Evidence ledger · Finding 10 · Ontario
The service with the most published governance in this atlas: a Board policy that bars predictive policing outright, and the only licence-plate regime in the country that publicly requires a reason for every search and keeps the logs indefinitely. It is also the service with thirteen convictions for unauthorized database access since 2018, none of which surfaced because somebody read a log.
Finding 10
Toronto is the hardest case for this project's national finding, because Toronto has done the most. Its Board adopted an artificial-intelligence governance framework in February 2022 with five risk tiers and a category of technologies that may not be adopted at all. Its published licence-plate record requires a valid search reason or case number for every query and says the audit log is kept indefinitely. Every other service in this atlas is further back. And the queries that mattered went through a records system its public technology page does not name.
The Service states that only limited, specifically trained members can search ALPR data, that all searches require a valid search reason or case number, and that activity is captured in audit logs currently stored indefinitely. Regina proposed this control and could not get it built; Toronto publishes it as in force.
TPS ALPR record ↗Since February 2022 the Board has barred mass surveillance, any application predicting who will offend, any use of carding data and any system without a human in the loop. It requires that all use of AI technology be auditable. The policy governs AI. A constable running a plate is not AI.
Board policy ↗Thirteen police-act convictions for unauthorized database access since 2018, four from a single division. One was found when a phone was seized after an arrest. The most recent reached a courtroom through an organized-crime investigation. The public record does not show a single one surfacing from a review of the query itself.
The Globe and Mail ↗Authorization timeline
The timeline separates the pilot, the purchases, the governance, the corrections and the convictions.
Capability register
Toronto answers more of this register than any other ledger here. The row it does not answer is the one the national finding is about.