Discover Justice
The Discover Justice event was developed to introduce grade 11 and 12 high school students to Mohawk College’s programs and open the door to considering public and private sector careers in enforcement, inspection and investigations.
By letting students get a hands-on experience of what the college does, what programs look like and be involved with some of the interactive sessions that our program of study includes, students may recognize a viable career path moving forward.
You may have heard that recently the Ontario government announced it is introducing a number of new measures to boost lagging police recruitment numbers, including eliminating a post-secondary education requirement to be hired as an officer and covering the costs of mandatory training.
Premier Doug Ford said that his government will also introduce legislation that would amend the Community Safety and Policing Act 2019 so a high school diploma or equivalent is "sufficient education" for the purposes of being hired as a police officer. And the province will cover 100 per cent of the costs for Basic Constable Training at the Ontario Police College. The three-month program costs $15,450 and new police officers are required to complete it within six months of being hired.
However, hiring requirements will still be managed by police services throughout the province.
Cheryl Burns, Associate Dean, Social Services and Justice Studies, “I don’t think it will have an effect at all, police services will decide on an individual basis what experience they will want their applicants to have. Life experience, lived experience, post-secondary experience anything that will give a potential applicant a few more years of growth and maturity is going to benefit any police service and any community. With post-secondary education students are getting the skills and they will also learn problem solving, critical thinking, communication skills, working in teams, deadlines, all of those important transferable skills. Those are the types qualifications and experiences that I think the police services are going to continue to look for in applicants.”