“We actually created the most diverse police service of any police service in Canada and one of the most diverse in North America,” he said, adding that he has the experience of “working through a significant cultural change in a uniform organization.”
“Diversity doesn’t mean culture change,” said Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute who wrote a book about toxic culture in the military. Toronto police are still reckoning with systemic racism. The Ontario Human Rights Commission found in a 2020 report that Black residents were more likely than white residents to be hurt or killed by police.Almost 25 per cent of all Special Investigations Unit cases about a death, injury or alleged sexual assault by police involved Black people, the report found.
In response, he said, the police services board tried to bring in a “very strong” policy to deal with racial profiling and so-called carding. Blair resisted.