Host: We are here to make an announcement regarding a lengthy investigation into organised crime and police corruption.

Host: Earlier this month, police chiefs from Toronto and York region dropped a bombshell. Seven Toronto police officers and one retired cop had been arrested in what is being described as one of the biggest corruption cases the service has ever faced. The investigation, called Project South, started when a veteran officer allegedly leaked the home address of a corrections officer to an accused drug trafficker, police say that led to an attempted hit. When authorities looked into that, they uncovered more a whole lot more allegations involving guns, drugs, bribery and obstruction of justice, among other things. Now, the province's inspector general of policing has ordered an Ontario wide review of police services and boards. So what exactly have officers been accused of and what happens next? And zooming out, what does a scandal like this do to public trust? We check out an index that lists countries according to how corrupt their public sectors are perceived to be, and find out where Canada ranks and why. Welcome to The Rundown. Project South has led to criminal charges against multiple Toronto police officers and allegations of involvement with organised crime. So what do we know so far? Jennifer Pagliaro is the Toronto Star's crime reporter and has been following this story closely. And she joins me in studio. How are you doing?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Good. Thanks so much for having me.

Host: There is a lot to uncover here. We are learning a bit more about the officers and the civilians involved. Give us the latest.

Jennifer Pagliaro: So we just reported that some of the officers were involved in a little bit more detailed allegations from the police that they, one of them was involved with a civilian who's also charged as part of this project, helping advise her on how to install a GPS tracker on another woman's car. It allegedly damaged her car, and that woman also felt harassed when she was followed using this tracker. And ultimately, police say she feared for her safety. Now, a Toronto police officer is charged jointly with a civilian in that allegation, which is, I think, shocking to a lot of people.

Host: And I'm. Correct me if I'm wrong. Was there a gun also found as well?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yes. The civilian had a very old model gun that she was allegedly keeping in a unlocked drawer inside of an envelope in her residence, which she was charged with carelessly storing. We're not sure how she got the gun. If the officer participated in helping her in any way. He's not charged with that, but of course, concerning nonetheless.

Host: And there was another officer, something closely related to insurance fraud or something with a car. What do we know?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah, there's an officer who allegedly counselled one of his associates on how he could help have that car stolen so that that person could claim an illegal insurance fraud on the stolen car, which would have been a setup, essentially. We know that the person whose name is on that court record, that name is also known to us as being one of the Peel Region police officers who is suspended but not criminally charged. No one would confirm that they're the same person. But of course, that name has popped up now on the court record, and that person allegedly never went through with the stealing insurance fraud scheme. And so that's why that person's not criminally charged. But the officer involved, Sergeant Robert Black, is charged with counselling him on how to commit insurance fraud.

Host: All right. We were making the comment that it feels like this is an onion just being, you know, we're peeling and seeing the layers. There's a lot to it. I want to take a step back just to kind of make sure we have all of the details here at the moment. How many officers have been charged and with what if you can give us sort of some of the more extreme charges versus some of the lesser ones?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah. So seven active duty Toronto police officers were charged, as well as one retired police officer. The interesting bit there is he and his son are co-accused in this case. His son only has around four years on the force and they're charged with a host of things. Some of the more serious charges is the officers are actually charged themselves in trafficking drugs, not just in aiding in that criminal activity, as well as accepting bribes and searching police databases, essentially leaking personal information that's on these confidential databases to known alleged criminals who were then disseminating it. And we know that that has led to a series of crimes, including conspiracy to commit a murder against a Toronto jail official and also a shooting various homes through the GTA.

Host: Fair to say the conspiracy to commit murder. The most serious charge on that list.

Jennifer Pagliaro: It is.

Host: All right. The now we do. You had mentioned Peel police as well. Three officers who have been suspended, not criminally charged. Do we know anything on that if that's going to turn into anything?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah. Well, we got a bit of a clue recently with that name that we saw that may have been involved in the insurance fraud. We don't know too much about what these other officers are alleged to have done, or whether they're just under suspicion at this time and have been suspended pending investigation. We just know that they don't have criminal charges, and we're not sure if they will warrant criminal charges, but we're watching that very closely.

Host: In terms of the precincts, throw out some numbers. Obviously, for a lot of reviewers, they probably won't know where they are, but just a general description of where where they are.

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah. So most of these officers, the active officers were assigned to divisions in sort of the northwest part of the city. So in the Black Creek North York areas, there was one officer assigned to a down like a right downtown core division. We know that some of the officers were working at the same divisions, 12 division that's in that Black Creek area. So we're still piecing together how all of the officers may have known one another or came to know one another. In the past, for example, we've been able to figure out that some of the officers who have all been sort of 19 years of service between them, may have graduated from police college together. And they also worked at 12 Division together early in their careers. So perhaps those relationships were maintained. We're still trying to understand what those allegations are and what the conspiracy is on at a big picture level.

Host: All right. I want to talk about one constable whose name really surfaced in the beginning, Constable Tim Barnhart. Who is he? What have we learning more of?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah. So he's one of those 12 division officers. He's been on the force for 19 years. He's been a constable that whole time, which means typically at a division you're like a rogue cop. You go out to nine, 11 calls or anything that requires your attention. He is one of those officers who is himself charged with trafficking in drugs. He is an officer who we know is alleged to have leaked the address of the jail official, who then these alleged criminals tried to kill. Okay. And we also know that he is involved in other alleged conspiracies, such as trying to protect illegal pot shops in the city. We know cannabis was legalised. There are still issues with illegal marijuana, and so there's a whole host of allegations of obstructing justice, falsely accusing people trafficking in drugs, as I said, and that involvement in the eventual conspiracy to commit murder.

Host: Now, I know at the press conference when Toronto police unveiled the investigation, there were questions posed to Project South ties to the tow truck wars that have been in the headlines for quite a while in GTA. What do we know? Is there is there a stronger connection there? What do we know about that?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah, we were sort of surprised when the press conference happened. My colleague Abby O'Brien was there, and she's been covering this tow truck issue a lot, and we Recognized one of the names of the civilians. That person was previously arrested for the incidents. I mentioned shooting up various houses in the GTA, including in Vaughan. One of those houses allegedly belongs to a so-called kingpin in this tow truck industry, which, you know, your viewers may have seen, as you mentioned, that there's been a lot of infighting to the extent of, you know, calling it a war. Shootings back and forth repeatedly in these locations, home addresses, tow truck yards. It's been really problematic.

Host: One has to ask. And this was a question that was asked at that press conference as well. But have any criminal cases been compromised because of the probe into police corruption?

Jennifer Pagliaro: We've been actively searching that out. We've been talking to criminal defence lawyers to find that out. So far, I haven't heard of any cases falling apart, but I think it's still a little bit early days for that. And that is obviously a huge concern.

Host: All right. We mentioned Ontario's Inspectorate of Policing is launching a review into all police departments across Ontario. Does that mean the problem goes beyond just a few bad apples? Obviously this case here is really tied into the the GTA for the most part. But does this problem go beyond that?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah, I think it's a valid question. I'm personally really curious to see what the inspector general finds. I don't think we have any allegations beyond this Toronto Police Department. And, you know, those three Peel officers who have not been criminally charged. However, there are some bigger questions about supervision, the way police have access to sensitive information and just overall, their ability to be incentivised to work with this, these criminal entities. And I think it's worth exploring. Of course, I'll be very interested to know how deeply they go on the Toronto police force and whether they uncover any more systemic issues with that force.

Host: Let's talk reaction. Political leaders, of course, have been quick to jump on sort of their thoughts on here, police unions as well. How are they reacting so far?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Well, there were some questions about whether Toronto Police Chief Myron Demko was going to face questions of leadership so far, talking to people behind the scenes. I'm not seeing any strong calls or any calls at all, really, from the mayor's office, from the police board that oversees the force or from the union, who often has a lot of negative things to say about policing management. So I think for now, Demko is not taking the fall for this. He seems to be taking it relatively seriously. But of course, the investigation as we know, is not over. So we're just waiting to see how that plays out politically.

Host: You mentioned Chief Demko. Obviously this is a big hit to public trust. And so I am curious, what are members of the public saying? You know, it wasn't that long ago when there were calls for defunding the police. We are talking we are in the midst of budgets. So, you know, these are usually pretty high up there when we talk about the money allocated to salaries for police. But what are the public saying?

Jennifer Pagliaro: Yeah, I think like we've seen such a huge shift in attitudes toward policing over the last decade and especially over the last five years. And I think it this investigation, I think, for a lot of people, validates what they felt was already happening in terms of corrupt policing. Now, I don't think anyone really knew specifically that this was going on or could have predicted this. I certainly didn't, but I think it's reinforcing a lot of negative opinions about policing. And that's a huge mountain for Demke and the service as a whole to overcome. And they have a lot of work to do to already repair a fractured trust in policing.

Host: You have been on the crime beat for for a bit here. I got to ask, has there been anything like this in Toronto police history or in just in the stories that you have covered in general? We are just at the beginning here. Yeah. Have you seen anything like this?

Jennifer Pagliaro: No, I honestly couldn't have imagined anything like this. You know, the night that we were starting to hear the initial rumours and then were able to confirm seven officers accused as part of a massive York police investigation. It's just never happened. It's unprecedented. We're in uncharted territory, and we're still waiting to see how far this goes. I asked chief Demkiw if he expected more arrests of his members, and he said he didn't want to speculate on what the investigation would bring. So we're tuning in to see what happens next.

Host: All right. As will we. Jennifer, thank you very much. Really appreciate your time.

Jennifer Pagliaro: Thank you so much for having me.

Host: Is police corruption rare in this country and more broadly, are Canadian institutions usually seen as trustworthy? Each year, Transparency International releases the Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks countries based on how corrupt their public sectors are perceived to be. Salvatore Cusumano is the executive director of Transparency International Canada, and he joins us in studio. How are you doing?

Salvatore Cusumano: Great. Thank you for having me.

Host: Great to have you here. Let's start off with we're here to talk corruption. So I think it's fair that we start the conversation with corruption scandal that's taken the headlines here in Toronto and broader. But what's your take on the Toronto police corruption scandal right now?

Salvatore Cusumano: I mean, I think it shows us it's a really elegant, if unfortunate illustration of how corruption works in Canada. Of course, the allegations haven't been proven yet. And anything I say today, of course, is really respectful of the due process that exists and the investigations that are continuing. But I think it shows you that with corruption, it takes two to tango. What I mean by that is that on the one hand, when we talk about corruption, you do have public officials who have to be willing to engage in the behaviour, people who are going to use their position of power or authority to personal, private or potentially criminal benefit. On the other hand, you have just that, which is an actor or a party that motivates the corruption in some cases, maybe coerces the corruption. And, you know, in this case, we see, unfortunately, allegations of public officials serving the public who may have been tied up in behaviour by actors who were looking to exploit a public institution for some very nefarious purposes.

Host: You use the word elegant. Help explain that?

Salvatore Cusumano: Well, I think it's elegant because, you know, at Transparency International, we're the Canadian chapter of a of a global organisation. And what's elegant is that it's a really, really clear illustration. If it's proven of the vulnerabilities that our institutions face in Canada. On the one hand, you know, I think the investigations hopefully will point to some of the sort of systemic tendencies that we could improve in our institutions. But on the other hand, it does show a rising concern with organised crime in Canada and the way that organised crime can, can really impact the integrity of our institutions. And so it's elegant in that sense because it's come out in public. We're fortunate to see it. And we do applaud the investigators who brought it to light. There's elegance in that too, that that we see the impact of the resources we put into these types of investigations. But unfortunately, the downsides are are evident as well.

Host: How corruption in policing is that, is that rare in Canada? These are the institutions that would sort of be investigating corruption cases on their own. So we flip that case is is it rare to see.

Salvatore Cusumano: That's a good question. And I think that, you know, on the one hand, I hope that the investigations that are going on will tell us, hopefully, that this is an isolated incident in the Toronto police and in Toronto police, Toronto Area police services. But no, we've seen cases of of of corruption in in police services in Canada. We've also seen issues of of other types of misconduct that exist. Sometimes the two are linked. But I think the real takeaway here is that I think there's a sense sometimes in Canada that that corruption or the word corruption refers to something that happens elsewhere, that it refers to something that happens in countries that are not democratic. I think I think what we see here is a real reminder that it is these types of public institutions that in this case, are supposed to be identifying, prosecuting this type of behaviour. Criminal organisations are targeting those, those, those entities as well, because they need to to carry out the types of activities they're doing. These are vulnerable institutions. And if we let our foot off the gas, as these groups become more sophisticated, this type of behaviour could become more common as well. But it does exist in Canada. It has existed, and we hope in this case it's isolated. But we'll have to see what comes out.

Host: All right. Well, let's switch gears a bit and I want to zoom out and talk about the Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index for people who aren't familiar with it. What is it? What's the methodology?

Salvatore Cusumano: That's a great question. So the Corruption Perceptions Index is sort of it's probably the most discussed index on corruption in the world right now. Transparency international has been doing it for, for for about 20 years. And what it basically shows is the perceptions of experts and business leaders vis a vis the perceived levels of corruption that exist in a country. Now, when I say perceived, it's not a direct measure of how many police scandals took place in the country. It's it's more a measure of what is the confidence and what is the degree of certainty that people have about what kind of place is Canada to do business? What kind of place is Canada to be a citizen and to expect accountability from its institutions? Now, what we saw on the rankings this year, 182 countries were ranked. Canada was 16th from the top. So you could say 16th best. I think if we're looking to Milano Cortina right now, we're not going to settle for 16th.

Host: In hockey.

Salvatore Cusumano: Fair enough. But you know, I think it shows again, this it's sort of what you see in the police scandal is that when I say 16th, that's a downward trend, the lowest ranking ever for Canada since we started the index. And since we were able to kind of standardise the scores in 2012, it could still be a good score in a global context. You know, top 10%. But it's that trend we're worried about because we think it also reflects and tracks with declining public trust in our institutions and a perception that that things aren't working in some way when it comes to to prosecuting these types of crimes. And as an aside, you know, the fact that business leaders are involved in the types of indices that feed into our index, it should be a cause for concern at a time when Canada is trying to diversify its trade and investment partnerships. You know, if our country, if our financial systems are not deemed to be secure, clean, it does increase costs for investors in terms of due diligence, in terms of checking where their money is going. And, you know, we really think on on all aspects public trust and investor trust. Frankly, we need to do a much better job and turn the ship around.

Host: I don't want to make the same analogy of the Olympics here, but, you know, it's hard not to compete or compare ourselves when we're looking at this. How do we compare to other Democratic peers?

Salvatore Cusumano: So one of the interesting things that came out this year is we saw a sustained trend of a similar decline among what you might call Canada's peer democracies, countries in the G7, some of its NATO partners, and so on. Now, again, on the one hand, you might be tempted to say, oh, well, what's happening here is not that exceptional. I think when you think back to, for example, what our Prime Minister talked about at the World Economic Forum, you know, you do see, in a sense, a threat that exists across many countries, a similar trend of declining public trust that we hope doesn't signal something deeper about how democracy in general is performing. We we believe that Canada can be a leader in in this community of countries. Our prime minister has certainly said he hopes that we can be he intends for us to be. And I think this is one area where democracies really have to come together and identify what is it about our institutions that is not keeping the public trust, and how can we change that?

Host: When we look at sort of from that zoomed out perspective from from the global side, you talked about perception versus actual corruption. Can you give us some some examples in terms of what a perception would look like versus actual? When we look at maybe down that index, when we get down to the bottom half of these countries.

Salvatore Cusumano: Sure. Maybe one thing I can talk about is the financial sector in a country. Another thing I could talk about is the type of corporate ownership transparency that exists. And these two things can can go hand in hand sometimes. For example, one of the things that that we can really see in the index coming through is what kind of confidence exists in who are people doing business with, and where does money come from when it's flowing into Canada, through Canada and out of Canada? Now the Corruption Perceptions Index is about public sector institutions. That's important to mention. But these kind of broader questions around how, how how well is it known, what companies are doing business with the Canadian government or with the Ontario government, for example? We are fortunate at Transparency International to have been able to work with government at various levels to have a registry now of companies that are registered at federal level and in a couple of provinces, who's behind them, what data exists? We think that still there could be room to roll this out across all provinces, an issue that you'll see come into public sector corruption in Canada is that it is a complicated environment. You've got regulations at federal level, provincial level, even at some, in some cases municipal level with these things. And because Canada's complex people need an additional level of certainty sometimes to be able to, to, to have, have trust. And we certainly see that in Canada from a citizens perspective as well.

Host: With that, what steps has Canada taken to shore up confidence that our system has safeguards against corruption? Obviously there's work to be done, but what have we done so far?

Salvatore Cusumano: Sure we have. We have the fortunate opportunity right now, a global body that looks at the integrity of our anti-money laundering framework in Canada, the Financial Action Task Force, they're actually wrapping up a review right now that's going to look at how far has Canada come over the last five and ten years in, in strengthening a framework that there had been some deficiencies identified. Now Canada has done a couple of things that we think could be stronger in practice. One is opening up that corporate black box numbered companies at the federal level. Now they're they're available for viewing on a public registry, B.C. and Quebec as well. Ontario has announced they're going to do it as well. You know, this is a really good opportunity to to show a body like this, but also our citizens that you can't hide behind a numbered company. You've got to you've got to do business openly. So we could see that we hope that will spread out across Canada. But it's a good step. Another one is we just saw Canada announce the government announced in the budget 2025 budget, the creation of a new financial crimes agency, which might look into that sort of supply side. I talked about where you have organisations trying to corrupt our institutions. This agency should theoretically help improve the coordination between bodies like RCMP, provincial level police Fintrac, the financial intelligence unit. That's a good step. It's been named in the budget, but we would want to know what kind of resources are behind it. How is it going to harmonise those those entities rather than add another one to the mix? Those are two things that they have great potential, but it's kind of the story. In Canada. We see good announcements. We have to really make them effective now.

Host: All right. Prime Minister Carney's government passed the Building Canada Act to expedite infrastructure projects deemed in the nation's interest. When we see expedite, we think things are going to speed up there. There might be some things that are missing there. Are there any risks that this would create opportunity for corruption?

Salvatore Cusumano: Certainly. I think that we at Transparency International Canada know through our international network that when you speed up the the way you do business, the way you make investments, the way you spend public money, if at the same time you're not increasing transparency and increasing oversight at a similar rate, public money is going to be misspent. We could look at what happened during Covid, for example. I think that everybody knows some of the the public misspending that took place, the name Arrivecan, while it should have been a source of pride for something that secured our country and improved our public health, it's now become an infamous name in terms of how our money is, is, is spent that that incident could be multiplied many, many times over. If we don't manage this critical moment the right way. And so when we see the creation of things like, for example, a new Defence investment agency, you know, that can be a very good way of helping improve our country's defence. But we need to make sure that when when you do create these kind of channels, that there is an opportunity to, to to be open with the public as much as you can with something as sensitive as defence about where the money is being spent, that it's being spent competitively, and that it is actually, at the end of the day, improving our defence. Because that's the bottom line. If we spend money and it doesn't improve our defence, that will undermine public trust. Same goes with infrastructure and many other priorities.

Host: Very quickly. When we're talking about Canada, it's hard not to have a conversation about the US as well. To some, the US has been the world's policeman to some extent. How have they been doing at policing corruption under this administration?

Salvatore Cusumano: Well, they've announced the rollback of certain of the enforcement of certain laws that were instrumental in bringing people to justice, both in the US and abroad. Now, I think what we'll see, it's still early to tell, if you can imagine a year in, we have seen so much. But on this front, I think it's still early to tell where it will go. It's again a reminder that these things can be weaponized. It's a reminder that you don't want to make yourself a target. We need to be impeccable on all of these things. It's not just the potential of rolling back enforcement, it's the potential of using it in ways that suit pretexts. We have seen this administration use, you know, the justification of, of of fentanyl flowing across the border into the US as a reason to apply tariffs. It's just a call to say whatever is happening south of us, there are so many things we can do to get better. Let's not give anyone a reason to to point the finger.

Host: All right. We're going to leave it there. I really appreciate your insights. Thank you so much.

Salvatore Cusumano: Appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Host: I'm Jeyan, thanks for watching The Rundown. What do you like or not like about what we're doing so far? Send us your feedback at tvo.org/rundownfeedback or leave us a comment on YouTube. Until then, see you next week.