They are the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, which handles public complaints, and the Ontario Civilian Police Commission, which investigates police services boards and chiefs.)

On the most important recommendations to modernize how the SIU works, pretty much all the agency can do is wait.

“We will continue to act in the best interest of the citizens of Ontario. However, significantly greater resourcing would be required to fully meet the recommendations of Justice Tulloch,” says an email to me from SIU spokeswoman Monica Hudon. So where are the changes at? Randy Hillier, the Progressive Conservatives’ justice critic, says it’s reasonable to expect legislation in the fall, perhaps coinciding with the updated Police Services Act. Yet there’s a long legacy of reports on police oversight mouldering somewhere at Queen’s Park. This time, the political pressure and social pressure — the cost of inaction — are likely too large for the government to ignore. “This is long overdue, it’s been needed for a significant period of time,” Hillier says.

Hillier says he’s also told Attorney General Yasir Naqvi (who also represents Ottawa Centre) there should be a mandatory review within five years, to make sure that Tulloch report is being implemented — and that Tulloch himself should do it.

It’s a fine idea, and would have the added benefit, ideally, of ensuring that the process is insulated from changes of government. A new administration might lose its enthusiasm once the partisan battles and lobbying between activists and unions got going.

Gilles Bisson, the NDP’s critic for the attorney general, says the party’s waiting to take a look at what the government proposes. “The government has often introduced ideas in the public which sound OK, then you look at the bill and find out it’s quite something else,” Bisson says.

The provincial Liberal government, hopefully, is clever enough to ensure changes to policing and oversight are done correctly. Also, hopefully, it’ll realize that ensuring police are held to account, and that the government gets it right, could well be a ballot box issue in 2018.

That’s a pretty good motivator.