Law Commons^™

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: The Overview: Four Models Of Police-Government Relationships, Kent Roach

Conferences and Workshops

This chapter provides an introduction to police-governmental relations in Canada. It does so by outlining the law and history of police-government relations in Canada, constructing four different models of police-governmental relations and identifying critical issues that distinguish different approaches to police independence.

The first part of the chapter examines the contested legal basis for claims of police independence from government with a focus on the Supreme Court of Canada’s pronouncements on this issue in R. v. Campbell and Shirose. The second part examines highlights of the history of police-government relationships. Controversies such as the Nicholson affair, the Airbus, Doug Small …

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: The Idea Of The Political "Independence" Of The Police: International Interpretations And Experiences, Philip Stenning

Conferences and Workshops

This chapter serves to clarify some of the key concepts. By graphically illustrating the relationship between degrees of ‘control’ and degrees of accountability it is argued that the two concepts are not incompatible. The term independence is then used in the chapter to refer only to decision-making that falls in what is pictured as the fourth quadrant: ‘full accountability’ with ‘no control’. The chapter then outlines the scope or range of the potentially ‘independent’ decision-making tasks.

Stenning discusses the growth of the ‘doctrine of police independence’. It is argued that what we might assume is a widely held value favouring …

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: Memorandum Re June 28-29, 2004 Symposium

Conferences and Workshops

No abstract provided.

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: Agenda

Conferences and Workshops

No abstract provided.

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: The Oversight Of Executive Police Relations In Canada: The Constitution, The Courts, Administrative Processes And Democratic Governance, Lorne Sossin

Conferences and Workshops

This chapter critically examines two central questions. First, what are the mechanisms which constrain and define executive accountability and police oversight in Canada? Second, can the need for the police to remain above partisan politics and beyond manipulation by the government of the day be reconciled with these mechanisms of governance and accountability? Sossin argues that an apolitical and autonomous model is best suited to the dynamics of policing in a constitutional democracy such as Canada, and has the potential to balance the need for political input into policing while countering inappropriate political interference in policing.

The executive-police relationship is …

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: Legal Sites Of Executive-Police Relations: Core Principles In A Canadian Context, Dianne L. Martin

Conferences and Workshops

This chapter provides an overview of the multiple sites where the governance of police in a democratic society is negotiated, with examples and solutions drawn from policy documents, public inquiries, legislation, and case law. Multiple factors bear on the ways that this intricately structured legal relationship is worked out in day-to-day situations, including political, institutional and legal influences. Bearing in mind the political and institutional contexts, this chapter examine the legal instruments and institutions that both structure the relationship and are part of resolving the inevitable conflicts that arise between these two very general concepts. The central argument is that …

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: The History And The Future Of The Politics Of Policing, Margaret Beare

Conferences and Workshops

This chapter examines the operational realities of the police executive linkages—beyond the official dictates of the law and the desired position expressed in ideological discourses on police independence. Paper draws primarily on historical and criminological literature and research, and public inquiries.

The central argument of this paper is that, while there may be a somewhat clear-cut division between the’ policy’ versus the ‘operational’ control of the police by the State in law and in rhetoric, the reality is quite different. The relationship between the State and the police is a dynamic relationship that changes to reflect the nature of the …

The Ipperwash Inquiry - Symposium On Government/Police Relations: Police-Government Relations In The Context Of State-Aboriginal Relations, Gordon Christie

Conferences and Workshops

Common debates over government-police relations share a certain structure – the main realm of contention revolves around questions about how to resolve tension between the concern that the police should be free to act independent of political interference and the concern that the police should, in a liberal democracy, be held accountable for their actions. This paper looks at this tension in the context of state- Aboriginal relations, a process of contextualization that casts a critical eye on the efficacy of the typical forms of analysis that arise from this debate.

The first stage of analysis provides a contrast for …