Law enforcement in Canada

In the Canadian Republic, a federal parliamentary republic in North America, the law enforcement apparatus consists of three distinct levels: local, provincial and federal. The majority of public interaction with the police involves and therefore the majority of law enforcement operations are handled by local agencies; the remained is handled almost entirely by provincial agencies, with federal agencies handling only the most important national operations and far-reaching (read: Canada-wide) investigations. Operations against and/or investigations of crimes which potentially have taken place across police area boundaries, that is, in two or more local jurisdictions of a province or territory, automatically come under provincial/territorial jurisdiction; similarly, operations and investigations which involve two or more provinces and/or territories automatically come under federal jurisdiction. Nevertheless, local agencies contribute much of the manpower to said operations, which are planned and dictated by provincial/federal authorities, while operations in areas of their jurisdiction are overwhelmingly supported by local agencies.

At the local level, there exist two parallel systems for the provinces and a single system for the territories. The provinces, to start with, each have their own provincial police and provincial sheriff's department, which are together responsible for enforcing the law and ensuring the administration of justice alongside the province's Ministry of Justice, to which such provincial agencies typically answer. Every province is divided into units of local government: the more common and traditional form is the county: all medium- and highly-populated areas are divided into specific counties, each of which forms the upper tier of local government; within each county may exist several incorporated municipalities, which form the lower tier of local government. For example, the city of Vancouver is a municipality within North Fraser County, British Columbia. Every county has its own county constabulary, the generic term for the local law enforcement agency responsible for local policing within the boundaries of that county. All investigations and operations which fall more or less exclusively, or at least initially, within a county constabulary's area of operations come under that agency's jurisdiction, with provincial/federal authorities taking over leadership of an investigation only if the same crime is believed, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have occurred across county/provincial boundaries.

Some of the larger provinces of Canada, including all the Prairie Provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, include vast regions which are not part of any county. These areas are the most common of the second main category of local government, known as a unitary authority. Unlike the two-tiered county-municipality system of local government of the more populated regions of provinces, unitary authorities are jurisdictions where the system of local government exists any only a single tier. The vast majority of unitary authorities are either regional districts or municipal districts. Both types are on the same level, one not subordinate to the other, and both equally below the provincial level of government. Regional districts tend to cover vast, generally rural, natural, or unpopulated areas, while municipal districts much smaller geographically but generally possess higher populations; they typically consist of the more populated settlements amidst the vast country. In every province, all regional districts and municipal districts, while possessing local unitary authority governments of their own, contract local policing to their province's provincial police; therefore, outside of what are described as county areas, local policing in addition to provincial policing is handled by the same agency. Therefore, only counties in Canada possess their own police agency; it is also worth noting that municipalities within counties, while their mayors do each sit on the county's police board (the employer of the county constabulary), do not have the right to form their own local police agencies, and thus all local policing even within the two-tiered county-municipality system of county areas exists as a unitary system.

There are a few exceptions to the above system. The third, and very rare, form of the unitary authority is one which is described neither as a municipal nor regional district, but which does not form a county. Toronto, for example, Canada's largest city and centre of its most populous metropolitan area, is a single municipal jurisdiction which is not part of any county of Ontario, thus making it a unitary authority. The Toronto Police Service could be considered a county constabulary, but as Toronto is not nor forms part of any county, its government exists at the county level in relations with the provincial and federal governments, but resembles a municipal government as it is responsible for all local government affairs within its jurisdiction.

Ottawa, the national capital, is another example; the city, which borders the province of Quebec to the north across the Ottawa River, and the province of Ontario on all sides where it sits on the south bank of the river, but is itself not considered part of any province. Its municipal government is headed by an elected mayor, but exists as a devolved local unitary authority for the City of Ottawa by an act of the Parliament of Canada, which is the exact process by which the six territories of Canada are permitted their own territorial governments. However, Ottawa is not considered a territory but rather a federal capital district. Like the territories, however, the City of Ottawa, along with the six territories, contract policing to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Canada's federal police force; for Ottawa, this means that the city's local police consists of RCMP detachments which handle all regular policing in the city, which also happens to include the headquarters and primary institutions of the RCMP, including the command centre of all its federal operations. In the six territories, the RCMP maintains a division which acts as the police for the territorial government, and a second division to provide local policing services to all incorporated municipalities within the territories. As such, while the RCMP handles much of Canada's policing operation which come under federal jurisdiction, its personnel can also be found providing regular policing services down to the local level within the six territories, and the federal capital of Ottawa, another unitary authority-type municipality, this time with no provincial or territorial level of government between itself and the federal government.

Within all provincial counties, all remand centres and jails are operated by the Department of Corrections of the county government; only prisons are handled by provincial corrections ministries. Outside counties but within a province (most likely within regional districts and municipal districts, the provincial sheriff's department operates all jails, except in other unitary authorities like Toronto or Ottawa, where the local police service or another local agency operates all jails and remand centres. Post-sentence prisons, on the other hand, are managed exclusively by the provincial government's Ministry of Corrections; while most prisons are provincial prisons, the federal government, via Corrections Canada, operates all federal prisons. While virtually all convicts are convicted and sentenced by provincial courts, all person serving over two years in prison are sentenced to be incarcerated in a federal institution. Like provincial sheriff's departments handle the transportation of remanded detainees as well as convicts, so too does the federal government's Canada Sheriff Service handles the transportation of all federal inmates and all detainees remanded by federal courts. At both the provincial and federal level, sheriff's departments, in addition to their routine duties, also typically handle the more risky and/or improvisational duties of law enforcement, including matters such as providing security on flights, leading national manhunts, and transporting highly dangerous offenders, as well as running a national witness protection program.