When the OSBCU strike started, thousands of labour activists across the province were filled with a sense of hope; something all too rare in the labour movement these days. Not only was a union finally defying back-to-work legislation, but they were being joined by other unions, tacitly defying both the bans on solidarity strikes and wildcat strikes. What went wrong?

The convoy debacle appears to show that there are elements of the repressive forces of the state, backed by segments of big capital and reactionary small capitalists, who no longer subscribe to the arrangement of bourgeois democracy. We will quickly find that what pass as democratic institutions are not nearly as powerful nor as permanent as liberalism would have us believe.

This essay explores the process and pitfalls of defunding the police in Ontario, showing that ultimately the police as an institution are largely removed from any meaningful form of democratic oversight. As a result, defunding the police will be exceptionally difficult within the confines of Ontario’s current institutional framework, revealing the limits of democracy within the Canadian state.