Canada Sheriff Service

The Canada Sheriff Service (CSS; French: Service du Chérif(fe) canadien(ne), SCC) is one of three primary agencies of the Canadian federal government for which the Attorney General of Canada is responsible, alongside the Crown Prosecution Service of Canada and the Crown Legislative Record of Canada. The Canada Sheriff Service is responsible for the security of all federal judicial buildings, institutions and personnel, providing plainclothes protection details to those in the federal justice system deemed at risk, operating Canada's premier national witness relocation and protection program, and transporting federal prisoners to, from and between court hearings, jails/prisons, medical appointments and emergency hospital visits, and all other facilities and institutions, as well as organising and facilitating extraditions.

Another major responsibility of federal sheriffs is ensuring the security of the family, household and person of both the President of Canada and the Prime Minister.

The Canada Sheriff Service is also the nation's leading expert service on national manhunts as well as capture of serial and/or spree killers via behaviour analysis. Its original function and to this day one of the most important is ensuring the smooth and unhampered operation of the federal judicial system as its enforcement arm. While the Canada Sheriff Service has full law enforcement powers in all parts of Canada, the primary federal agency in charge of policing is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which answers to Public Security Canada, a federal executive department led by the Minister of Public Security and Solicitor General.

Nevertheless, federal sheriffs of the CSS are considered the most vigorously trained law enforcement agents in the country. It is not uncommon to find a couple of Canadian federal sheriffs aboard major domestic and international flights, always in an undercover manner, only revealing their law enforcement status in the event of an attempted hijacking, robbery or other violent crime carried out aboard the aircraft, which CSS sheriffs are trained to undermine. It is estimated that 1 in 15 domestic flights (mostly larger flights) and 1 in 5 international flights to/from Canada have as passengers a normally two-man undercover CSS (federal sheriff) unit, responsible for the above if necessary.

The CSS is also the only agency in all of Canada, at any level of government, to operate prisoner transport aircraft. As such, even non-federal prisoners requiring aircraft transportation are flown by one of the CSS's ten 737–700s to the airport nearest their destination, where their respective (provincial, territorial or federal) corrections or sheriff services make the final transport to the destined facility.