CPA ACP

October 6, 2026

Dear Prime Minister:

We are writing collectively as participants in the recent Roundtable on Officer Safety convened by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, which brings together police service leadership from across Canada, and the Canadian Police Association, which represents front-line police personnel through its member associations. We support the measures directly concerning police in Premier Doug Ford’s October 1 letter and ask you to make a coordinated national response to officer safety a priority for your government. Your leadership can give this work the direction and urgency it requires, ensuring that the concerns our members have brought forward lead to action across the departments and governments that share responsibility for their protection.

Our roundtable brought together police executives and elected association leaders in Ottawa on September 28 and 29, representing some of the country’s largest police organizations and smaller municipal and regional services. We carry different responsibilities, but share an obligation to the people who report for duty every day. The deaths and serious injuries of colleagues across Canada brought us together under extraordinary circumstances, as the consequences of violence against police reach deeper into our profession and the lives of our members. Families live with growing concern for the safety of someone they love, experienced officers reconsider their future in policing, and prospective recruits weigh whether to accept those same risks. These pressures demand urgent action, both to protect those serving today and to sustain the police services Canadians will depend on tomorrow.

We met immediately following the Canadian Police and Peace Officers’ Memorial on Parliament Hill. Many of us had just stood alongside families mourning someone who left for work and never came home. The responsibility we carry towards those families continues long after the ceremony, as does our responsibility to the officers returning to duty in communities across the country. Remembering those we have lost must be accompanied by a sustained effort to protect those who continue serving.

Our members should know that the people entrusted with leading their services and representing their interests stand together on this issue. We recognize the dangers they face, take seriously the concerns they bring forward, and intend to carry those concerns into the decisions that affect their safety. They deserve to see that commitment reflected in what we do next.

The public cannot be safe if police are not safe. When Canadians call for help, they depend on an officer being able to enter a situation others are trying to escape, intervene against violence, or confront someone who has ignored a court order. Those responsibilities are being carried by police services already struggling to fill front-line positions, in a country with the lowest police-to-population ratio in the G7. Canada’s police strength stands at approximately 180 officers per 100,000 people, down from 203 in 2010. Every officer lost to violence or forced away from duty by injury places further pressure on colleagues and reduces the capacity available to protect the public. The willingness of our members to confront danger must be matched by a commitment to protect them and sustain the ranks of those serving alongside them.

The scale of violence against those enforcing the law warrants national attention. Statistics Canada recorded 13,710 assaults against peace officers in 2025, with a population-based rate 19% higher than in 2015. Those figures give a measure of the problem, but our members live with its consequences: an injury that ends a career, an absence that places further pressure on colleagues, or a family waiting for news after learning that someone they love has been attacked at work. Violence against police reaches well beyond the encounter itself. Our profession also carries the loss of colleagues who have died by suicide, leaving families and fellow officers with grief that endures long after their deaths. Those losses deepen our obligation to address the cumulative strain of police work, including repeated exposure to violence, and to ensure that our members feel supported through meaningful action by the institutions of justice and government they serve.

A recurring concern at the roundtable was the danger of encountering the same violent individuals repeatedly, sometimes in circumstances that have become more serious. Statistics Canada found that 58% of people accused of firearm-related violent crime in 2024 had previously been identified by police as an accused person in at least one other violent crime between 2018 and 2024. That history matters to the officer approaching the next call, and it must matter throughout the justice system when decisions are made about risk, supervision, and intervention.

An officer who arrests someone for violent conduct or repeated breaches of a court order must be able to rely on the rest of the system to carry that work forward. Where effective intervention does not follow, another officer may be called upon to face the same danger again. Repeated disregard for the rule of law, including court orders, also weakens the confidence of officers and the public in the law’s ability to protect them. Denunciation and meaningful accountability is part of the protection our members need to carry out their responsibilities.

Premier Ford’s letter puts concrete proposals before your government, which we endorse and emphasize the importance of prioritizing:

• A mandatory minimum sentence of six months for the conduct described in his letter involving resisting arrest, assaulting a police officer, or fleeing from police where bodily harm is caused, or another person’s life or safety is endangered.
• Increasing the parole ineligibility period from 25 to 30 years for the first-degree murder of a police officer.
• Stronger penalties for offences committed by young people against police officers.
• Federal legislation enabling police to lawfully obtain encrypted electronic evidence through judicial authorizations and with appropriate safeguards.
• Expand drone restrictions to cover police facilities and provincial correctional institutions similar to the current restrictions around federal correctional institution.

These proposals recognize the seriousness of attacking someone carrying out a public duty and the importance of giving police effective tools to investigate crime. An officer assaulted while protecting another person has suffered violence while fulfilling a responsibility we collectively ask them to undertake. Deliberately targeting officers because of that responsibility demands a clear response, and the murder of an officer must carry consequences that reflect the gravity of the offence and the permanent loss suffered by their family.

Our discussions also made clear that protecting officers requires action before the next violent encounter. Reliable information about known threats must reach the people who need it. Court orders must be backed by effective supervision and enforcement, and police services must have the resources, training, and equipment to prepare their members for the circumstances they will face.

These responsibilities extend across governments and institutions and include the need for provincial governments to examine the need for involuntary treatment of offenders whose mental health and substance abuse pose a safety risk to police officers and the public.

Decisions in the justice and health care systems shape the situations to which officers respond, while gaps in other services can leave police repeatedly carrying responsibilities they cannot resolve alone. Officer safety cannot be addressed by policing alone, and the burden of finding solutions cannot rest solely with the people exposed to those risks.

The collaboration that produced Bill C-14 shows that a shared concern can lead to meaningful action. Premiers and the policing community pressed for changes to address serious and repeat violent offending, and your government worked with those partners to deliver stronger bail and sentencing provisions. Police experience helped shape the reforms, and cooperation across governments helped bring them into law. We want to see that approach succeed again in protecting our members.

The Council of the Federation has already directed provincial and territorial Justice and Public Safety Ministers to develop options for federal action to strengthen protections for law enforcement, first responders, and other front-line workers. Premier Ford’s letter gives that work further direction. The upcoming federal, provincial, and territorial ministerial discussions are an opportunity to turn this shared concern into decisions with practical consequences for safety.

We ask you to direct your Ministers of Justice and Public Safety to advance this priority with their provincial and territorial counterparts, and to invite representatives of police services and front-line police associations to participate directly in the portions of those meetings addressing officer safety. The people who lead policing operations and represent those exposed to the risks should help shape the response. We are prepared to bring evidence and operational experience to the table, assess proposed measures, and work with ministers on recommendations that can be implemented across jurisdictions.

An early meeting with your Ministers would allow us to prepare that contribution and agree on how the resulting recommendations will be advanced, with clear responsibilities and timelines. Our members will judge this effort by whether it produces changes they can see in their working lives, and we share that expectation.

Prime Minister, every day, police officers accept responsibility for the safety of people they may never have met. They do so knowing that the next call may ask more of them than they can anticipate. They and their families deserve to know that those responsible for their safety approach that obligation with the same resolve. We have come together to honour that responsibility, and we ask your government to work with us to deliver on it.

Regards,

 Tom Stamatakis

 President

 Canadian Police Association

Thomas Carrique

Past President

Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police