Recommendation 11
Police Services should continue developing and enhancing their partnerships with local Fire and Emergency Medical Services to facilitate integration into their public order deployments, as appropriate
Most POU services had external partners such as fire services, paramedic services, and other medical professionals. The services that did use fire and EMS spoke of their positive contributions to their POUs and the enhancements they bring to public and police safety.
Chiefs of Police should continue developing and enhancing their partnerships with external emergency services and medical partners through integrated training, where feasible.
The Ministry of the Solicitor General should also examine options to coordinate and enhance the integration of Fire services in public order deployments, as appropriate.
The Ontario Public Order Hub should explore putting in place a MOU detailing the nature and expectations of these partnerships. The IG also recommends to the Ministry of the Solicitor General that if the Hub is able to develop a model MOU, these MOUs become a compliance requirement contained in Ontario Regulation 392/23 Adequate and Effective Policing (General).
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iv. Ontario Public Order Hub Model
During the events in 2022 related to the Freedom Convoy, the OPP was required to respond to many convoys, demonstrations, and blockades that were consistently and repeatedly emerging in communities across Ontario. This included requirements to concurrently deploy public order units to large scale protests occurring simultaneously in Ottawa, Toronto, and Windsor.
To effectively manage the simultaneous public order events, coordinated support was required from municipal police, the OPP, and RCMP public order units.
As a result, in collaboration with municipal police public order units, the OPP initiated the Ontario Public Order Hub model to ensure public order units were concurrently deployed across the province in an integrated, strategic, and risk-based manner to prevent injury, preserve life, and protect critical infrastructure.
Ultimately, the Hub model enabled the execution of an integrated planning process that facilitated the deployment of multiple public order units from not just Ontario, but throughout Canada, to effectively manage the operational priorities and respond to the Freedom Convoy occupation.
There are currently three Hubs in Ontario (East, West, and Central). The Chair of each Hub is contacted when assistance is required for POU incidents. Typically, these are planned events that are known in advance. The Hub assists by mobilizing POU deployments to public order events throughout Ontario, both in circumstances where the local police service has its own POU, but the event is beyond the scope of what they can manage with their own POU assets – and in circumstances where the public order event is occurring in a jurisdiction where the local police service does not have its own POU. The Hub model facilitates near-constant exchange of information and allows for collaborative and coordinated operational response to dynamic situations such as recent Israel and Hamas war-related demonstrations that have occurred in various locations across the province. The Hub provides immense value for POUs to collaborate, pool resources, and manage deployments in an intelligent fashion that supports a local police Chief’s deployment decision-making.
However, the Hub is not formalized as an entity within Ontario’s public order policing landscape. It is important to address this, and ensure that the coordination, information-sharing and policing support that it offers becomes a permanent fixture of Ontario’s public order policing system. It is vital that through this formalization, police services that are part of the Hub are able to both deliver adequate and effective public order policing locally in their ‘home’ jurisdiction and provide effective support to others when called on to do so.
This Inspection identified an increase in demand for public deployment in Ontario, that is expected to continue trending upwards. Coupled with the complexity of events witnessed in recent years that transcend jurisdictions, including areas of federal jurisdiction (e.g., international borders), these factors risk putting very real pressures on existing POUs and their services without a sustainable approach. Ontario’s Public Order Hub model offers a strategic and scalable solution that not only supports Ontario but can be adopted at a national level.
Recommendation 3 in the Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency states that:
“Police and other law enforcement agencies [to] develop, in conjunction with affected governments, protocols around requests for additional law enforcement resources, where a police service is unable to respond on its own to major events, including certain protests” (Recommendation 3).[1]
The Ontario Public Order Hub is the framework to bring the Inquiry’s recommendation into practice, as it will address the imperative for coordination of public order resources during major events. In addition, given that public order needs are increasingly crossing jurisdictional boundaries, all orders of government should work together to find sustainable funding solutions or risk potentially greater pressure on the current system and its ability to effectively ensure public safety.
Given the IG’s mandate to ensure compliance with the CSPA, the Ontario Public Order Hub model should consider the new requirements in the CSPA when entering into policing arrangements (under section 14) or making requests for temporary or emergency assistance (under section 19). There are also new requirements to provide notification to the IG where these arrangements or requests occur. It is vital that any public order maintenance collaboration directly between police services or through the Hub comply with these new requirements.
[1]The Honourable Paul S. Rouleau, “Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency” Volume 1: Overview (2023): pg. 252.