Wednesday’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting was one for the record books, as the embattled board struggled to maintain its legitimacy in the face of withering public scrutiny. But the board’s struggles with legitimacy didn’t start on January 8 during the public participation phase of the 2025/26 municipal budget process. Instead, they can be traced back to last year’s municipal budget, the 2024/25 edition, and the public participation around that budget, which began in the fall of 2023.
During last year’s budget, the board approved the two police budgets and sent them to council. After the board did that, a group of citizens wrote a letter urging council to deny the police budgets outlining three issues with the board’s behaviour, one issue at each of last year’s three public participation meetings. The first chance the public had to comment on the 2024/25 police budget was in October 2023, and during that meeting then-chair of the police board Becky Kent allowed business owners to refer to unhoused people as the “less desirable” people to have in Halifax. Then came the November 22 meeting, where a member of the public from District 11 was shut down by then-commissioner Gavin Giles, for “casting huge blanket indictments against large swaths of this community”—police officers—”not here to defend themselves.”
We’ll get to the next public meeting in a moment, but there are two things about Giles’ comment.
The first is that the speaker from District 11 was saying police spending is bad spending because it’s funding the police—the institution, not the officers—and that institution has “rampant misogyny, rampant racism,” which are two of the harms historically perpetrated by police onto the local community. Trying to prevent those harms is why we have oversight bodies like the Board of Police Commissioners in the first place. But Kent sided with Giles and censured the speaker.
The second is that the police were there—at least one of them, with a loaded pistol—ready to defend themselves from such accusations.
Moving on, we get to la piece de resistance: The third and final public participation meeting on Nov 29, 2023 that devolved into what can only be described as a procedural and governance shit show. During that meeting Giles, who could have taken Mr. Rogers’ advice and said nothing, instead decided to say this:
I have not been attracted by any of the canned and banal presentations of the type we received last week and two weeks before that. Some of which have been really bizarre, one of which went so far to suggest that police officers—and I guess, it’s all of them have been unable to heal the emotional neglect that they experienced as children—nonsense and rubbish commentary designed only to titillate and annoy rather than to inform and teach.”
This sends a pretty clear message to the public that the board—as people—does not take the public’s concerns seriously, even though the board—the institution—exists to do exactly that. These were the events of last budget’s public participation process, and in the interim Giles was made chair of the board, so he led Wednesday’s meeting for public participation in the current budget.
Keenly aware of the implied insult to the public, some members of the public responded in kind on Wednesday. One member of the public joined the virtual meeting with a background featuring five adorable piglets. Which led to this phenomenal exchange:
Giles: “I don’t want you to put up a background of pigs.”
Speaker: “Why?”
“Pig is a very discriminating and very insulting word to use against the backdrop of a police officer, and that’s what we’re doing. We’re talking about a police budget.”
There’s a bit of a pause.
“I’m not familiar,” says the speaker. Deadpan.
This put chair Gavin “titillate” Giles in a hilariously awkward position. Even though his comments sometimes indicate otherwise, Giles is probably not a dumb man. As a lawyer, he knows the justice system only works as long as we all believe in it. And we can only keep believing in it if the institutions designed to protect us, like the Board of Police Commissioners, act like they are, in fact, trying to protect us. So as long as those institutions appear to be working, we keep believing in them and society keeps on functioning. But the board is on incredibly shaky ground where their legitimacy in the eyes of the public is concerned. And Giles specifically has cultivated the perception that he is incredibly pro–police, and dismissive of the public.
Even though it strains credulity to breaking, the five little piglets, who knew enough about the police to provide informed and educated critical feedback of the police budget, claimed they did not know that cops were commonly referred to as pigs, pork chops or bacon. What’s Giles going to do? Would chair Gavin “canned and banal” Giles dare to accuse a member of the public of lying, and thus destroy the last remaining shreds of the board’s credibility? Or would he sit there and allow this bit of civil disobedience in a public meeting, in a free country? So five little piggies went to the board of pork oversight and asked them to start rendering some bacon and get sizzlin’ on defunding.
The desperate pleas from the public are ones the board has historically dismissed as canned or banal, designed only to titillate and annoy, but the board really should start to listen and let themselves be taught.
One of the first speakers from the public told the board that recently, there has been a lot of optimism. The board had commissioned the Wortley and Defunding reports about how to reform policing. The latter report outlines four pillars of policing as follows:
The report the board commissioned to find out how badly everyone messed up the Aug 18, 2021 encampment eviction clearly states that the board has the power to implement these four pillars. The report also says this power is routinely not used.
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Historically, this is due to city lawyers telling the board they do not have the power to direct the police chief, even though the Police Act clearly states that the “function of the board is to provide” according to section 55(1) “the administrative direction, organization and policy required to maintain an adequate, effective and efficient police Department” 55(1)(b). “A board shall,” 55(3), “ensure that community needs and values are reflected in policing priorities, objectives, goals, programs and strategies,” 55(3)(c). And “ensure that police services are delivered in a manner consistent with community values, needs and expectations” 55(3)(d). And “ensure the department is managed by the chief officer according to best practices and operates effectively and efficiently” 55(3)(i). Except for “complaints, discipline or personnel conduct except in respect of the chief officer of the municipal police department” 55(1)(c); “a specific prosecution or investigation” (d); or “the actual day-to-day direction of the police department” (e).
For clarity, that last one means the board could say something like “patrol downtown when there’s a higher likelihood of criminal activity” or “go clear out that encampment” but couldn’t say something like “send four officers to patrol downtown on Saturday night.”
Except for one notable exception, the common theme of the public engagement was members of the public begging the board for better. They have commissioned reports on how to reform police. They have commissioned a report saying the board has the power it needs to do the police reform it says it wants to be doing. People in the community are getting hurt and dying. What more do you need? What will it take for the board to please, please, please just start doing their fucking jobs?
As for that notable exception, at the start of the meeting chair Giles told the public that the meeting was “not an opportunity for speakers to engage with us on their own personal interactions with the police.” However a former Halifax police officer and member of the Emergency Response Team who spoke at the meeting was allowed to engage with the board on his own personal interactions with police, because he was allowed to talk about his work. And to be clear here, this is not to say that the former cop should not have been allowed to speak in a public participation session, but more that human beings understand information better when it’s told to us in stories we can understand. It’s what qualitative evidence is and why it exists. The issue is that the board asked the rest of the public to omit qualitative evidence in their submissions, but allowed it from the police-identifying public. You can’t have your donut and eat it too.
Nevertheless, the former cop explained that he supported the armoured personnel carrier proposed in the capital budget because it could be used in a variety of situations. By situations, he meant the various ways the police can engage in firefights with armed enemy combatants. This type of situation has not yet happened to the HRP. According to a police spokesperson “to date, Halifax Regional Police has been fortunate not to be in this situation,” reads the email. Police officers “deserve to enter those situations”—the firefight situations that to date have not happened—”with the best possible resources to keep themselves, and others, safe. We would be happy if we never had to extract someone from gunfire, but if that situation does arise, we would hate to look back in hindsight and wish we had been better prepared to do so.”
And this right here is the crux of the argument against the APC, and why the board is relentlessly shredding its credibility with the public. The police cost a lot of money—AKA a lot of finite municipal resources—and according to the RCMP’s budget submissions in 2022 a substantial portion of police budgets primarily fund inefficient, administrative bloat. It does not make sense to keep pumping money into the police departments without first fixing the administrative bloat that is sucking up a massive amount of resources. And every time they ask for more resources, even when it’s a top-of-the-line toy, not necessary but kind of nice to have just in case, the police get those resources.
On boxing day, an unhoused person died in the HRM. We have been unfortunate to be put in this situation. When Haligonians enter the situation of being unhoused they deserve the best possible resources to keep themselves, and others, safe. We would be happy if we never had anyone become unhoused, or die neglected in a municipal park, but when that situation does arise again, we would have to look back in hindsight and wish we had better spent municipal resources.
This article appears in Dec 19, 2024 – Jan 31, 2025.
Magnificent journalism. Sincerely. Thank you.
Just because a group keeps flogging a dead pig, er horse at a public meeting and doesn’t get its way, doesn’t mean the commission isn’t doing its job…