Consuming Interests: Some Critical Thoughts Upon the Occasion of a Proposal for a Canadian College of Policing

Abstract

In 2022 the Canadian Coalition for Police Reform was founded and began calling for enhanced police professionalism in Canada, spearheading a campaign to establish a national Canadian College of Policing. Although establishing a federal institution of this kind seems unlikely in the present political context, the proposals provide an occasion to critically review the politics of policing in Canada. This paper argues for a better empirical understanding of networked policing if it is to be brought to account, but that continuing volatility in the moral economy that surrounds it prevents this. Observing the broader historical and geopolitical context of authoritarian drift in Western countries as they decay into post-democracies, this paper advances the view that police organization in Canada is also dangerously drifting toward soft authoritarianism.