Buzzapp Master 
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Also troubling is that the committee has taken a long time to get set up; being ineffective is part of a pattern. The same applies to the Ottawa Police Service‘s Community Equity Council (CEC) Use of Force Review Panel and the City’s Anti-Racism Advisory Table. In May 2024, the Ottawa police issued a call for applications for community members to join the CEC’s Use of Force Review Panel, but has yet to announce its members. City council approved the city’s Anti-Racism Strategy in June 2022, including the creation of an Anti-Racism Advisory Table. However, as of April 5, Coun. Rawslon King, Council Liaison for Anti-Racism and Ethnocultural Relations Initiatives, said the advisory table member selection process is “in progress.”
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No room for the critics
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Another issue is Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs sitting on the committee while there is no representation from groups that are highly critical of policing. The Community Safety and Policing Act mandates that a chief of police or his or her delegate must sit on the committee, but it doesn’t say groups that critique police must be excluded, yet that’s exactly what’s happened. That the committee has not recommended one change that would reduce the police budget at all is, therefore, not surprising.
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Ottawa Police Chief Eric Stubbs sits on the committee; critics of the system do not. Photo by JULIE OLIVER /POSTMEDIAArticle content
The influence of the police is also clear in the committee’s uncritical acceptance of praise of the ANCHOR mental health crisis response system, which falls under the CSWB. The committee doesn’t point out that ANCHOR won’t achieve one of its main objectives — reducing the probability of the police harming, instead of helping, people having mental health crises — because ANCHOR personnel will only be sent if 911 personnel, members of the Ottawa police, deem the situation is “non-violent.”
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Despite the clear urgency of issues like use of force and mental-health crisis response, the city continues to fall short on its promises to address these issues, while giving endless budget increases to the police.
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The CSWB plan was supposed to create a collaborative framework for change. Instead, it has become yet another example of how bureaucratic stall tactics can block meaningful change. In the absence of concrete action, residents risk becoming disillusioned with a system that seems more interested in maintaining the status quo than in addressing the root causes of violence, providing real social support, and uprooting systemic injustices.
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It’s time for the city to put an end to the stall tactics and take meaningful action on the issues that matter most to Ottawa’s residents. Only then will we begin to see a city where all people, especially the most vulnerable, can feel safe and supported.
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Jeffrey Bradley is a PhD candidate in legal studies at Carleton University, a part-time criminology professor at uOttawa and a member of the Ottawa Transformative Justice Collective. Robin Browne is the head of of 613-819 Black Hub, a not-for-profit focused on systemic anti-Black racism.
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