SIU governed by ‘legislative afterthought’

The Special Investigations Unit has the monumental task of investigating the police and laying criminal charges against officers, yet its authority is derived from a mere 11 sentences buried at the bottom of a statute that deals with other issues.

“A legislative afterthought,” as former Ontario Ombudsman André Marin put it in his 2008 report on his investigation into the SIU, titled “Oversight Unseen.”

Marin is among a growing number of advocates pushing for the section dealing with the SIU to be taken out of the Police Services Act — which largely deals with policing in the province — and create a separate act that would focus solely on the SIU.

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