Charged with serious crimes, police officers still collect their pensions. Gowling WLG’s Deron Waldock explains why
When police officers are charged with serious crimes, the public can expect swift and total consequences like stripped badges, lost jobs, forfeited pensions and in a twist of irony, maybe even jail time.
But the reality, according to one pensions and benefits expert, is far less satisfying.
Deron Waldock, partner in Gowling WLG's national pensions group, notes the legal framework governing police pensions in Canada leaves little room for the kind of retribution many taxpayers might expect to see. The rules that protect every worker's retirement savings apply with equal force to officers convicted of corruption, assault, or worse.
“Unfortunately, it really is driven and covered by plan specific rules and pension legislation,” explains Waldock. “So what we have is a situation really no different than any type of wrongful dismissal for an employee… While we can stop future accruals, once the officer is no longer a member of the police force, dismissal for cause doesn't automatically erase the already accrued pension. Total forfeiture is rare. It's usually tied to specific statutory provisions or criminal offenses and circumstances where the wrongdoing or fraud itself led directly to the receipt of the pension."
Officers who have been arrested and charged with grave offences are still expected to keep the pensions they have already earned, even if they are ultimately convicted and dismissed, noted Waldock. Even under provincial law, those accrued pension rights are treated as earned property.
According to Waldock, this practice isn’t new as he points to two Canadian examples where the same principles played out in practice. In Toronto in the late 2000s, officer John Schertzer, with more than 30 years of service, was able to retire and collect a lump-sum pension payout of over $1 million despite criminal charges arising from a corruption scandal.
The other example Waldock highlights took place in Winnipeg, where former police officer Elston Bostock pleaded guilty to multiple corruption‑related offences involving vulnerable women who had overdosed. When prosecutors argued at sentencing that his pension should be taken away, the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench declined, on the basis that the judge had no legal authority to strip an earned pension.
The only real “penalty” on the pension side in that Winnipeg case was actuarial, noted Waldock. Because Bostock was younger and left earlier than a normal retirement date, his entitlement was significantly reduced compared with what he would have received after a full, clean career. Even so, he still received a portion of his pension.
Yet Waldock is quick to highlight that keeping a pension doesn't mean corrupt officers are home free. While the pension itself is protected in law, money that’s already been paid out is a different matter.
For example, civil judgments and restitution orders can be used to garnish pension income once it lands in the officer's hands.
"It's pretty well untouchable,” he said. “But if people are persistent and they really go after it, there's these collateral or ancillary ways where it could be attacked.”
According to Waldock, there’s also the matter of a built-in financial penalty, even without any forfeiture. Police pensions are defined benefit plans, calculated on a formula that typically uses the best five years of salary multiplied by years of service.
Because salaries tend to rise over a career, an officer who is terminated early misses out on the highest-earning years that would have driven up the final calculation.
"It's going to significantly reduce what they're entitled to and what they've protected and are able to get," Waldock said, adding that they still collect something, but it falls short of what a full, clean career would have delivered.
Because police pensions are effectively prepaid where the money has already been set aside, there is no fresh cost hitting the plan or the employer when a convicted officer collects, he noted. But despite the damage being limited from a financial standpoint, the real pain is reputational, said Waldock.
He cautions that the officers in question have been charged, not convicted and that the cases still need to work their way through the courts. He also stressed that while the conversation has centred on Toronto, the pension principles at play apply across the country.
Police officers occupy an unusual dual status as both employees and sworn officers, subject to criminal law, professional discipline, and service rules all at once. That complexity can make the pension question seem murkier than it is.
At its core, Waldock believes the protection is a broad labour right, one designed to shield workers of all kinds from losing their retirement savings when employment ends. The fact that it sometimes extends to officers convicted of serious crimes is an uncomfortable side effect of a system built for everyone else.
"If people are upset, perhaps the silver lining of this is to the extent that they're upset, it shows how good these protections are for the average person. The real hidden story here is the number of people in Ontario and across the country that don't have a employer sponsored pension that are left without this type of savings,” noted Waldock, emphasizing that for many watching a disgraced officer collect a DB pension, the frustration is less about the specifics of police misconduct and more about a retirement system they feel shut out of entirely.
That gap between public-sector pension holders and everyone else, he suggests, may prove a more powerful force for change than any one corruption case.
If Canada were to pursue reform, he suggests the British model is the one worth studying - treating the employer's contribution not as something earned incrementally but as a reward contingent on completing service in good standing. He doubts it will happen but sees value in the debate itself.
"It reinforces for police officers right across the country how, one, this could be vulnerable and could be susceptible to legislative change. And two, it's a great advantage that they have over a lot of other Canadians getting a pension. They shouldn't take it for granted," he said.
