The Protecting Class: who guards the gatekeepers?

The protecting class

Look at who runs for office and who wins. The same three professions keep coming back: the people who enforce the law, the people who argue it, and the people who keep the state's secrets.

Each of them is handed something the rest of us never get. The officer can stop you, search you and open a file on you. The lawyer, and above all the prosecutor, decides what you are charged with and which story the court hears. The intelligence officer reads what you never meant anyone to read.

Those powers are given in trust, for a purpose. They are not given as a head start in politics. Yet nothing stops the people who hold them from walking out of the job and onto the ballot, carrying the knowledge, the contacts and the credibility the job gave them.

From privilege to political power

The route runs in four steps, and every one of them is legal today.

Hand-drawn four-step strip. One, Access: gain privileged knowledge, legal authority and networks, shown as a filing cabinet of folders stamped confidential, client privilege, investigative and classified. Two, Influence: shape cases, select charges, frame narratives, manage what the public sees. Three, Transition: leave the profession with the knowledge, contacts and credibility, shown as a figure walking away with a briefcase. Four, Elect: run for office and turn that advantage into political power, shown as a figure at a podium before a crowd.

It's not a few people

In the United States, law is the single most common profession in Congress. The Congressional Research Service counts it at the start of every Congress.

Hand-drawn panel comparing the two countries. United States, 119th Congress, 2025 to 2026: 31 percent of the House and 47 percent of the Senate have law degrees and practised law; roughly 35 percent of Congress has a legal background, before counting former police or intelligence. Canada, examples of the same pipeline: Bill Blair, Toronto police chief, to federal cabinet in Public Safety and then National Defence; Julian Fantino, police chief, to federal cabinet; and multiple prime ministers, justice ministers and cabinet members with legal backgrounds.

31%

of House members practised law

119th Congress (2025 to 2027). Lawyers alone come to 187 of the 535 members of Congress, 35 percent, before a single former police officer or intelligence officer is counted.

Inside those numbers sit 41 former prosecutors and 9 former state attorneys general. Alongside them: 3 sheriffs, 3 police officers, an FBI agent and a CIA analyst. Here is what the road looks like, person by person.

Abigail SpanbergerCIA case officer, 2006 to 2014. Three terms in Congress. Governor of Virginia since January 2026.
Elissa SlotkinCIA analyst from 2003. Congress from 2019. United States Senator for Michigan since January 2025.
Eric AdamsTwenty-two years in the NYPD and Transit Police, retired a captain. Mayor of New York City, 2022 to 2025.
Val DemingsOrlando police chief, 2007 to 2011. Member of Congress, 2017 to 2023.

Canada runs the same pipeline, and runs it to the top of the security portfolio.

Bill BlairChief of the Toronto Police Service, 2005 to 2015. Elected that fall. Minister of Border Security in 2018, Minister of Public Safety from 2019 to 2021, in charge of the RCMP, CSIS and the border. Minister of National Defence from 2023 to 2025. Named High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in February 2026.
Julian FantinoToronto police chief, 2000 to 2005. Commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, 2006 to 2010. Elected in a 2010 by-election. Associate Minister of National Defence in 2011, Minister of International Cooperation in 2012, Minister of Veterans Affairs in 2013, and Associate Minister of National Defence again in 2015.
The lawyersPierre Trudeau, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were all called to the bar before they became prime minister. Six of the seven people who held the office between 1968 and 2006.

The narrative is built before the judge sees it

A case reaches a courtroom already made. The police chose which leads to chase and what went into the report. The prosecutor chose the charge. The lawyers chose the story. The judge decides between versions that other people built.

Hand-drawn panel. A police officer holding a report and a lawyer holding a case file stand on the left under the caption: investigate, select and frame the story. An arrow points to a judge at the bench, captioned: judge decides, from a case already shaped. Speech bubbles say judges have a duty of reserve, impartiality and political restraint, but the lawyers and prosecutors who feed the bench can run for office, lobby and shape public opinion.

And the judge is the only one the law keeps out of politics. Canada's elections law names who may not stand as a candidate. A federally appointed judge is on that list.

The following persons are not eligible to be a candidate: … a person who is a judge appointed by the Governor in Council, other than a citizenship judge …
Canada Elections Act, section 65

The police chief is not on that list. Neither is the RCMP officer or the CSIS officer. Until 2018, the list also included the county Crown Attorney, the local prosecutor. Parliament took that line out. The people who shape the case can run. The one person paid to judge it neutrally cannot.

Judges must cease all partisan political activity upon the assumption of judicial office.
Canadian Judicial Council, Ethical Principles for Judges, 5.B.2

We restrain the referee and leave the players free to write the rules.

The inherited advantage

Privileged access does not stop at one career. It compounds, and it can be handed down. One American family shows the whole circuit: business networks, then the Senate, then the head of the intelligence service, then the presidency.

1908Samuel P. Bush becomes president of Buckeye Steel Castings in Columbus, Ohio, a supplier to the railroads.
1931Prescott Bush becomes a partner at Brown Brothers Harriman on Wall Street.
1952Prescott Bush is elected to the US Senate for Connecticut and serves until 1963.
1967George H. W. Bush enters Congress for Houston, Texas.
1971Ambassador to the United Nations. Republican National Committee chair in 1973. Head of the US mission in Beijing in 1974.
1976Director of Central Intelligence, until January 1977.
1981Vice-President of the United States. President from 1989 to 1993.

The man who ran the CIA went on to command the government it serves. Nothing in the rules stood in the way, and nothing does now.

Reverse the logic

Hand-drawn panel titled The Core Principle. A stick figure raises a finger beside a large speech bubble: a profession that is entrusted with extraordinary access to our information, our disputes and our freedom should not be allowed to convert that privilege into electoral power.

Today the strictest political restraint falls on the judge, the one actor with no case to build. The people with the files, the charges and the secrets face none. Turn that around.

Today

Political restraint on judges only
Police, prosecutors and intelligence officers run freely
Professional privilege becomes political leverage
The case is shaped before it reaches the judge

The better model

Post-employment political restrictions on the protecting professions
A cooling-off period, or a bar, before running for office
Hard limits on using files, sources or case knowledge
Judges stay independent and impartial

Where would you draw the line?

Tick the rules you would write into law. Your rule appears below, ready to send.

No political use of what the job gave you
Files, informants, client confidences and case knowledge stay out of campaigns, permanently.

A cooling-off period
Years between leaving the badge, the Crown office or the agency and appearing on a ballot.

Not over your old institution
No former chief as the minister in charge of the police, no former spy over the agency.

Audited access
Every look at a sensitive record logged, audited by someone independent, and punished if misused.

Keep the bench impartial
The judge's restraint stays. The difference is that the people upstream finally share it.

Your rule

A fairer democracy

Separate the power to investigate, the power to argue and the power to govern. Close the revolving door between privileged access and elected office. Keep the courts impartial. And make sure that the public's trust in the police, the courts and the security services is never a stepping stone to someone's political career.

Public trust is not a political inheritance.

The record

The panels on this page are hand-drawn illustrations.

Who guards the gatekeepers?

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