Why has the police response been so different to the lawlessness in Ottawa?

Feb. 7, 2022

All that is at stake here is our freedom. Not a juvenile notion of freedom — but freedom from the tyranny of hatred.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the ongoing events in Ottawa is not the lawlessness but the failure of law enforcement to police it.

Law enforcement in our constitutional democracy prescribes a very simple duty upon the police: enforce the laws passed by democratically elected governments within the framework of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is a duty that applies to all such laws. It is a duty that requires the enforcement in relation to all Canadians.

We have seen police services across the country enforce laws against certain Canadian minority groups with great force and great apparent enthusiasm. This is why the almost total police inaction against the undisguised, unquestionable transgressions of a different minority group of Canadians against myriad federal, provincial and municipal laws in Ottawa has been so shocking to so many Canadians.

Why did this happen? The police response has been an unwillingness to provoke this particular Canadian minority. Many Canadians wonder, therefore, why a similar approach has not been taken with other minority Canadian protesters by police services. They ask themselves, why has policing not been as patient about even minor criminality in demonstrations of political grievances by Canadians who do not carry Nazi flags or the banners of white supremacy, who do not flout public heath measures designed to protect their most vulnerable fellow citizens, and who do not assault and threaten their fellow Canadians?

There is, of course, an obvious possible answer to this question: police services agree with them.

Certainly not all police officers agree, of course. There are, to turn a phrase, many good apples in the bunch; perhaps even a large majority. But are they a controlling majority? Are they the ones dictating policy and the day-to-day institutional attitude of their services in encounters with various segments of our population, or are they cowed by a thuggish, racist, bigoted and biased minority?

What, after all, is the explanation for a seemingly unending string of independently documented racist acts and acts of extreme brutality by police services across the country against visible and vulnerable minorities? What is the explanation for one female officer after another leaving police services citing the unbearable misogyny of male officers? And what is the explanation for case after proven case of police violations of the most fundamental Charter rights of Canadian minority groups? Should not our police services always reflect the intolerance toward such behaviour the majority of Canadians feel?

Personally, I do not believe “defund the police” to mean eliminating the police. Can one imagine what this group currently running lawless and loose would be doing without at least the possible threat of a significant police response?

On the contrary, I can imagine policing in Canada that actually lives up to the typical police motto of serving and protecting. First, however, any minority of police officers holding white supremacist and anti-democratic views must be removed from the profession and replaced with champions of diversity and democracy.

I believe defunding to mean using the ultimate control of taxpayer funding to curtail that funding until a police service clears its ranks of officers who will only enforce the law and conduct themselves in a nondiscriminatory fashion.

All that is at stake here is our freedom. Not a juvenile notion of freedom — as in not having to wear a mask or to live momentarily with other inconveniences that protect our fellow Canadians — but freedom from the tyranny of hatred. To preserve that freedom we need police officers who we can depend upon to properly police white supremacists, not share fist pumps with them.