Police occupy a critical and demanding role in Canadian society. They are entrusted with preserving public safety and preventing crime while enforcing the law. To achieve these objectives in complex and typically high-pressure situations, the police are granted significant powers — the authority to detain, search, question and use force. However, such powers are not without limits. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms establishes constitutional safeguards designed to protect individuals from state overreach.
The research report, Unlawful Enforcers: Charter Violations by Major Ontario City Police Services, conducted by a team of researchers from Western Law and the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto, investigates what occurs when those protections are not respected. A review of published court decisions between January 1, 2015, and May 31, 2025, revealed that officers from Ontario’s five largest municipal police services — the Toronto, Peel, York, Durham, and Ottawa services — committed over 1,000 Charter violations across more than 600 reported cases.
Many of these violations are not merely technical breaches, but breaches of fundamental constitutional protections. Sections 8 and 10(b) were the most frequently violated Charter protections — namely, the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, and the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay. Together, these two Charter protections account for more than 60% of all violations identified in the report. Importantly, these findings only represent a fraction of the problem. Many decisions are unreported, and the report does not capture Charter-infringing conduct that never results in criminal charges.