Ombudsman calls out Ontario for 'painfully slow' progress on police de-escalation training

Six years after Ontario ombudsman Paul Dube recommended a standardized, mandatory de-escalation training for police across the province, Ontario is no closer to making it happen, he said on Wednesday. 

"Progress has been painfully slow," Dube said at a news conference introducing his annual report, which outlines trends and investigations his office handled between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022.

Mandatory de-escalation training is just one of the recommendations Dube made in a 2016 report issued in the wake of teenager Sammy Yatim's death at the hands of police three years earlier. 

Though all of those recommendations were accepted by the then-minister, Dube also said he hasn't seen enough action in the years since on issues such as creating a new use-of-force model, revised training and issuing guidance to police services about body-worn cameras.

"We're going to keep raising this. If we have to do another investigation, we will. It's something we're contemplating," he said, adding that he's hopeful about a meeting with the new solicitor general, MPP Michael Kerzner.

Former solicitor general Sylvia Jones was asked about Dube's remarks later on Wednesday, telling reporters that there "was a lot of work with training, particularly with new recruits" during her tenure but didn't offer any explanation as to why she never pursued a mandatory, standardized de-escalation training. 

"This government has had four years to act," Ontario NDP interim leader Peter Tabuns commented, calling the delay "outrageous." 

At this same press conference, Dube also discussed two investigations his office is in the process of wrapping up: one looking at the oversight of long-term care during pandemic, the other at delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board. 

He described them as "two important and extremely complex issues," both of which he hopes to put out in the next few months. 

The long-term care investigation was launched in June 2020, after waves of COVID-19 infections and deaths ripped through Ontario's LTC's and after visits by the Canadian military revealed "shocking conditions" in some facilities, wrote Dube. 

Dube's probe into delays at the Landlord and Tenant Board, meanwhile, is a systemic investigation that builds on the nearly 2,000 complaints his office has received about the backlogged tribunal. 

In recent years, landlords have described months-long delays in eviction hearings, leading to thousands of dollars in unpaid rent. 

Critics, meanwhile, have described the LTB as an "eviction machine" that favours landlords and de-prioritizes tenant complaints. 

Pushed to say whether he felt the system benefitted landlords or tenants more, Dube said that there is "pain on both sides."