Tamera Ugolini examines the Toronto Police Service’s collapse under weak leadership, weaponized whistleblowing, and retaliation, spotlighting Staff Sergeant Dave Haynes’ punitive transfer after exposing 22 Division’s failures—like 6-hour response times for Jane and Finch’s 300K residents. His 15 charges (some dropped) and PTSD stem from systemic cover-ups, while Ontario’s integrity probe led by Ryan Teshner reveals murder plots and drug trafficking. The 2025 What We Heard report confirms a culture of fear, nepotism, and ignored frontline concerns, with promotions favoring connections over competence. Ugolini warns that shielding executives while punishing officers erodes policing’s mission, demanding accountability to rebuild trust and safety. [Automatically generated summary]
What role does weak leadership play in police corruption allegations sweeping Canada's largest police service, leaving public safety and operational concerns awry?
Tonight, Tuesday, February 17th, and I'm Tamera Ugolini, guest hosting for Ezra on The Ezra Levant Show.
With trust in institutions, government, policing, and authority at an all-time low, we need to look no further than what's happening within the Toronto Police Service, Canada's largest police force to see that something is deeply amiss.
Let me begin by acknowledging that corruption is as old as power itself.
The allegations unfolding in Toronto are damning, though hardly surprising, especially when viewed in the broader context of what is happening, both in public view and behind closed doors.
Yes, we see the chaos, the violence, and the crime playing out on the streets.
But out of sight, there are deeper concerns.
Weaponized whistleblowing, weak leadership, a service that prioritizes platitudes over public safety and internal disciplinary processes leveraged to preserve the status quo.
And when trust in institutions is already fragile, the consequences of failure inside organizations like the Toronto Police Service are only amplified because the erosion of trust doesn't begin on the street necessarily.
It begins in the upper echelon.
And I think that the case of Staff Sergeant Ernest, better known as Dave Haynes, who happens to be Ontario Premier Doug Ford's son-in-law, exemplifies just that.
After a return to frontline policing following unpaid leave during the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, Sergeant Haynes was subjected to a position transfer as what he refers to a form of punishment for bringing concerns forward to his superiors.
During his abusive process motion hearing last Friday, February 13th, he testified for roughly six hours, raising repeated operational and public safety concerns within the Toronto Police Service, including training deficiencies, staffing shortages, and supervision failures at 22 Division.
It's important to note here that this division oversees the notorious Jane and Finch neighborhood, well known historically for its crime, poverty, high density, and low-income housing.
Officers are expected to respond to emergency calls, violent incidents, mental health apprehensions, and community-based complaints in real time.
As an operational staff sergeant, Haynes testified that he was responsible for overseeing platoons of officers and supervisors tasked with answering radio calls for service across a large geographic area.
And sometimes this happened with only a handful of patrol cars available for hundreds of thousands of residents.
Haynes noted how inherently challenging this division was, that it was strained upon his arrival.
And according to his testimony, these conditions created not only internal morale challenges, but public-facing risks as response times lengthened and frontline officers operated under sustained pressure with, you guessed it, insufficient oversight at the supervisory level.
For bringing concerns forward, he was met not with corrective action, but with retaliatory investigations, demotion, loss of pay, and disciplinary proceedings that he argues constitute an abusive process designed to silence him as a whistleblower.
Now on medical leave with complex post-traumatic stress disorder or PSD, Haines' defense lawyer Bath Sheba Vandenberg maintained throughout the motion that there is a clear and troubling pattern of reprisal where legitimate operational concerns are met with escalating investigations and disciplinary measures she argues amount to an abusive process.
She told the tribunal that the issue is not the ultimate merits of each individual charge as some of those leveraged against Haynes have since been dropped, but whether the integrity of the proceedings themselves has been compromised by what she characterized as structurally unfair and retaliatory conduct.
Now let's keep in mind that all of this is also happening against the backdrop of an absolutely staggering integrity probe by Ontario's policing inspectorate over murder plots, drug trafficking, and leaking sensitive information.
Notably, Ontario's Inspector General of Policing is Ryan Teshner, who served as the Executive Director and Chief of Staff for the Toronto Police Services Board for nearly five years from June 2018 to April 2023.
Calling into question his ability to be fully impartial in overseeing an investigation into the very organization he once helped manage and advise, there are concerns around conflicts of interest, institutional accountability, and whether structural loyalties could influence the scrutiny applied to senior leadership and operational practices within the service.
It is with all of this in mind that we must examine the internal state of the Toronto Police Service.
Let's not forget the recently released internal review, the 2025 What We Heard report, which painted a damning picture of a service crippled by fear, nepotism, and dysfunction.
Officers describe chronic shortages, low morale, and leadership that is distrusted at every single level.
Promotions and assignments are said to favor connections over competence, while harassment, bullying, and discrimination remain persistent, leaving officers demoralized and the public at risk.
This is exactly the environment Sergeant Haynes testified about.
The pattern that he described mirrors the findings of the internal review, a culture in which officers who raise legitimate operational concerns are met with bureaucracy, intimidation, or outright retaliation.
Public safety suffers when internal transparency is replaced with self-protection, and frontline officers are left to navigate unsafe conditions with limited support.
As the TPS struggles to address these failures, from unsafe staffing levels to poor leadership accountability, incidents of real-world harm continue to emerge.
Response times stretch dangerously long.
Operational resources are mismanaged, and officers like Haynes are put in impossible positions where doing their jobs properly becomes a liability rather than a duty.
The question now is whether the Toronto Police Service can repair itself or whether institutional self-protection has become so entrenched that both internal trust and public confidence may be permanently undermined.
Haines' testimony, combined with the internal report and ongoing integrity probe, does little to inspire confidence in the service's ability to address its deep-rooted problems.
Stay tuned because next we have an exclusive interview with Haynes' counsel, Bath Sheba Vandenberg, on all things Toronto Police Service disciplinary proceedings, whistleblower reprisals, and the weaponization of tribunals to silence officers raising safety concerns.
Stay tuned.
For Rebel News, I'm Tamara Ugolini here in the small hamlet of Millbrook, Ontario, in the backdrop of the Millbrook Public Library.
I'm joined with Bath Sheba Vandenberg.
As an administrative and regulatory lawyer, Vandenberg has come to represent Toronto Police Staff Sergeant Ernest or Dave Haynes, who happens to be the son-in-law of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, throughout a series of disciplinary tribunal proceedings brought by the Toronto Police Service.
Haynes was initially served with five cases comprising of 15 charges ranging from internal emails to social media activity, including posts made after he says he was forcibly transferred as a form of de facto punishment for raising operational officer safety and community safety concerns.
Since Vandenberg took over his defense last year, one full case has already been dismissed for lack of jurisdiction after it was found to have been served outside of the statutory time limit, but only after a contested motion and two-day hearing.
Now, all of this is unfolding against a broader backdrop of corruption allegations within the Toronto Police Service, internal accountability concerns, and claims that disciplinary mechanisms like exactly what's happening to Haynes within the service are being weaponized, particularly against members who speak out.
Following the filing of an abuse of process motion, prosecutors moved to withdraw three additional charges, citing a desire to streamline the proceedings.
What does this mean?
And where do these proceedings go from here?
And so in the case of Staff Sergeant Haynes, can you share with us kind of the crux of the allegations against him and where the proceedings currently are?
Right.
So Staff Sergeant Haynes was served with a total of five cases comprised of 15 charges initially.
And some of those charges have to do with Instagram posts and others have to do with internal emails that he sent.
A couple of the charges deal with when he forwarded some emails to his wife, Christoph.
Now, since the start of the case where I started representing Staff Sergeant Haynes last year in February, we've had one of the cases, case 50-2024, withdrawn for lack of jurisdiction.
It was known that that notice of hearing hadn't been served within the six months statutory time limit.
And yet we had to bring a motion and we had a two-day hearing back in November of 2025, which resulted in a decision in January of this year that the tribunal didn't have any jurisdiction to hear that case.
And that case was a charge of discredible conduct for having allegedly committed discredible conduct by forwarding emails to his wife, Christopher.
And after that, we then submitted an abusive process motion and we had actually attempted to submit an abusive process motion along with our motion to withdraw that particular charge.
And the prosecution indicated that they hadn't been given sufficient notice of that intention.
And so we set up some fresh dates to hear the abusive process motion, which is what we're going through at the moment.
And in response, and when I say in response, it was because after I filed the factum for the abusive process motion along with the supporting affidavits, the prosecution wrote a letter to us stating that they were going to withdraw a further three charges.
So one case and the one case of case 31 2024, which had to do with an email that Staff Sergeant Haynes sent internally to 22 and 31 DIV on December the 29th of 2023.
And then two other charges, which has to do with a February 14, 2024 Instagram post that he posted just a couple days after he was forced transferred out of 2020, 22 DIV, rather.
And so here we are.
The reason that the prosecution gave for withdrawing those three charges is to streamline the process.
Now, I've never heard of such a reason before for withdrawing charges.
We recently saw in the news that a certain police officer by the name of Kondo had his charges withdrawn against him.
The conduct that he was alleged to have committed was very, very different than the conduct that Staff Sergeant Haynes is being alleged of having committed amounting to misconduct here.
And anyways, in that case, the prosecution withdrew the charges for the reasons that the lack of jurisdiction, that they were out of time.
And so, and so that is a good reason and the right reason to withdraw charges.
We would have hoped that we wouldn't have had to have launched a motion with regards to case 50-2024, which also had an issue with jurisdiction for lack of meeting the timeline to serve the notice of hearing.
So streamlining is an interesting choice of words because, well, Staff Sergeant Haynes has been facing these charges now for two years.
And only after we brought an abusive process motion was the case streamlined and three further charges withdrawn.
And I submitted in my oral submissions, well, both on Thursday and Friday, I reiterated that our position is that we believe that the withdrawal of the charges is an attempt to try to prevent eliciting evidence or giving any weight to evidence in our abusive process motion.
That has to do with the very reasons why Staff Sergeant Haynes has been charged with all of these allegations, now facing 11 allegations, because we specifically stated that the reprisal conduct,
which constituted of Staff Sergeant Haynes being forced transferred out of 2022 DIV and of these charges themselves originates as a result of Staff Sergeant Haynes raising concerns of operational safety issues, public safety issues, police officer welfare.
He's been raising those concerns throughout 2023 since he joined 22 DIV.
And it culminated in an email that he sent right before the New Year's holidays.
to try to make his officers feel heard, that they weren't alone.
And that email he sent out on December 29th of 2023.
And then he was charged with misconduct for sending an email to his police officers raising the issues of resource limitations and public safety issues and police officers' safety.
And that was in case 31, 2024, and that was a case that the prosecution withdrew.
And yet that case is really front and center of why Staff Sergeant Haynes was subsequently charged because literally within the first week of January, when everyone got back from their happy new year holidays, all of these allegations were looked in.
It's almost like looking for dirt, you know?
It's like they looked for reasons to charge Staff Sergeant Haynes.
And they drafted a bunch of notices of investigation and then two and a half weeks later served them on to Staff Sergeant Haynes.
Wow.
And you've raised some of the issues that he was trying to bring forward and make his chain of command, so to speak, aware of and highlight.
And going back to that what we heard report, I mean, it said in there that there was a lack of accountability, that officers feared reprisal when they attempted to bring issues forward to their superiors to have them properly addressed.
It just is not happening.
And there's an internal culture of toxicity within the force.
Can you highlight maybe one instance in particular or some things, some of these systemic deficiencies that Sergeant Haynes was trying to raise, operational or otherwise?
Yeah, well, first I want to say that what we heard report, I invite everyone to have a look at that.
It's very, very important, very telling about what's going on in the Toronto Police Service.
And in fact, although this report is about the Toronto Police Service, it's going on in many police services across the country.
And in particular, since the mandates and policies of 2020 and COVID-19, that had a huge impact on police resources and public safety.
And so with regards to the what we heard report, Staff Sergeant Haynes included that in his affidavit.
I mean, because as he testified yesterday, he stated that report validated exactly what he was going through.
And I had invited Staff Sergeant Haynes to read his December 29, 2023 email onto the record.
And that was denied.
And I understand why, because it's already filed in the materials as part of the record.
But I think it's important to share the first paragraph that Staff Sergeant Haynes wrote.
And this is an internal email.
So this wasn't a public-facing email.
It is now a matter of the public record of this disciplinary proceeding.
So this is December 29th of 2023.
And Staff Sergeant Haynes is writing to his colleagues in 22 DIV.
And you got to remember, he's responsible for these police officers here.
And he's also writing to 31 DIB because he used to serve in 31 DIV.
And he's, as we heard him testify yesterday, he's a very Carrying leader, and he wants his subordinates and his colleagues to know that they're heard.
Because, as we heard in the what we heard report, is that police officers don't feel heard.
They're raising grievances, serious grievances, and the grievances are not being dealt with.
And in some cases, when police officers raise grievances, they face immediate reprisals, like automatic transfers out, or at times, just very bullying, harassing, intimidating behavior.
And we saw some of that intimidating behavior yesterday as well and Thursday while Staff Sergeant Haynes was trying to run his abusive process motion.
So the email starts off with valued members.
And Staff Sergeant Haynes then goes on to write, first of all, I hope this email finds you all well and getting ready to say goodbye to 2023 and welcome 2024.
I was having some conversations with some members around the station, and the general outlook is that people are excited to put this year behind them and are looking forward to some good things in the new year.
The last year, the last few years, in fact, have been extremely challenging for a lot of people, but specifically for our frontline first responding members.
With extremely limited resources to begin with and the constant high demand for our services, sometimes it can seem there is no end in sight.
I'm sure if we sent out a survey asking our officers why they signed up for this job, a popular answer would be to put bad guys in jail.
That would be my answer.
Instead, what we have seen happen over the course of the last few years is a move towards more of our resources being funneled into mental health emergencies, social issues, and persons in crisis, which by cause and effect limits the amount of officers and resources we can use to front end load our criminal investigations and perform proactive policing.
That's the very first paragraph.
And I think that highlights really the systemic issues faced by police, not just, as you mentioned, the Toronto Police Service, but other police services across Ontario and arguably also across Canada,
that their resources are not being properly or adequately allocated to the crime, which has, I would say, been a direct correlation to the public disorder and the community safety concerns we see unfolding on our streets in real time.
Now, this abusive of process motion that you argued, I would summarize it to say that it was that Staff Sergeant Haynes' disciplinary proceedings reflects structurally unfair and retaliatory process against him rather than just being these isolated incidents.
But in light of the allegations of sweeping corruption within Toronto Police Service and leadership failures that have been highlighted kind of throughout those reports, would you say that this case suggests that there is a that Staff Sergeant Haynes's proceedings are symptomatic of a deeper cultural problem within the service?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Because what we see are two things and it's a pattern.
And it's a pattern that, quite frankly, is not conducive to public safety.
Public Interest vs. Chain of Command00:07:00
And it's not conducive to our principles of transparency and accountability.
So the twofold pattern that I see is one with regards to the corruption allegations going on now in the Toronto Police Service.
So when I see that some police officers have been charged, what I look at is rank and what I look at who is being charged and who is not being charged.
Oh, I take issue with the police service falling back on the chain of command as if it's this very black and white, strictly adhered to process of subordinate versus supervisor in the police force when it comes to pressing disciplinary charges.
But when it comes to accountability, that chain of command ceases to exist.
And I say that because when I think of chain of command, I think about the military.
And I think about my time doing international humanitarian law, which is laws of war and international criminal law.
I spent four years at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where people in the military are held to account for war crimes committed by their subordinates.
So when I see charges or issues of corruption in the police force, I want to see the executives being charged.
And the reason why is because if we properly apply the structure of command responsibility, then we need to see those in the upper chain of the chain of command held to account for their subordinates' actions, not just the subordinates.
And the reason for that is because of the responsibility to supervise, to train, to provide resources.
And that goes to my secondfold pattern that I've identified, is that disciplinary proceedings are being used in some instances, such as with Staff Sergeant Haynes and also with Detective Helen Gruce, to silence police officers that have stood up to say that we have resource issues,
that we have public safety issues alive in our police force and we need to do something about it.
And instead of the police force doing something about it, taking accountability, taking responsibility, right?
So the first thing is to recognize that they have a responsibility.
And then the second thing is, is to take accountability and to act on the issues that are being that are being reported upwardly.
But instead of taking that approach, the chain of command or those higher up in the executive decide to issue internal chief of police complaint and they take the badges away and off of these police officers.
They transfer the police officer out of their positions.
They demote the police officers.
They suspend the police officers.
And now you can suspend police officers without pay.
They punish police officers.
They, as in the executives in the police force, punish subordinates for raising issues of resources.
And that's to stop them from having to do anything about it.
But that impacts our safety.
The very role of a police force is to preserve life, to protect us.
And repeatedly throughout watching these proceedings, and I appreciate that you brought up the story of Detective Helen Grooves from the Ottawa Police Service and what she's been faced with in terms of these weaponized disciplinary proceedings.
And repeatedly, a pattern that also has become clear to me is that the upper echelon really is untouchable.
And that's the message is that we will and we can throw those subordinates under the bus for the lack of oversight, for lack of uh accountability, kind of is is definitely a repeated theme, but also um, the ins, the lack of inspection.
Right there's, inspectors are in place to inspect and ensure that the force and these services function as they're meant to.
And given all of this context and the what we heard report and these uh, this corruption scandal unfolding within TPS, how can the service justify moving forward with this prolonged, really reputation destroying disciplinary proceeding against hands who did all of those things that we keep hearing are happening and proliferating within the service?
We've argued that it's not in the public interest to continue these proceedings, because to continue these proceedings, which rest squarely on the fact that they're reprisals for having conducted whistleblowing, is not in the public interest.
It is not in the public interest for the police service to be sending a message to the public that they punish their own for speaking out about resource issues.
It is in the public interest that we are kept safe.
It is in the public interest that our police forces have enough resources.
It is in the public interest that our police officers are trained, and I like how you reminded us of why a police officer would be uh, would have the rank of an inspector to inspect to make sure that the standards are being upheld, the standards, and policing and police disciplinary proceedings are in play to ensure that police officers are in line with the expected standards.
And so, when the police disciplinary proceedings are being used as a reprisal mechanism, that undermines a very reason why we have standards in the first place.
It makes standards arbitrary and that is dangerous.
We cannot live in a world where our rules, especially in the police world, become arbitrary.
Police officers are the boots on the ground that ensure that we have rule of law in this country.
In your view, what would be satisfactory on part of the tribunal to carry out their responsibility, also to scrutinize whether this internal disciplinary proceeding and these charges are actually being with weaponized against whistleblowers?
Procedural Fairness in Policing00:02:54
My expectation of every tribunal in Canada, not just a police disciplinary tribunal, but any administrative tribunal is that they apply the rules of procedural fairness, that they apply principles of natural justice.
And what I have experienced at times and i'm not saying in this particular process per se, I have experienced in administrative hearings and in police disciplinary hearings uh, the principles of of, of fairness uh, not being fully respected and a fair hearing really, if we have been been paying a lot of attention to the words that I use and the meaning of words,
because words create reality, in my view, and I think sometimes we we get lost in uh, lost in in in abstract ideas without rooting them in the practical reality.
So a fair hearing isn't just a concept, it's not just a terminology.
A fair hearing means that an officer is heard, that the person accused is heard, and it takes time at times for a person to tell their story and sometimes I feel that proceedings are rushed and I appreciate that we want to be expeditious with resources,
but I feel that we're living in a world right now where we just don't have time for anyone anymore.
And that kind of cultural approach due to the pressures of life and quite frankly, because of the reality of lack of resources, we're dealing with these time crunches that are impacting the rights of accused to having a fair hearing, to being heard.
And again, principles of fairness and procedural fairness, because there's fairness and there's procedural fairness.
Procedural fairness is actually, it's a legal thing.
There's procedural safeguards as under section seven of our charter.
Those start to unravel when we rush proceedings.
As someone who has come to represent at least a few, a handful of police officers and other rank and file within various services across, as far as I know, Ontario at least.
Can you speak on the broader culture happening in policing?
Back to Basics00:02:38
And I suppose also kind of just in closing and to wrap it up, perhaps a message you have for the public or the upper echelon to get things back to what policing was and should be about, which as you mentioned, is protecting life, public safety, community safety, and putting the bad guys in jail.
I think it's important for Canadians to ask for their police services to get back to basics.
And when we think about what that might look like with the police service is remembering our history, where do police services come from?
And originally their structures were paramilitary.
And that's why they have a chain of command structure.
But that current chain of command structure is not working the way it is meant to work.
We need more commanders or any commanders.
We need some commanders being held to account to set the example across the country that the executives are not above the law.
Enough with hanging the subordinates publicly.
Enough of that.
Yes, some police officers screw up.
Yes, there are some bad police officers out there.
But what I've seen are wonderful police officers, excellent police officers.
And some of those excellent police officers, the ones that we need on our front line to protect us, are being punished by the executives because they stood up to say that there are problems in the police force.
They stood up to say, we need your help.
And instead of getting help, they were silenced, publicly humiliated, and punished.
This is not good for the police world.
And what is not good for the police world is not good for the public.
Let's go back to basics.
Let's start conversations with each other to talk about what we want to see in our police force.
Powerful.
Well, thank you for your time and for your defense in these cases.
As the Gruce One moves forward, as Haynes moves forward, we'll definitely stay in touch and do updates as it's fitting.