The jury is in on carding, and the verdict is it should end

Judge’s report brings needed clarity and a basis for action

Politicians have long played the law and order card — culminating with carding.

The discredited practice of carding — where police question innocent people without any reasonable reason, jotting down those private details on millions of contact cards entered into their databases — was finally banned in 2017 by the last Liberal government. Belatedly.

Will carding make a comeback under Premier Doug Ford in the new year? Given the bizarrely dismissive way in which Ford’s Tories dumped an important new report by Justice Michael Tulloch — midafternoon on New Year’s Eve — it’s hard not to wonder and worry.

For years, police chiefs and political leaders defended the indefensible, even when ineffective. They proclaimed carding to be a vital tool for intelligence-gathering databases that help solve crimes — without any data backing up their claims.

The judge concedes that like many people he also misunderstood the difference between random carding and focused street checks — where police have a defined investigative purpose that can yield actionable intelligence.

Against that backdrop of continuing confusion — by police, politicians, the press and the public — Tulloch suggests the 2017 regulations be reinforced with greater clarity. No one wants to handicap cops pursuing criminals, but nor should anyone conflate pointless checks of innocent people — when there is no crime being investigated — with legitimate lines of inquiry that solve crimes.

But if Tulloch has given us much needed perspective on policing powers, it now falls to politicians in power to follow up. They must heed his call for better wording — translating his recommendations into action, not just words.

At a public briefing last week, one of the lawyers who worked with Tulloch suggested diplomatically that the Progressive Conservative government is “going to move forward in good faith, but ultimately it’s up to them to decide.”

The official reaction so far is hard to fathom. Ford’s minister of community safety, Sylvia Jones, relegated her reaction to Twitter, moments after her office dumped Tulloch’s report, at 3:26 p.m. on Dec. 31.

“We will fix the police legislation the Liberal’s (sic) broke. We are committed to developing legislation that works for our police and for the people of Ontario. Justice Tulloch’s report will inform this work.”

What are the Tories trying to say? That the previous government “broke” policing by banning carding?

This is not idle speculation. One of Ford’s first acts as premier was to deactivate another law that included major changes to policing brought in by the Liberals, in response to an earlier report from Tulloch on police oversight — including improvements to the civilian Special Investigation Unit.

The previous Tulloch-inspired SIU law “hurts policing efforts in the province and undermines confidence in the police,” Ford announced last July, days after taking power. “Ontario’s hard-working police officers deserve to be treated with respect.”

Yes, police deserve our respect. But Ford’s self-proclaimed “Government for the People” must also respect the people whom our police are sworn to serve and protect — and respect.

The police are not a plaything for politicians. The mixed signals over carding are yet another reason to be wary of the premier’s crass and discreditable appointment of an underqualified crony, Ron Taverner, as his new OPP chief, pending a probe by Ontario’s integrity commissioner. Beware the politics of policing.