The first approach has involved the reform of police governance institutions, while the second has restricted the political rights of police officers in terms of their outside organizational affiliations and activities. This paper explores both these aspects of the relationship between police and politics, within the Canadian context, and from both historical and contemporary perspectives. The author concludes that each of these strategies for ensuring a nonpartisan police force has had a checkered history among multiple Canadian public police jurisdictions, and neither seems to be generally accepted or agreed upon. If the current popularity of the concept of community policing remains strong, there will almost certain be a fundamental reassessment of the relationship between the police and the communities they serve, and of the role of politics in policing. 61 references