Law enforcement in Canada

Overview of law enforcement in Canada

Law enforcement in Canada is the responsibility of police services, special constabularies, and civil law enforcement agencies, which are operated by every level of government, some private and Crown corporations, and First Nations. In contrast to the United States or Mexico, and with the exception of the Unité permanente anticorruption (English: Permanent Anti corruption Unit) in Quebec and the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia, there are no organizations dedicated exclusively to the investigation of criminal activity in Canada. Criminal investigations are instead conducted by police services, which maintain specialized criminal investigation units in addition to their mandate for emergency response and general community safety. Canada's provinces are responsible for the development and maintenance of police forces and special constabularies, and every province except Newfoundland and Labrador delegates this responsibility to municipalities, which can establish their own police forces or contract with a neighbouring community or the province for police services. Civil law enforcement, however, is the responsibility of the level or agency of government that developed those laws — the by laws of a transit authority, for example, are enforced by that transit authority, while federal environmental regulations are enforced by the federal government. The federal government maintains its own police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, popularly known in English speaking areas as the "Mounties"), which provides federal criminal law enforcement and contract police services to provinces and municipalities that do not maintain their own police forces. Since the 1990s, a framework has existed for First Nations to establish their own police services, funded entirely by the federal and provincial governments and regulated by provinces. These police services generally receive less funding compared to other Canadian police forces — for example, in 2016, the Nishnawbe Aski Police Service in Ontario received only 36% of the funding that the Ontario Provincial Police estimated it would cost to police the same area.

Police services in Canada are responsible for the maintenance of the King's peace through proactive patrols and emergency response, the enforcement of criminal law, and the enforcement of some civil law. The exact duties of Canadian police forces vary significantly. Some police services are responsible for municipal by law enforcement, and many large police forces maintain investigative units specialized in technical or financial crimes. In some provinces, police forces are obliged to investigate all traffic collisions, regardless of whether or not they resulted in injuries or serious damage. An increasing share of Canadian communities and police forces have adopted tiered police service delivery models, which reduce the responsibilities — but not powers or mandate — of police services and police officers, usually by employing unarmed peace officers to respond to lower risk emergencies or enforce traffic regulations. although contract policing for provinces, territories, municipalities, and First Nations is at the "heart of what the RCMP does." In addition to its contracts with three territories, eight provinces, 150 municipalities, and more than 600 Indigenous communities, the RCMP is responsible for border integrity; overseeing Canadian peacekeeping missions involving police; managing the Canadian Firearms Program, which licenses and registers firearms and their owners; and the Canadian Police College, which provides police training to Canadian and international police forces. The force has faced criticism for its uniquely broad mandate, and a partially redacted 2019 memo to then Minister of Public Safety Bill Blair "confirmed" for the Minister that "federal policing responsibilities have been and are being eroded to meet contract demands." Between 2012 and 2020, the RCMP gradually closed its money laundering and financial crimes units in British Columbia and Ontario, In 2021, an all party federal parliamentary committee recommended terminating the RCMP's contract policing program, and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was mandated to conduct a review of RCMP contract policing when he took office in 2022. The CFMP provides police, security, and operational support services to the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the Department of National Defence (DND). As a military police force, the CFMP does not have a frontline community policing role, but CFMP members are considered peace officers under the Criminal Code. CFMP officers have authority over any person subject to the Code of Service Discipline (CSD), regardless of their position or rank, and can charge members of the broader public when a crime is committed on or in relation to DND property or assets, or at the request of the Minister of Public Safety, the Commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, or the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The ability of CFMP members to enforce provincial legislation varies, however, and in several provinces, CFMP officers can enforce neither traffic legislation nor mental health legislation — even on military bases. The CFMP maintains an investigations branch, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service, which has the ability to investigate any crime concerning DND property or employees, except for sexual assault and intimate partner violence.

Under the Railway Safety Act, any railway in Canada can request that a superior court judge appoint railway employees as police officers. These officers are hired, trained, and employed by the railway for the purposes of preventing crimes against the company and the protection of goods, materials, and public rail transit being moved through the railway network, and have nationwide jurisdiction within 500 metres of a railway line or as it relates to railway operations. As of 2023, the Canadian National Railway, the Canadian Pacific Kansas City railway, and Via Rail—a Crown Corporation—each maintain their own police service. TransLink, the transit authority for the Metro Vancouver Regional District in British Columbia, maintains a police force authorized by the province as opposed to the federal Railway Safety Act. Some smaller railways and transit authorities, such as GO Transit, also maintain provincially regulated special constabularies to protect passengers and property. These agencies are authorized by provincial governments and are not related to federally authorized Railway Safety Act police forces. Railway police have attracted scrutiny and criticism for their privately funded nature and role in investigating train derailments. In 2020, a former Canadian Pacific Police Service officer alleged that he was ordered to stop investigating a fatal railway derailment to protect the railway's interests.

There are five provincial police services in Canada, maintained by four provinces, although only three are involved in frontline policing. The Ontario Provincial Police, Sûreté du Québec, and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary provide provincial police services to Ontario,Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador, respectively, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary provides Frontline police services to all areas they police in Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia and the Unité permanente anticorruption provide specialized criminal law enforcement services to British Columbia and Quebec, respectively. In Ontario, the OPP provides police services to municipalities without independent police forces regardless of whether or not there is a contract in place for them to do so, but contracts enable municipalities to direct police service priorities, have a role in selecting detachment commanders, and review police service performance, including complaints, on a regular basis. In Quebec, contract police services are available to any municipality — outside of those in urban agglomerations — with fewer than 50,000 residents. In 2021, a provincial committee recommended that the population threshold for contract police services be raised to 130,000 residents and that police forces serving populations under this threshold be folded into the Sûreté du Québec. The Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia (OCABC) is legally defined as a designated policing unit, like the Metro Vancouver Transit Police and Stlʼatlʼimx Tribal Police Service, and is the "core agency" of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit – British Columbia (CFSEU BC). Despite its status as the core agency of the combined unit, the CFSEU BC is governed by RCMP policies and procedures rather than the policies and procedures of the OCABC. but relied on secondments from other police services until 2018, when it became its own police force. and strategically leaked information to the press to promote the unit's activities — and, in the process, interrupted and ultimately stopped legal proceedings against a former politician.

Municipal police forces make up the bulk of Canadian police services, and are generally responsible for all criminal matters within their jurisdiction. There are municipal police services in nine provinces, with 12 in British Columbia, seven in Alberta, 12 in Saskatchewan, 10 in Manitoba, 44 in Ontario, 31 in Quebec, 10 in Nova Scotia, and three in Prince Edward Island. Almost every major city in Canada maintains a municipal police service, and the majority of municipal police forces serve urban areas exclusively. Many rural communities also operate police services, however, and several have only a handful of police officers. The police services in the Town of Luseland, Saskatchewan, and the Rural Municipality of Cornwallis, Manitoba both have one officer each. while other provinces allow small police forces to rely on outside resources to routinely supplement their patrols and investigations. Some provinces, such as Manitoba, do not define a minimum standard of "adequate and effective" policing, while others, such as Quebec, authorize several tiers of police forces based on the size of the municipality, with the lowest tiers providing only basic patrol and law enforcement functions and the highest tiers responsible for all law enforcement, investigations, and policing in their jurisdiction. Beginning in the 1970s, and continuing into the 1990s, several municipal police forces were amalgamated (alongside, in many cases, the municipalities they served) into new, regional organizations in the interest of creating efficiencies and reducing costs. Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. The adoption of regional policing has been controversial, however, and a review of nine Canadian police services in 2016 found that there were no significant differences in cost or service quality between regional and non regional police forces, and a separate 2015 literature review found that larger police services are less effective and more expensive than those serving about 50 000 people. As of 2022, police regionalization continues to be proposed by both provinces and municipalities, particularly in metropolitan areas where several urban municipalities that border one another each maintain independent police services.

In Canada, special constables are sworn peace officers granted police powers to enforce specific legislation in a distinct context or geographic area. Special constables are regulated differently in each province and territory, and as such, there is no consistent definition of a special constabulary in Canada. Typically, a special constabulary is any law enforcement organization composed of special constables, peace officers, or safety officers (as opposed to police officers) with a mandate for criminal law enforcement and/or general peacekeeping and security. Some civil law enforcement agencies, usually those whose staff are designated as special constables, are also considered special constabularies. Special constables are not exclusively employed by special constabularies, and may be employed by government ministries which require civilian investigators to have some police authority, by police services as part of a tiered police service delivery model, or by civil law enforcement officers in jurisdictions that do not authorize a specific class of civil law enforcement officer. Special constabularies are used extensively in southern Ontario, where they are maintained by transit authorities, universities, park authorities, and some social housing corporations. In Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Yukon, municipalities and other government agencies can raise special constabularies to enforce by laws, traffic regulations, and other civil legislation, but are generally unable to enforce the Criminal Code. In those four provinces and three territories, municipal special constabularies are distinct from ordinary municipal by law enforcement agencies in their proactive posture, role in frontline policing, and enforcement of provincial legislation. In 2021, the City of Moncton, New Brunswick, requested that the provincial government amend provincial legislation to allow municipalities in the province to maintain special constabularies able to enforce provincial legislation like those in Alberta and Quebec.

British Columbia, Ontario, and Saskatchewan maintain special constabularies for the purposes of protecting their provincial legislatures. Select special constables in British Columbia and Ontario were armed with handguns in the wake of the 2014 Parliament Hill shooting. In Alberta, legislative security is provided by the Alberta Sheriffs Branch, an armed provincial law enforcement agency also responsible for courtroom security, traffic enforcement on provincial highways, and some criminal investigations. In Saskatchewan, in addition to the Legislative District Security Unit, the Provincial Protective Service (responsible for the provincial highway patrol, sheriffs officers, and conservation officers) maintains a special constabulary that patrols Wascana Centre, the park that surrounds the provincial legislature. The federal parliament buildings in Ottawa are protected by the Parliamentary Protective Service, which was formed by amalgamating the House of Commons Security Services, Senate Protective Service, and the RCMP parliamentary precinct detachment. The Service, which was formed after the 2014 Parliament Hill shooting, is not a special constabulary, and only some of its members have the powers of a peace officer.

Civil law enforcement agencies are responsible for the specialized enforcement of civil legislation. Civil law enforcement agencies are maintained by every level of government, a variety of government corporations and authorities, and First Nations. The powers of civil law enforcement agencies vary significantly. Some, such as the Saskatchewan Highway Patrol, have the authority to enforce criminal legislation in addition to their primary mandate to enforce civil legislation, while others are limited to enforcing only a handful of by laws. Regardless of the breadth of their legislative authority, all civil law enforcement officers in Canada are considered peace officers for the purposes of carrying out their duties, and may be variously appointed as special constables, provincial offences officers, or generically as peace officers.

The federal government maintains several civil law enforcement agencies, most prominent among them the Canada Border Services Agency, which manages Canadian ports of entry and enforces the Customs Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, and the Quarantine Act. The Agency also operates a Criminal Investigations Unit that investigates criminal violations of CBSA enforced legislation, such as smuggling or immigration fraud. The government of Canada also employs fishery officers, who enforce federal fishing and fishery regulations; and Environment and Climate Change Canada enforcement officers, who are responsible for enforcing federal environmental regulations. The Canada Revenue Agency operates a variety of compliance and enforcement divisions, but its proactive criminal enforcement unit, which collaborated with RCMP officers to break up organized crime rings, was disbanded after budget cuts in 2012. (The RCMP disbanded its various counterparts to the CRA's criminal enforcement unit between 2012 and 2020.) The federal government also operates the Competition Bureau, which enforces the Competition Act, the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, the Textile Labelling Act and the Precious Metals Marking Act. Parks Canada maintains a park warden service, which is responsible for the enforcement of the Canada National Parks Act, the Species at Risk Act, and park specific legislation.

Each province and territory in Canada operates or authorizes a variety of civil law enforcement agencies, including employment standards and workplace safety offices, Because of the wide ranging regulatory powers of provinces, and the technical, specialized nature of much of civil law enforcement, many provincial civil law enforcement agencies operate in obscurity. While conservation officers in every province and territory are routinely armed, only the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and New Brunswick deploy armed commercial vehicle enforcement officers. Some provinces, such as Ontario, empower provincial corporations and authorities to establish and maintain their own civil law enforcement agencies, separate from the provincial government.

Almost every province and territory in Canada maintains a sheriffs service, although their role and powers vary between jurisdictions. In most provinces and all three territories, sheriffs are limited to providing courtroom security, enforcing court orders, and transporting offenders to and from court. In Quebec, sheriffs have no security function and are instead limited to enforcing court orders and selecting juries. Since 2006, the province of Alberta has gradually expanded the mandate and powers of its sheriffs service, which now maintains a highway patrol, a criminal investigations unit, and provides legislative security to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Ontario is the only province or territory in Canada that does not maintain a sheriffs service — instead, court security and prisoner transport duties are handled by local police services, and the enforcement of court orders is the responsibility of the Superior Court of Justice Enforcement Office, which was named and is still sometimes referred to as the sheriff's office.

Every municipality in Canada is authorized to develop and enforce municipal by laws, but each province and territory regulates the authority of municipal law enforcement agencies differently. In British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, municipal enforcement agencies are generally limited to the enforcement of municipal legislation and operate on an as requested basis. In all three territories, as well as the provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, some — but not all — municipal enforcement agencies also enforce provincial legislation and control traffic. Several municipalities rely on police services or contracted commissionaires for bylaw enforcement.

[[File:Police car in Kuujjuaq (Fort Chimo), Québec, Canada. jpg|thumb|left|A patrol car belonging to the Kativik Regional Police Force (now the Nunavik Police Service), an arm of the Kativik Regional Government. The Regional Government was established as a result of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and serves a population that is mostly Inuit. and the law enforcement powers of Indigenous governments vary significantly between the different groups. Métis self government exists only in eight settlements in Alberta, none of which have the authority to raise police services, but may, with provincial approval, establish bylaw enforcement agencies. The territory of Nunavut and regional government of Kativik, both of which are populated mostly by Inuit peoples, were established after Inuit land claims agreements, but are not exclusive to Inuit peoples, have authority over police services. First Nations and Inuit communities governed by the Indian Act have access to the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program operated by Public Safety Canada and can establish their own police forces, funded entirely by the federal and provincial governments, but most Inuit governments and First Nations that have completed the comprehensive land claims process can only contract police services to a third party police force (although frameworks exist for these Nations to eventually establish their own independent police services). Because of the history of the Canadian reserve system, which operated on the assumption that Indigenous families required less land than settler families and routinely gave away reserve lands to settlers without Indigenous consultation or consent, many reserves are too small to sustain independent police forces, requiring First Nations to form regional police agencies with neighbouring communities or contract with the federal or provincial governments for police services.

thumb|A First Nations constable employed by the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation Police, an OPP administered First Nations police service. The Shoal Lake Police would later be amalgamated into the Treaty Three Police Service. The policing of Indigenous communities in Canada has long been fraught with racial tension, inequitable police service delivery, and the enforcement of colonial laws and practices. Beginning in the 1960s, the federal government began to withdraw RCMP officers from reserves in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in favour of provincial control over First Nations policing. Between 1990 and 1995, there were several high profile conflicts between Indigenous protesters demanding the return of lands to which they had Aboriginal title and non Indigenous police forces, resulting in the death of a police officer — Corporal Marcel Lemay of the Sûreté du Québec — and an unarmed Indigenous protester named Dudley George. During the 1995 Gustafsen Lake standoff, an RCMP commander reportedly told a subordinate to kill a prominent Indigenous demonstrator and "smear the prick and everyone with him," and an RCMP media liaison officer was quoted as saying that "smear campaigns are [the RCMP's] specialty." The federal government created the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program in 1992, which scholars have called the first "comprehensive national policing strategy for [a country's] Aboriginal peoples." Saskatchewan, and Manitoba; three services in Alberta; nine in Ontario; and 23 in Quebec, although that number had decreased to 22 by 2020. First Nations police services are required to meet different standards in each province. In British Columbia, First Nations police services are considered "designated policing units" and placed in the same category as the Metro Vancouver Transit Police. In Alberta, First Nations police services cannot maintain specialized resources, such as police dogs, and must consult with the RCMP before completing investigations into major crimes. Many First Nations police services face serious funding shortfalls. In January 2006, two Indigenous men burned to death and an officer was seriously injured in a rescue attempt at a Nishnawbe Aski Police Service detachment that the police force could not afford to bring into compliance with the fire code. (Two years later, the service had only one detachment that met provincial standards.) Other First Nations police services have struggled to pay for officers' wages and benefits or fill frontline positions because of budget shortfalls. In 2022, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found that the federal government, which unilaterally and noted that "a truly decolonized lens would see Indigenous police services as an option for neighbouring municipalities or regions." Earlier that same year, the federal government began engaging First Nations about changes to the program and Indigenous police legislation.

thumb|left|Indigenous art on the fender of a Vancouver police cruiser. The Vancouver Police Department, which provides police services to the Musqueam First Nation, is one of many non Indigenous government services in British Columbia to have added First Nations art to buildings and vehicles in recent years. Every form of Indigenous government has the power to enact and enforce by laws. Métis settlements receive their authority from the Alberta Metis Settlements Act, However, because the Indian Act does not specify whether by law violations should be prosecuted in federal or provincial and territorial courts, some provincial courts will not prosecute Indigenous laws. The federal government ended a program that allowed Indigenous governments to appoint federal judges to enforce Indigenous laws in specialized courts in 2004, and as of 2022, few Indigenous governments exercise their powers to enact and enforce by laws. Several First Nations, such as the Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation in northern Ontario, rely on police services to enforce by laws, while others maintain dedicated by law enforcement agencies. First Nations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba can maintain special constabularies for the enforcement of Indigenous and provincial legislation. Some First Nations police services, citing a lack of legitimacy or prosecutability, will not enforce Indigenous laws.

Several First Nations operate community safety organizations with few or no law enforcement powers. The Musqueam First Nation in British Columbia maintains a Safety and Security Department, responsible for emergency management, community patrols, and "ensur[ing] compliance" with Musqueam by laws. The Fort McKay First Nation in the Alberta oil sands maintains a Park Ranger Program, staffed by peace officers able to enforce First Nation by laws but only report violations of provincial or federal law, to patrol the reserve's parks and wilderness and provide assistance and education to band members and visitors. In Yukon, First Nations can hire "community safety officers", who — unlike community safety officers in Saskatchewan — have no law enforcement or police powers and are instead tasked with patrolling communities, engaging with residents, and responding to emergencies. Many of these agencies are composed mostly or entirely of elders. Some First Nations in Saskatchewan operate "peacekeeper" programs, whose staff do not have law enforcement or police powers, to respond to non violent calls for service, vehicle accidents, and fires. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, public safety services are provided to urban Indigenous populations by the all volunteer Bear Clan Patrol, as well as other organizations, such as the Mama Bear Clan. The Patrol conducts regular patrols of Indigenous neighbourhoods, liaises with Winnipeg Police to search for missing people, and delivers food to unhoused residents. The model became increasingly popular during the late 1990s, motivated by a desire to reduce costs and simplify hiring and training processes. As of 2023, two provinces (Alberta and Saskatchewan) have specific frameworks for municipalities to employ unarmed peace officers to deliver some police services, and tiered police service delivery models are practised in three more (British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario). The Saskatoon Police Service employs special constables, referred to as "alternative response officers," to guard crime scenes, direct traffic at emergencies and events, and conduct foot patrols in high crime areas. The File Hills First Nations Police Service employs special constables to fulfill almost all community policing duties in member reserves, manage police stations and police records, conduct traffic enforcement, and respond to some calls for service. Police services in Ontario have practiced tiered policing since the 1980s, when special constables first began to assume court protection and prisoner transport duties, Cobourg Police Service, and Toronto Police Service now deploy special constables and volunteer auxiliary constables in frontline policing roles. Since 2021, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has employed Civilian Criminal Investigators, unarmed peace officers recruited from non police fields, to assist with technical computer science or financial crimes. In all three territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Urban agglomeration of Montreal, Newfoundland and Labrador, and parts of southern Ontario, tiered police service delivery includes separate special constabularies, which provide police services to municipalities served by regional or contracted police forces and to specific organizations, such as universities or transit systems. In some communities, the adoption of tiered policing has been hampered by "outdated" perceptions that special constables and other non police specialists are untrained, ill equipped, or assuming less important duties compared to police. Some police services have also struggled with social rankings that result in the exclusion of non police staff from events and workplace conversations, contributing to a sense of alienation. Tiered policing has been compared to and proposed as an alternative policy response to proposals to "de task" and "defund" the police service.

In 2000, the Toronto Police Service partnered with local hospitals to create the Mobile Crisis Intervention Team, which pairs nurses with frontline police officers to respond to mental health crises. The program is only active in some parts of the City, and only during the afternoon and early evening, although it has gradually expanded since its introduction. The Royal Newfoundland Constabulary offers services of a Mobile Crisis Response Team which is formed as a combined of mental health nurses, social workers and plain clothed police officers. All calls for Mental Health intervention initiate a response by the MCRT. This response has proven to be largely successful with an increase of community resources and a decrease in calls over time as each community becomes educated on available resources. Similar programs exist in parts of Ontario; parts of Metro Vancouver and Vancouver Island; Alberta and Saskatchewan, where they are operated by each province's respective provincial health authority; Winnipeg, Manitoba; the Halifax Regional Municipality; Newfoundland and Labrador; and some First Nations. Many of these services operate part time, restrict their clientele to certain demographics (such as youths), and have only a few teams to cover a large area. There are no mobile mental health crisis response teams in Quebec or Canada's territories, although the Nunavut RCMP began talks with the Nunavut Justice Department in 2020 to implement a unit. Following the death of Regis Korchinski Paquet, the Toronto Police Service expanded its Mobile Crisis Intervention Team and began dispatching members of the team through 9 1 1 calls, rather than by back up requests from other officers.

In every province except Quebec, municipalities operating their own police service are required to establish a police commission, also referred to as a police board or police services board, to oversee local policing, prepare budgets, hire the chief of police, and legally employ every police officer at an arms length of the municipal council. These commissions have authority over the policies and procedures of the police service, and while they do not have control over operational matters (i. e. the number of police officers dispatched to a protest or a decision to charge an offender), they can offer advice about and oversee most policing operations.

thumb|alt=Six Calgary Police police officers stand side by side in a grass field. From left to right, one officer is wearing a cowboy hat and no rank insignia, one is wearing no hat and rank epaulettes revealing that she is an inspector, one is wearing a peaked cap and deputy chief rank insignia, one wears a cowboy hat and no rank insignia, one wears a peaked cap and police chief rank insignia, and another wears a cowboy hat and sergeant stripes on his sleeve.|Members of the Calgary Police Service, including Police Chief Mark Neufeld (second from right), posing for a photo at a Canada Day event in 2022. Canadian police ranks are largely consistent with those used by British and Commonwealth police services. Uniquely, Canadian police services use the title "staff" in place of "chief" for certain ranks, such as staff sergeant or staff inspector. Chief of Police is the title of the head of most Canadian police forces, except in British Columbia (where police executives are called Chief Constable or Chief Officer) and Quebec (where police executives are called Directors). In most provinces, police ranks and insignia are regulated by the solicitor general. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Ontario Provincial Police both use the title "Commissioner." Most police cruisers are equipped with carbine rifles and other long guns designed to fire less lethal ammunition. Police officers and special constables are also usually equipped with collapsible batons and pepper spray. Police services have equipped officers with Tasers as early as 2001, but their use has been controversial. In one 2021 incident, a judge stayed all charges against a man who was repeatedly tasered by an Edmonton police officer after a brief foot chase, finding that the officer had tasered him "out of frustration" and violated their police force's Taser policies. In 2007, RCMP officers killed Robert Dziekański, a Polish citizen, with a Taser at the Vancouver International Airport. The incident prompted the Toronto Police Service and Royal Newfoundland Constabulary to put orders for Tasers on hold. (Both forces eventually acquired Tasers.) Taser deployments, and particularly their use against people experiencing mental health crises, continued to attract public scrutiny as of 2022.

Compared to American police forces, Canadian police and law enforcement agencies have been slow to adopt body worn cameras. The first police force to acquire body worn cameras on a permanent basis was the single officer police service in the Rural Municipality of Cornwallis, Manitoba, in 2016. In the wake of protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, body worn cameras were adopted by several Canadian police forces, including the Toronto Police Service, Cobourg Police Service, Kentville Police Service, and Saint John Police Force. The RCMP planned to roll body worn cameras out starting in late 2021, but had not yet awarded a contract for supplying the cameras as of November of that year. However, as of May 2023, the RCMP is starting to roll out body worn cameras to some detachments

Some special constabularies, such as the Saskatchewan Highway Patrol, also use body worn cameras. The Happy Valley Goose Bay Municipal Enforcement Department, a special constabulary in Newfoundland and Labrador, equipped its officers with body worn cameras briefly in 2021 before the province's privacy commissioner recommended that the Town stop the program because of concerns that video footage was not adequately protected.

As part of their authority to establish, maintain, and regulate law enforcement agencies, some provinces regulate the models of vehicle that can be used by police services for frontline policing. In the late 2010s and early 2020s, many Canadian police services began ordering vehicles painted grey, navy blue, or black to replace white and silver coloured cruisers, sparking controversy about their accessibility to the public and visibility in low light conditions. In every province and territory, police services are entitled to use red and blue lights on marked and unmarked emergency vehicles. As of May 2023, the Barrie Police is the first regional police service in Canada to have officially adopted UK inspired Battenburg markings on all of their fleets. Most special constabularies use fleets of marked police model vehicles, and many are painted in colours that reflect the larger corporate branding scheme of their parent organization. In Alberta and Saskatchewan, vehicles maintained by special constabularies must have two blue reflective stripes, the organization's logo, and text that reads "Peace Officer" (in Alberta) or "Community Safety Officer" (in Saskatchewan) on the bottom of the passenger doors. In Quebec, special constabularies are restricted to using red emergency lights exclusively, and in Ontario, special constables can only use emergency lights or sirens if authorized by the relevant police services board. In every other province and in all three territories, including Alberta and Saskatchewan, special constabularies can use red and blue lights. Only some civil law enforcement agencies operate marked vehicles, and the exact markings vary significantly based on the role and nature of the agency. Some agencies, which are operated by police services, use vehicles that are painted in variations of the larger police force's livery, while others operated directly by municipalities or provinces may use vehicles from the larger motor pool, marked only with the parent organization's logo. In British Columbia, by law enforcement officers are authorized to use red lights, and in Ontario, civil law enforcement officers enforcing emissions or commercial vehicle regulations may use red and blue lights and sirens. In every province and territory, civil law enforcement officers employed by conservation officer or commercial vehicle enforcement services can use red and blue lights. Civil law enforcement officers are otherwise restricted to amber lights.