Clarifying that the central principle underlying community policing is the formation of a full partnership between the community and their police to identify and ameliorate local crime and disorder problems, this paper sketches some of the community policing initiatives taken by selected police forces across Canada, raises a number of unresolved issues which may challenge the viability of community policing, and attempts to explain the popularity of this approach in the context of its apparent origins. A comprehensive theory of community policing has yet to emerge, and community policing, as currently constructed, is a theoretically undeveloped set of policing principles and practices. A need exists both to conduct further research on the working of community policing tactics and to set the agenda for a critical discourse on the role and impact of community policing in Canadian society. 1 note, 1 table, and 99 references (Author abstract modified)