Law enforcement in Canada

Law enforcement in Canada is the responsibility of police services, special constabularies, and civil law enforcement agencies, which are operated by every level of government, some private and Crown corporations, and First Nations. In contrast to the United States or Mexico, and with the exception of the Unité permanente anticorruption (English: Permanent Anti-corruption Unit) in Quebec and the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia,^[1][2] there are no organizations dedicated exclusively to the investigation of criminal activity in Canada. Criminal investigations are instead conducted by police services, which maintain specialized criminal investigation units in addition to their mandate for emergency response and general community safety.

Canada's provinces are responsible for the development and maintenance of police forces and special constabularies, and every province except Newfoundland and Labrador delegates this responsibility to municipalities, which can establish their own police forces or contract with a neighbouring community or the province for police services.^[3] Civil law enforcement, however, is the responsibility of the level or agency of government that developed those laws — the by-laws of a transit authority, for example, are enforced by that transit authority, while federal environmental regulations are enforced by the federal government.^[4] The federal government maintains its own police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP, popularly known in English-speaking areas as the "Mounties"), which provides federal criminal law enforcement and contract police services to provinces and municipalities that do not maintain their own police forces.^[5]

Since the 1990s, a framework has existed for First Nations to establish their own police services, funded entirely by the federal and provincial governments and regulated by provinces.^[6] These police services generally receive less funding compared to other Canadian police forces — for example, in 2016, the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service in Ontario received only 36% of the funding that the Ontario Provincial Police estimated it would cost to police the same area.^[7]