In Canada, police protection is provided either by a municipal police force, an Aboriginal police force, a provincial force, or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) – the federal police force coming under the authority of the department known as Public Safety Canada. As a result of this plurality of actors, three configurations relating to the organization and delivery of police protection services have emerged:

• Ontario and Quebec both have a provincial police force (called, respectively, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Sûreté du Québec), which is empowered to operate, in precise circumstances, over each province’s entire territory, notably on municipal territories that are not covered by a municipal police force. In both these provinces, municipal and Aboriginal forces operate on certain, well-defined territories with a view to applying, first and foremost, municipal by-laws or band council by-laws. On the territory of these provinces, the RCMP does not provide local police services but does, however, conduct activities aimed at enforcing federal legislation relating to drug trafficking, the sale of goods and services generated by criminal activity, customs and excise, and economic crime;
• Newfoundland and Labrador is home to a singular organization of police protection services. The province has its own police force, known as the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, which operates only in the most heavily populated areas and urban centres – namely, the Avalon Peninsula (where the capital, St. John’s, is located), Corner Brook, and the western portion of Labrador (where Labrador City is located). In the remainder of the province, police services are provided by the RCMP within the framework of contracts established with each municipality;
• In the other seven provinces, where a municipal or Aboriginal police force does not exist, the RCMP provides police services on a contract basis to municipalities and Aboriginal communities. As in the case of Ontario and Quebec, the mission of the municipal and Aboriginal police forces in these provinces is to enforce local by-laws.

Civil protection and fire protection services

Civil protection refers to all the mechanisms implemented by the public authorities and civil society in order to protect the public from natural and anthropogenic hazards.

Firefighting – i.e., the confining and extinguishing fires – is the responsibility of firefighters. Across Canada, the distribution of jurisdictions relating to fire protection has given rise to three different situations:

• on Prince Edward Island, fire safety comes under the authority of the Fire Marshal, with services being organized on a province-wide basis;
• in Quebec, fire safety services are organized at the municipal and occasionally supramunicipal levels (i.e., regional county municipalities). The person in charge of coordinating firefighting interventions on a province-wide basis is, in the absence of an official Fire Marshal, the associate deputy minister at the Ministère de la Sécurité publique associated with the Direction générale de la sécurité civile et de la sécurité incendie;
• in all the other provinces, services are organized at the local level, with a Fire Marshal overseeing the carrying out of the applicable provincial legislative provisions.

Correctional services
 
Correctional services are responsible for incarcerating individuals found guilty of crimes and facilitating their rehabilitation. In Canada, the organization of these services is based on the length of prison terms :

• the provincial and territorial governments are responsible for overseeing the incarceration of individuals sentenced to terms of less than two years;
• the federal government is responsible for overseeing the incarceration of individuals sentenced to terms of two or more years.