THE GOVERNANCE DEFICIT: REFLECTIONS ON THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC AND PRIVATE POLICING IN CANADA
Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice
http://www.ccja-acjp.ca/en/cjc/cjc47a1.html
Scott Burbidge
Port Williams, NS

The growing presence of private police in our society, and especially the fact that they perform many policing functions traditionally regarded as the preserve of public police, raises fundamental questions of police governance and accountability for a democratic society based on the rule of law and respect for human rights. From the perspective of the rule of law and respect for human rights, this article argues that it is unacceptable that while the public police (at least in theory) are governed by and accountable to democratically elected governmental authority and to the public, private police officers performing the same policing functions as their public police counterparts are not subject to the same form of democratic governance and accountability.

Given existing federal and provincial human rights legislation in Canada, and the recent extension of federal privacy and access legislation to the private sector, there would seem to be no insurmountable jurisdictional or constitutional obstacle to extending the notion of a code of conduct incorporating human rights to the private security sector, insofar as they are involved in the exercise of the police powers of investigation, detention, arrest, the gathering and sharing of personal information, and so on. Such a development would constitute significant progress towards achieving comprehensive and effective democratic governance and accountability for both public and private policing in Canada.