The Asper Centre is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a Law Foundation of Ontario responsive grant to develop online guides to the police oversight procedures in Ontario. This forms part of our ongoing work developing national online guides about the police oversight procedures in all of Canada, which stems from the activities of our recent student working groups on police accountability.
The Law Foundation grant will fund the portion of our project focused on the complaints procedures of the various oversight bodies in Ontario, as well as the RCMP, our federal police force that has a marked presence in Ontario. The funds will help the Asper Centre undertake consultations with relevant stakeholders and communities, in order to ascertain needs, which will inform the development of the guides as well as our dissemination plan for the guides. The Foundation grant will also support the translation of the guides into French, and into a number of Indigenous languages, as well as the design of the accessible PDF guides and the development and maintenance of a web-platform that will house the guides.
We are immensely grateful for the Law Foundation of Ontario grant, as this project is very timely and important given the current context of police oversight legislative reforms in Ontario; recent media exposure of issues behind unfounded sexual assault allegations; and, the serious concerns being raised in respect of the treatment of women and girls from First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities as well as the police mishandling of complaints by Indigenous peoples.
We are also grateful for the support of LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund) and Aboriginal Legal Services as our project partners.
For further information please contact tal.schreier@utoronto.ca