Alok Mukherjee, The Way I See It

On May 20, Mark Saunders posted this tweet of himself posing with a group of Toronto police officers at a “32 Division Police Community BBQ.”.

This is Mark Saunders, one of 100+ candidates for a political office, that of Toronto’s Mayor, and not Toronto’s Chief of Police. That’s the job he stepped down from on July 31, 2020. Since then, he has run for the provincial parliament and taken on other political assignments for Ontario’s Conservative Premier Doug Ford.

It is generally accepted that Saunders is Doug Ford’s man in the race and has the support of the Ford Nation’s well-oiled electoral machinery.

If he wins, he would be a “strong” mayor, able to exercise the powers the Ford government has given, to override the elected city council and implement measures in areas the province designates as priorities. One doesn’t have to be a genius to figure out that Ford would love dearly to have this man in the Toronto Mayor’s office. He has praised him quite openly and said how he shudders at the idea of a “leftie” winning instead.

To put it bluntly, Mark Saunders is Doug Ford’s stalking horse, and to re-phrase Ford, I shudder at the idea of him winning.

Saunders’s May 20 tweet represents a very important reason why I question his fitness for the city’s top job: his judgement, or paucity thereof.

Using uniformed police officers, for whose salaries the city provides the funds, to promote his candidacy for a political office in a democratic system adds to his record of repeated poor judgement. Many of us remember well Chief Saunders’s justification of random stops and carding, his refusal to implement the Toronto police services board’s policy on police engagement with public, his poor implementation of Justice Iacobucci’s report on police interactions with people in crisis, his incompetent and irresponsible handling of the Church Street multiple murders by Bruce McArthur, his completely improper buttonholing and lobbying of city councillors for a larger police budget, and the deterioration of the critical 911 service under his watch.

But his total lack of understanding of or disregard for the importance of keeping policing out of partisan politics stands out.

Readers may remember an incident from 2015 when Saunders’s predecessor, retired Chief Bill Blair, decided to seek the nomination as Liberal Party’s candidate for Parliament from a Scarborough riding.

Chief Saunders showed up at a rally in a hotel. To avoid being recognized, he came dressed as a civilian, wearing a tattered t-shirt and jeans. He tried to hide in the crowd, but his presence was captured by a vigilant reporter’s camera. He was not off duty; his presence raised many questions of judgement, conduct and ethics. He got away because his employer, the police services board functioning under the thumb of his patron, Mayor John Tory, gave him a pass.

The May 20 photograph with a group of smiling police officers repeats the same lack of understanding of or disregard for avoiding politicization of the police, except this time, from the opposite direction. This time, the former police chief has compromised members of the police service by using the photo-op as endorsement of his candidacy for a political office. Not just any political office, but one which has the potential to exercise significant influence on city policing generally and the working conditions as well as remuneration of police officers specifically.

It is one thing for Mark Saunders to present himself as a “law and order” candidate and leverage his own career as a police officer. It is quite another for him to compromise the independent and non-partisan character of policing.

What makes this particularly egregious, disturbing and concerning is that he should know better. Section 46 of the Police Services Act says quite unambiguously: “[N]o municipal police officer shall engage in political activity, except as the regulations permit.”  And Ontario Regulation 554/91 governs the political activities of municipal police officers. 

Since 2004, the Toronto police services board has had a policy in place called “Political Activity of Police Officers,” which states:

It is the policy of the Toronto Police Services Board that: 

1. The endorsement or opposition of political candidates by municipal police officers is prohibited by the Police Services Act and its Regulations; 
2. Members of the Toronto Police Association or its Executive are subject to the Police Services Act and its Regulations; 
3. The Chief of Police will communicate with the Toronto Police Service each time an election campaign commences to reiterate that police officers are prohibited from using their status as police officers to endorse or oppose candidates during an election; and 
4. The Chief of Police will discipline any police officer who contravenes this policy.

As one who worked for a long time as a police officer, and the last few as the chief, Saunders ought to know better. The only conclusion is that he has chosen to flout both the Police Services Act and board’s policy.

That brings me to the actions or inactions of the board, the current chief, Myron Demkiw, and the Unit Commander of 32 Division. Have they followed the statutory prohibition and the board policy to ensure that members of the police service are aware of the rules?

For years, after the policy was approved, the police chief, following the board’s request, sent out a reminder about this policy to all members of the police service whenever a municipal election was called. Prior to the adoption of this policy, police stations used to offer promotional materials of preferred candidates. The policy stopped that practice and any direct involvement in municipal election campaigns by police officers.

Saunders may not care, but the Toronto police services board and Chief of Police Myron Demkiw must.Do not let Mark Saunders – or any other candidate – compromise the important separation of police from partisan politics by directly or indirectly using police officers as props for their campaigns.