OKAY, BUT ONLY A FEW WORDS.

JUSTICE MICHAEL TULLOCH RELEASES HIS 300-PLUS PAGE REVIEW OF CARDING AND STREET CHECKS IN ONTARIO.

NOW WHAT?

Commissioned by the previous Ontario Liberal government, it’s now up to the current Progressive Conservative administration at Queen’s Park to do something with it. Tulloch’s extensive report is one of four critical perspectives into policing released during the last few weeks. After an initial flurry of attention, these voluminous, expensive, but usually worthwhile exercises frequently end up tucked away on a dusty shelf and forgotten.

Tulloch, an Ontario Court of Appeal justice, and his team consulted widely and accepted numerous written submissions, including representations from 34 police services in the province. Culling a bottom line from all those pages, random street checks….carding….have no investigative value, although done right and for the right reasons, targeted street checks are worthwhile. In spite of painstaking efforts in the report to flesh out the difference, considerable subjectivity remains. That’s the pitfall.

Sylvia Jones, the provincial minister responsible for policing today, said “new police legislation will reflect a simple principle: racism and discrimination have no place in policing. Justice Tulloch’s report will inform our work as we fix Ontario’s policing legislation.” We’ll see.

No matter what this government does with the information now in its hands, no matter what any government does, one overriding principle is paramount:-

We must have some understanding of the law and our rights within it. We must stand up for those rights, speak up for those rights, act up for those rights. We must outlaw infringements on those rights. Otherwise, we get the boot.

Just as a reminder…..”Carding is code for police state”

Now, let’s get back to Canada’s prison industry.….next time we dump a bad law.