Policing in Canada has historically been grounded in the principle of equality under the law, where all individuals, regardless of identity, are subject to the same legal standards and enforcement practices. However, recent shifts in policy, training, and public discourse suggest that Canadian policing is increasingly adopting a model that applies different standards based on identity categories such as race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. This evolution is driven by a combination of social justice movements, government directives, and institutional reforms aimed at addressing systemic inequalities. While intended to rectify historical disparities, this approach raises questions about consistency and impartiality in law enforcement.
One clear indicator of this shift is the implementation of race-based data collection by police services across Canada. Initiated in response to allegations of racial profiling, agencies like the Toronto Police Service and the Ontario Provincial Police began collecting and analyzing data on the race of individuals stopped, questioned, or arrested, starting with pilot projects around 2019 and expanding since then. The stated goal is to identify and address “disproportionate” enforcement patterns, particularly against Black, Indigenous, and other racialized groups. While this data has confirmed higher rates of police interaction for certain communities—such as a 2020 Toronto report showing Black individuals were 2.2 times more likely to be involved in use-of-force incidents—it has also led to tailored policing strategies that adjust scrutiny or leniency based on racial identity rather than uniform application of the law.
Training and policy changes further illustrate this trend toward differential standards. Following high-profile incidents like the 2020 death of Regis Korchinski-Paquet and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, Canadian police forces have overhauled training to emphasize “de-escalation” and “cultural competency,” often with specific focus on interactions with Indigenous and racialized populations. For instance, the RCMP introduced mandatory “bias-free policing” modules by 2022, which instruct officers to consider historical trauma and systemic factors when engaging with certain groups. While these measures aim to reduce harm, they implicitly encourage officers to alter their approach—sometimes reducing enforcement rigor—based on an individual’s perceived identity, diverging from a strictly neutral standard.
Legal and governmental frameworks also support this shift. In 2023, Bill C-92, an Act respecting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children, youth, and families, effectively granted Indigenous communities greater autonomy over child welfare, including policing-related interventions, creating a parallel system distinct from mainstream enforcement. Similarly, hate crime laws and sentencing guidelines increasingly factor in identity-based considerations, with offenders targeting “vulnerable” groups facing harsher penalties, while enforcement in marginalized communities is often softened to avoid perceptions of over-policing. This dual-track approach—tougher on some, lighter on others—reflects a deliberate move away from universal standards toward identity-specific policing practices.
Finally, public and institutional pressure continues to reinforce this trajectory. Advocacy groups, such as the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers and Indigenous rights organizations, have successfully lobbied for policies that treat identity as a mitigating factor in policing. Reports like the 2021 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry explicitly called for reduced police intervention in Indigenous communities, alongside increased accountability for officers dealing with these populations. Meanwhile, urban police forces face scrutiny for “over-policing” racialized neighborhoods, prompting initiatives like Toronto’s 2024 “Community Crisis Support Service,” which diverts mental health calls involving racialized individuals away from police entirely. These developments signal a broader trend: policing in Canada is increasingly calibrated to identity, balancing equity goals against the traditional ethos of equal enforcement. Whether this enhances justice or undermines fairness remains a point of contention.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
1 comment
April 3, 2025 at 6:59 am
tildeb
This approach leads directly to less policing, less enforcement, and greater crime. This is the same policy that led to the rise and growth of the UK rape gangs… and we see exactly the same patterns developing in Canada.
How so?
The cover for crime when confronted by law enforcement is ‘Racism!’ Because race supposedly matters. Politicians and police won’t address criminal activity if there is a racial element – especially by ethnic gangs – because they will be called racists. Judges will take into account this nebulous idea of ‘historical harm’ coming from a ‘victimized community’ and massively reduce penalties should the criminal be able to use indigeneity as an excuse. So we get a Myles Sanderson rampaging across Saskatchewan killing 11 and injuring 18 AFTER being convicted over 50 times of violent crimes and put right back into the public every single time. To do anything else was and remains ‘racist’ because race is now the elevated to be the more important metric than the crimes being committed. The changes in law and judicial reports and judgements reflect this. Equality is no longer a valid legal principle in Canada.
So the threat of this label alone – imposed by policy and laws on those dealing with the public – is enough in enforcement to either slow down response time or excuse no intervention. It is enough to compel judges to rule using race as the important criteria and equality nowhere in sight. So we see Chinese triads operating in the open laundering money and buying properties and threatening diaspora to obey CCP dictates while neutering investigations into their role influencing Canada into becoming a Chinese proxy state. This is how it’s done. And anything else causes a mass reflex of pearl clutching by those who believe race is the most important determining factor in causing behaviour and vote and opine accordingly. It’s why we see this bullshit throughout public education (in spite of historically low student attendance, historically high violence in schools, historically low literacy and numeracy rates, and so on). It’s a major reason why Canada is fast becoming a failed state. But those citizens playing their part in shaping Canada into a failed state think they are the kind ones, the nice ones, on the right side of history and full of self-anointed virtue as they gut our founding principles like equality and replace them with opposite destructive and divisive values intended to dismantle our founding and common ones.
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