Falling On His Sword

Mounties' top cop resigns Not enough. He has fallen on his sword for his political masters and for his officers.

In Letters: The Zaccardelli resignation

What a difference 24 hours makes in Canadian politics.

Embattled RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli said today that he got his facts wrong about the Maher Arar affair when he testified at a Commons committee in September but he steadfastly refuses to resign over the matter.

Zaccardelli was back before the public safety committee to “set the record straight,” as he put it, about what he knew and when he knew it in Arar’s deportation to Syria as a suspected al-Qaida agent.

But his performance left opposition MPs howling for his resignation, and even some Conservative members expressed disbelief at his new version of events.

OTTAWA - When the Prime Minister unleashes his lapdogs to join a parliamentary pack attack, someone is about to die.

Conservative MPs treated RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli with kid gloves when he appeared before a parliamentary committee two months ago to explain his involvement in the Maher Arar affair.

They dropped the gloves and savaged him yesterday during his second appearance, when he admitted to misleading MPs due to a severely flawed memory.

It was an all-party Zach attack, and when Stephen Harper stood in the Commons a few hours later, urging patience for "due process" before anyone gets fired, well, all that's left to discuss are the terms of severance.

Notice that this has relieved the Tories of demanding he discipline and reprimand the officers who violated the law, those who subesquently he rewarded with promotions rather than sackings. And incompetence is no excuse.

Former RCMP complaints commissioner calls Zaccardelli "incompetent"

There are heads to roll but they won't since the New Law and Order Government loves its Secret Police State. No matter it is illegal and incompetent.

Canadian police said Tuesday they had told U.S. authorities they had no evidence an Ottawa software engineer was an Al Qaeda agent before Washington deported him to Syria , where he was tortured.

Yesterday, Zaccardelli, 58, said he didn't know the RCMP had given false information to U.S. authorities until the report came out in September. He had said in earlier testimony that he learned about the errors in 2002 and had briefed the appropriate ministers.

The U.S. accused Arar of links to the al-Qaeda terrorist network when authorities detained him at John F. Kennedy International Airport during a stopover on his way back to Canada from Tunisia. The investigation was ordered by former Justice Minister Anne McLellan in January 2004.

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Irony Thy Name is Zaccardelli

Ironically, Zaccardelli is the only federal official who has offered a public apology to Arar for his treatment. The government has refused to do so, pending negotiations on financial compensation.

Because the Government is full of those who called Arar a terrorist and demanded harsher, brutal treatment of him and carte blanche for the RCMP to round up more of those listed in their terrorist profile.

A teary-eyed Giuliano Zaccardelli says he's stepping down as RCMP commissioner with a clear conscience, having told the truth and done the right thing.

And the only reason Zaccardelli had crocodile tears for us today was because he was covering for those Mounties that screwed up.

More junior officers who actually conducted the investigation of Arar — and made the mistakes that led to his ordeal — continue to serve with the Mounties and in some cases have won promotion.

Zaccardelli, standing in front of a backdrop photo of charging Mounties on horseback, told a news conference that he’s resigning to help preserve public confidence in the Mounties.

We won't have confidence in the RCMP or the New Law and Order Government until there are resignations or firings of the Mounties responsible for the Arar affair, for leaking false information after the fact and for raiding an Ottawa Journalists home for having recieived the leaked information, imprisoning her illegally.

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Falling On His Sword

RCMP Terror

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RCYA

Further proof that RCMP Commissioner 'Cover Yer Ass' Zaccardelli was an incompetent administrator who has a penchant for perjury.....as if we needed anymore proof....

Former RCMP commission Giuliano Zaccardelli told the Commons justice committee in 2004 that the forensic lab services matched the best in the world, that it had no backlog and that all cases involving violent crimes were given priority and that its clients — police forces and prosecutors were satisfied.

"Our audit found many of these claims to be incorrect," Fraser stated, adding that the most of the same problems found in the audit were raised in 1990 and 2000. "It is disappointing to find them still unresolved," she told reporters.

The auditor general said the fact is that for 99 per cent of its cases it is unable to meet its own turnaround target of 30 days, partly due to its backlog of DNA requests, which on average take 114 days to complete in 2005-06. However, when pressed, it can turn around urgent service request in 15 days, but this only happens in about one per cent of the cases.

Former RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli told a Parliamentary committee in 2004 that there was no backlog at his force's forensic services and that DNA analysis for major cases was completed within 15 days.

But a report released yesterday by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser says there is a backlog, it is growing, and fewer than one per cent of DNA samples sent to the RCMP Forensic Laboratory Services are processed in less than two weeks.

The rest, including homicides and sexual assaults languished in the lab for an average of 114 days in 2005-06, Ms. Fraser said in her report released Tuesday.

That was actually an increase of nearly three weeks over 2003-04 when additional spending and staff were directed at the labs because the force was being criticized for long turnover times and backlogs.

Ms. Fraser refused to speculate on the reasons for Mr. Zaccadelli's misleading testimony when she spoke to reporters at a news conference yesterday.

“I think you have to ask the people who made those statements. I have no explanation for that,” she said.

The suggestion that the former commissioner may have misled politicians comes after he resigned for providing false information to the government about Maher Arar who was wrongly accused of having terrorist ties. It also comes as Parliament is trying to get to the bottom of mishandling of the RCMP pension.

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Keystone Kops and Air India

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Gosh Shucks

"I also shared in that letter with (Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff) that as we had taken that particular step, I would sure appreciate if they would do the same." Day: US asked to clear Arar as security threat He forgot to add the giggle, and hayseed 'Gosh Shucks',and oh yes the pretty please. The Americans of course have no idea what he is talking about.

But what did you expect from Stockwell Day who also owes Arar an apology for having labeled him a terrorist. Still waiting for the Conservatives to apologize for believing and promoting the RCMP lies that he was a terrorist. Not just an apology as the New Government of Canada but as the Conservative Party who when in opposition smeared Arar as a terrorist.

When the then-Liberal government began belatedly, timidly asking for Arar's release from his Syrian torture chamber in the fall of 2002, opposition leader Stephen Harper was dismissive. The Liberals, he claimed, were "hitting the snooze button on security matters." His colleague, Stockwell Day, even argued the government's "lack of vigilance" had allowed a notorious terrorist like Arar to avoid detection and detention in the first place.The Arar case is not the end

And how about firing some of them RCMP bad guys. Nope not this Law and Order government. Instead they allow the RCMP commissioner to hold on to his job, and they accept that those who broke the law regarding domestic spying, a law in place years prior to 9/11, should get meritous service awards.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli testified at the Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on Thursday of last week. Mr. Zaccardelli said after Mr. Arar's extraordinary rendition from New York to Syria in 2002, he was alerted to Mr. Arar's case and that he attempted to correction false information about Mr. Arar that the RCMP sent to U.S. authorities.

"I learned about it when I reviewed the information. We tried to correct it with the Americans. We let Canadian officials know about that," Mr. Zaccardelli said of the false information.

But opposition MPs said Mr. Zaccardelli's testimony was incomplete and asked if he had known that the RCMP's information was false, why he did not correct the record in Canada. It remains unclear why the RCMP and CSIS together resisted–as Justice O'Connor documents–the attempt by the minister of foreign affairs to send a letter to Syria saying that there was "no evidence" that Mr. Arar was linked to al-Qaeda. CSIS didn't want Arar returned to Canada

Yep the New Government is a Police State in the waiting. Waiting for a Majority.

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Zaccardelli Gets The Boot?

Will the Conservatives turf RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardali, looks like they are planning to. Not over his mishandling of the Arar Affair, oh no the Harpocrites love the idea of the Security State. Nope they are dragging up an old sexual abuse case to use as an excuse to turf him. That of course is far more heinious a crime for the Tories than rendition, torture and falsifying information about Maher Arar.

RCMP whistleblowers get Day's protection

Goldring said the officers have information on a case dating back to the 1990s that the RCMP did not adequately investigate alleged sexual abuse by an ex-Mountie at a school in New Brunswick. RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli was in charge of that criminal division at the time.

MP flags concerns over Zaccardelli

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Really Corrupt Mounted Police

Gee it's hard to be a law and order government when the official state police force is riddled with corruption, cronyism and fraud.

Those who uphold the law once again act as if they are above the law.

Which suits the Harpocrites just fine since they are acting the same way.

a parliamentary committee reviews allegations of pension-fund fraud, cronyism, and three years of expense reports of former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli that were either swapped out or disappeared by his underlings, his successor, Bev Busson retires today. The planned departure comes only hours after the report of lawyer and Bay Street minence grise David Brown delivered a report on the force's corruption to Public Safety minister Stockwell Day. The RCMP, Mr. Brown declared, is "horribly broken."

Like other political police forces; the FBI and KGB for instance the RCMP have maintained their traditional para-military structure through political blackmail.

"I've worked with Liberals and Tories, and nobody wants to tangle with the RCMP," said Shirley Heafey, the former chair of the force's commission of public complaints.

"They have a lot of information on a lot of people ... It causes a chill. They have long memories in the RCMP."

And so do we on the left. We remember their infiltration of the left, their penchant for protecting strikebreakers and shooting strikers, their attack on the On to Ottawa Trekkers, their role in the Liberals attempt to discredit their opponents in particular the Quebec nationalists, their systemic refusal to deal with members of the force who abuse natives and prisoners, their role in the Arar affair and the Air India debacle, the list could go on and on.

After all the RCMP Motto is Maintain the Right.

The solution to the problem of the RCMP is three fold; implementation of the recommendations of thirty year old Macdonald Commission including; a non RCMP Commissioner, civilian control and oversight and allowing the rank and file to unionize.

Others call on Ottawa to break up the RCMP's mandate, which they believe is unwieldy. While it has many federal responsibilities whose powers range from protecting the borders against drug-smuggling, enforcing stock markets against fraud and investigating politicians, the RCMP's bread-and-butter is the contracts it has with provincial and municipal governments.

These contractual arrangements harken back to the RCMP's roots as a guns-for-hire protection and enforcement group, said Paul Palango, investigative reporter and author of The Last Guardians, a book on problems within the RCMP, calling them essentially a paramilitary force working at the behest of their hosts.

The force, he said, has turned into a hybrid organization that is both a business and a national institution.

Articles referenced;

RCMP Terror

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

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Another Sad Day

They said they needed the Anti-Terrrorism Act to get to the truth of the Air India bombings, which would give them the right to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Canadians for information.

Well we don't need that since the Air India inquiry has exposed that the Keystone Kops are incompetent.

Red tape stymied CSIS surveillance, Air India inquiry told



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Crisis? Wot Crisis?

Saying it is so, does not make it so.

No crisis in the ranks of the RCMP: Stockwell Day

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says there's no crisis in the ranks of the RCMP despite allegations of corruption at the highest levels.

As I said here the Conservative government is trying to downplay the systemic corruption that is leading to the very public collapse of the RCMP.

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The Cone of Silence Bank Presidents and the RCMP

Funny but Bank Presidents sound just like the RCMP Superintendent and Commissioners when it comes to telling the truth to Parliamentary Committees.

Deputy Commissioner George, who was suspended from duty after a previous appearance before the committee, was rebuked by MPs, who said her testimony has been evasive and incomplete.

Staff Sgt. Frizzell said the pension investigation took an unexpected turn when documents were uncovered suggesting insurance funds were being diverted with Deputy Commissioner George's approval.

But he was ordered off the case before he had a chance to follow the trail, he said.

She said she had nothing to do with the winding down of the pension-fund investigation, or the issuing of a "cease and desist order" to Staff Sgt. Frizzell directing him to return to other duties.

She did not rule out the possibility that she might have seen documents related to transferring insurance funds to the pension fund.

She did not recall this, but she said she relied on advice from another senior Mountie with expertise in insurance and financial matters that there was nothing untoward with the life-insurance funds.

Back off on ABM legislation, banks warn MPs

Whenever members of the Commons committee probing ATM fees tried to peer inside the world of banking, they were met for the most part with blank expressions or no comments."We won't comment on that," said the Royal Bank's Jim Westlake, group Head, Canadian Banking, when asked about profit margins on the ATM fees.

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Gimme More Public Inquiries

The Air India public inquiry shows why we need one into recent RCMP scandals and not Government appointed inquiries.

Inquiry highlights inter-agency issues: Rae

"I think what the public is hearing, perhaps in an abrupt way, is what I think has been pretty clear to people who have studied this for a long time -- that there really was a problem of communication between different levels of government, different departments, agencies, the RCMP and CSIS," Rae told CTV's Mike Duffy Live on Friday.

With new information emerging from the inquiry, critics have wondered if race played a part in how authorities handling the case.

Asked if she thought the information Bartleman provided to the RCMP would have been treated differently if the plane was filled with whites, NDP MP Alexa McDonough said she felt it was a factor.

"I wish it weren't true. But I do think it's true," McDonough told Mike Duffy. "I also think it's shocking that as we pushed and pushed for an inquiry...they kept saying there's no need for an inquiry there's no new information there's nothing more to be learned.

"That turns out not to be true. It's an utter horror story, and thank goodness there is now a full public inquiry underway that can get to the bottom of this."

Shock, outrage and more questions

Their outrage was palpable. Family members of those killed in the Air-India disaster have been trying for more than 20 years to find out what happened at the time of the mid-air bombing.

Yesterday, they heard that days before it occurred, the RCMP brushed off information from an electronic intercept suggesting an Air-India flight had been targeted for the coming weekend.

"It's absolutely incredible," Prakash Sahu, who had a father, stepbrother and stepsister on the flight, said yesterday in an interview from Montreal. "This makes a mockery of what the RCMP were doing."

He was upset it took so long for someone to say publicly what many family members believed for so many years. He wondered why the Mounties have failed to bring those responsible for the bombings to justice. "They should have solved this long ago," he said from London, Ont.

The government resisted calls for a public inquiry for years by "hiding behind the criminal investigation," Mr. Paliwal said. He praised former Supreme Court judge John Major, who heads the inquiry. "We have a lot of confidence in him," he said.

Articles referenced;

RCMP Terror

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

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Heil Hillier, Maintiens le droit

Military chief called period of Liberal governments a 'decade of darkness'; Liberal says Gen. Rick Hillier a `prop' for Tories

Gee I said that: Joined At The Hip

The first two people Harper met with after the election were RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli and General Hillier.

Scary that.

Consider the political role the RCMP had in the defeat of the Liberals. Releasing a press release during the campaign that said they were investigating the Liberals over alleged Income Trust leaks. Which was revealed this week, over a year later, with a inconsequential bust of a bureaucrat who profited from the Income Trust announcement but not a leak or any evidence of any kind of leak.RCMP income trust probe goes bust

Pure politics by Zaccardelli, which won him government support during the Arar affair, until he shot himself in the foot which he had already placed in his mouth.

Of course the RCMP has always been political.

They are Paramilitary Force created by the State to defend the State. That they would support a self declared Law and Order government is the essence of their slogan; Maintiens le droit.

Which my history Prof Jim Penton reminded his class meant Maintain the Right. As in the Kings Right, droit, or law, which the RCMP themselves translate as the harmless; Defending the Law. But as our Governor General Michelle Jean translated more accurately, and in the context of the Harpocrites a starkly insidious; “Upholding the Right,”

Another voice of men with guns and right wing political views was former General Lewis Mackenzie who is now an outspoken Conservative. But at least he waited till he retired to declare his allegiances to the right. Until Prime Minister Harper’s election and the brave new direction he set for Canada’s foreign and military policies, Gen. MacKenzie’s was almost a voice in the wilderness in this land.

General Hillier on the other hand is an outspoken supporter of War and of the Harper Government, because they do his bidding. Going to war in the South of Afghanistan was the first act of the New Harper Government, prior to that we had been doing peacekeeping in Kabul.

Hillier's Pro War ideology and Harpers correspond in wanting to recreate Canada's Armed Forces. By transforming them from their traditional Liberal role as Peace Keepers back into a traditional conservative Fighting Force. He began the change under the Liberals who appointed him but has mobilized his mouth in favour of Harper and War at any cost. Harpers War was originally posed to Canadians as an extension of Liberals Peace Keeping operations in Kabul. But all that changed when we joined the Americans in Kandahar.

Now we have a new Fighting Armed Forces. Complete with new recruitment ads. Gone was the tradesman/woman of the No Life Like It era, appealing to the Maritimers, the vast majority of our nations Armed Forces. Now it is a stark black and white world in the ads that show the viewer that we are fighting back.

Not only has Hillier been outspoken in public about the need to make war; the blunt-speaking Gen. Hillier has denigrated those fighting against Canadian troops in Afghanistan as "detestable murderers and scumbags." An over the top appeal to conservative law and order types. But our Armed Forces now find themselves in a situation where they face charges of attacking innocent villagers and abusing prisoners.

And Hillier has mobilized his troops to take to Canada's streets to support the war in Afghanistan.

The Red Friday Rallies began in Ottawa with Harper addressing the partisan crowd of spouses of our soldiers, Hillier was there, and the Conservatives allowed public servants time off to join the noon hour rally.

Since then Red Fridays across Canada have been small affairs notably made up of the RCMP and the Army and its conservative supporters. While ostensibly billed as supporting our troops it really is a rally to support Hillier and Harpers War.


And we remember the last time we had mass rallies of armed forces.

Men with guns being political. Scary.

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Autocrat


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News Briefs

Or is that News Boxers? Anyhoo a few short tid bits.

Ish Theilheimer, no really that is his name, at Straight Goods wishes everyone Seasons Greetings with two posts on one page.

First One; predicting that there will be NO Federal Election in 2007. How brash of him. Being contrarian to all popular pontifications and predigitations of the pundits. Anyways his reasoning is interesting, check it out. I actually think that if it is called it won't be in the spring but the fall. The reason, Quebec provincial election.

Second One; A short precise review of the the past crimes of the RCMP that implicate more than just the Commissioner. They are rotten to the core as are their current political masters.

Straight Goods is not impressed by the un-truth-telling and subsequent resignation-when-exposed of RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli. Although it is believable that he was kept in the dark of some of his force's errors and wrongdoings, it is unlikely he was completely ignorant of everything going on. And if he was, that represents gross incompetence. (This could be called the Paul Martin dilemma. Not knowing is as bad as knowing.) The horrific Arar affair is one of many recent stains on the RCMP including:

Zaccardelli wrote a letter during the recent federal election campaign that announced an investigation into former finance minister Ralph Goodale's handling of the income trust affair. There have been no charges since or indications of wrongdoing. Gooddale was eliminated from seeking the leadership after that;

the March 1999 raid by the RCMP in which officers served a search warrant on then BC premier Glen Clark and tipped off TV local reporters. Clark lost his government after that, over what turned out to be a $12,000 backyard deck;

the RCMP received approximately $3 million in cash handed out by Liberal-friendly firms during the Adscam scandal;

politically motivated actions in support of Jean Chrétien including raids on enemies of the Prime Minister's and aggressively pepper-sprayed peaceful demonstrators during the 1997 APEC meeting;

embarrassing former prime minister Brian Mulroney over the Airbus affair and costing taxpayers more than a million dollars to cover lawsuits;

inadequate disclosure about why four members were murdered by a madman in Mayerthorpe, Alta., or the deaths of the two officers in Spiritwood, Sask., this year.

Meanwhile, the Harpocrites continually invoke a Bush-style law 'n' order campaign, including a proposal to let the police stack the judiciary. With police like this, who needs criminals?

We now return to regular programming.

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Yes or No

The Harpocrites have a hard time with simple questions. Like ones that simply need a Yes or No answer.

In Question period last May the NDP asked the Defense Minister if we were at war in Afghanistan. Yes or No. Simple right. No answer he wandered all around the issue.

This week after the revelations of the O'Connor report on Mahar Arar, Public Security Minister Stockwell Day, a simple fellow, was asked if the head of the RCMP had tendered his resignation to the Minister. Yes or No. And well you guessed it Day wandered all over the place and never answered. Tories sidestep issue of Zaccardelli's future

Of course as I said to my partner the other day the reason it's called Question Period is for the opposition to ask questions. Nothing says the government has to answer them. After all its not called Answer Period.

Meet the New Government same as the Old Government.

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Repeated Cover-ups by Mounted Police

Spells; R C M P.

And it couldn't happen to a nicer pro cop law and order government. Now of course they point the finger across the chamber and blame the Liberals. And for good reason. But let's first look at he who waves the fickle finger of blame.

The PM met with the Chief of Defense and the Commissioner of the RCMP as his first act. The government has been on a law and order kick since the election.

When the O'Connor Commission report was issued in the fall it was followed by questions raised by the Auditor General about the RCMP pension and health benefits privatization.

Then Commissioner Zaccardelli told the Public Security Minister, Stockwell Day, all was well with the RCMP.

Except it wasn't and Zaccardelli had to step down, falling on his sword for the RCMP and in effect the government of the day. The question is not what Zacredelli did or did not tell the Minister. The question is why the Minister accepted anything Zacradelli said at face value. Why did he not dig deeper.

And here is the flaw in the Harper government, it has made such a fetish of law and order and defending the police it aided and abetted the RCMP cover ups. That in itself is a serious enough charge that cannot be conveniently white washed with a Government appointed Investigator. A full public inquiry is required. Nothing less will do.

It is not just a case of a single cover up around pension and benefits and the privatization of those services. It is the rest of the O'Connor recommendations on the RCMP, it is the blunders that are being covered up by all levels of the bureaucracy around the public inquiry into the Air India disaster.

The current cover up is part of the culture of corruption that is the RCMP hierarchy. Which I have documented here before.

The parliamentarians in the NDP all parties praise the rank and file but the problem is the RCMP itself, as an institution and as a para-military force of the State.

What the Conservatives have inherited is the old Liberal government culture of we are entitled to our entitlements and don't ask don't tell.

How can we fault that small coitire at the top of the RCMP and their private sector pals who are accused of looting the rank and file pension funds and health benefits for retirees, because the company hired overcharged for work not done.

Auditor General's report

Among the report's findings:

• The NCPC (National Compensation Policy Centre) Director established consulting contracts valued at over $20 million, overriding controls to avoid competitions for the contracts. These contracts resulted in some work of questionable value being performed, and excessive fees for administrative services of little or no value being charged to the pension plan.

• About $3.4 million in improper expenses were charged to the plan

• "An estimated $1.3 million was charged to the pension and insurance plans to pay for commissions or products that provided little or no value, and for excessive payments to employees' friends and family members hired as temporary staff." About $270,000 of that had been repaid.

• The RCMP persuaded the insurance carrier to subcontract work to a second firm to administer insurance plans on behalf of the RCMP. As a result, there was no competition for a $4.6 million contract.

Where have we heard of this before? Does the Gomery Commission ring a bell? Word for word we have charges that brought down the Liberal government of Paul Martin being echoed about the RCMP. And the RCMP were engaging in these activities for the past four years, during the public airing of the Ad Scam affair.

Taking a cue from their political masters, they too engaged in scams and demanding their entitlements for their efforts. And then they did what they always do, using the ideology of closing ranks to protect their venerable institution they covered up.

And the Martin Government probably had an inkling of what was going on, but the" don't ask don't tell" ideology meant two paranoid institutions had suspicions about each other but didn't dare confront it.

So paranoid were the upper echelon of the RCMP they pulled dirty tricks during the last election to lead the Liberals off the scent, and ensure their pals in the law and order Conservatives got elected. Teaching the Liberals a lesson about the power of the RCMP. It is a stunt they pulled before, and like then it's timing was perfect to through a spanner in the works of the last election.

Having a new government especially one that kowtows to cops, the RCMP establishment must have felt secure that their skeletons would remain hidden. After all every action by the Gnu Conservative Government has followed the old dictum don't tell even if we ask.

Unfortunately even with a pro-cop government the O'Connor report on the Arar case proved the RCMP's undoing. There we learned that once again just like in the bad old days of the Seventies, the RCMP had become a paranoid institution spying on Canadians, and then covering it up. Worse yet the culture of corruption at the RCMP was such that in order to cover up they close ranks and promote wrong doers.

So Stockwell Day and Harper stood in the house in the fall declaring for all to hear how much they supported the RCMP and its Commissioner. Three days later he resigned. Today they claim they fired him, according to a blustering Geoff Norquay on Mike Duffy Live on CTV yesterday.

Once again we hear Stockwell Day tell the house that when the auditor general revealed last November high crimes and misdemeanors in the RCMP right up to its Commissioner over the pension issue, Day asked the RCMP if they had fixed the problem, and was assured they had. And all was right with the world. This is of course like the famous question; when did you stop beating your wife.

Of course the RCMP fixed the problem, they buried it, covered it up, hid it under a bushel. The Minister of Public Safety didn't ask the right question, what reforms were put in place. But satisfied with being misled by the RCMP, Day and the rest of the Conservatives could happily chant at the opposition; "We Support the Police you don't." It should be a bumper sticker.

And while the Conservatives like to claim they have accepted all of O'Connors recommendations, like the Gomery Commission, they have accepted only the first report. They have left the second report recommendations in abeyance.

These are far more critical towards a full revamping of the RCMP.

And that is what is needed, not another single investigation into a single matter of wrong doing. Rather the RCMP needs to be overhauled.

It has been caught with not just once, nor twice, nor three times, but four times in as many years. And as years go nothing has really changed in the RCMP since the seventies and the MacDonald Commission, whose recommendations were not followed up on except to separate CSIS from the RCMP.

It's rank and file needs the right to unionize, something that has arisen because of the military hierarchy and its culture of corruption exposed this week when they were caught plundering the rank and files pension fund.

Worse yet the RCMP has failed to conduct full and fair investigations into internal charges of sexual and racial discrimination and harassment.

More than 100 RCMP officers across Canada were found guilty of misconduct during the last two years for offences ranging from having sex in a cop car and surfing Internet porn on the job to drunk driving, sexual assault and abusing prisoners.

They have failed to conduct proper investigation into pubic complaints, missing all important time lines that allowed criminal activities to be dismissed on a technicality. RCMP scandals and setbacks since 2006

The RCMP have broken the law and used the ambiguity of that law to cover up its illegal actions as in the Arar and other anti-terrorism cases and when it attempted to misdirect the public that Arar was a terrorist according to its own self perpetuated leaks. Leaks which when were exposed for what they were led to a reporter being arrested and jailed for leaking the leaks.

A complete house cleaning is needed in the RCMP. A non RCMP commissioner needs to be appointed, the rank and rile should have the right to unionize, the definition of their purpose and structure should be changed from one of being a para-military force to being a federal police force with civilian oversight.

The reality is that this of course is the furthest thing from the Conservatives plan. They need police support for their law and order policies. They need to show they unreservedly support the police. Period.

This then is their weakness. Progressives and the left need to emphasize that the culture of corruption is inherent in the capitalist state in the 21 st Century, and that spreads its web of deceit through out all institutions including the police. That it is not simply a Liberal Party phenomena but is the actual systemic dysfunction of the state, then the Conservatives can be hoisted on their own petard for failing to do a wholesale house cleaning of the RCMP. Because they are not prepared to do that.

Not while chanting "We Support The Police", "You Are Soft On Terror/Law and Order." Their actions in appointing a limited non-public independent inquiry is simply an attempt to cover up for the RCMP. By failing to provide a full public hearing or Royal Commission on RCMP restructuring, they are in effect saying the problem is NOT systemic but a matter of a single issue; the pension fund controversy.

The Conservative government assurance that this limited government sponsored investigation will be made public is less than reassuring. We remember the last promise of government about making a report public, that was over the Lebanon War last summer. And we are all still waiting to see that report.





THE RCMP SHAMEFUL PAST

This is not some mythological NWMP under Sam Steele who dealt fairly with Sitting Bull and the native peoples of the North West, forgotten in this glorious mythos is the fact that it was a question of maintaining Canadian control of the West against American incursions. This is a paramilitary police force modeled on the British Imperial Army. Who had all the authoritarian and imperial biases of the British in Canada.

On January 1900, Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal) offered to raise and equip a mounted regiment at his own expense to serve in the South African or "Boer" War. His Regiment was recruited largely from cowboys and frontiersmen of Western Canada and members of the North West Mounted Police (N.W.M.P.). Command of "Strathcona's Horse" was given to the now famous Superintendent of the N.W.M.P., Sir Sam B. Steele. Lord Strathcona's Horse arrived in Cape Town, South Africa on April 10, 1900 and quickly became essential to the British Army.

The idea of the NWMP/RCMP was given birth during the Riel Rebellion in North West Canada as a force the Canadian State wanted to create to deal with Canada's original Separatists in Western Canada. Their purpose like their British Imperial Army counterparts was to pacify the Wests indigenous population and to open the way for colonialism and the railway.

In the same year that Canada acquired control of the Territories, a British army officer, Lieutenant William Butler, was commissioned by the government to survey the conditions prevailing on the new frontier. In his report, submitted in 1871, Butler stated: "The institutions of Law and Order, as understood in civilized communities, are wholly unknown." To establish order, he recommended the formation of a well-equipped military force of from 100 to 150 men, with one-third to be mounted. In 1872, a second Western reconnaissance was made by Colonel P. Robertson-Ross, the Commanding Officer of the Canadian Militia. His report confirmed Butler's assessment of the situation, concluding that "a large military force was not required, but that the presence of a certain force would be found to be indispensable for the security of the country, to prevent bloodshed and preserve order." He recommended the establishment of a regiment of 500 mounted rifles, and suggested that their uniforms include red coats. Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, had intended to organize a mounted police force in 1869, the year that the North-West Territories were originally scheduled to be transferred to Canadian sovereignty. At that time, he conceived of a force of mounted riflemen which "should not be expressly Military but should be styled Police, and have the military bearing of the Irish Constabulary." In addition, the force was to be a "mixed one of pure white and British and French half-breeds," after the British model of counteracting religious and racial strife in colonial India. However, the Red River Rebellion forced the postponement of Macdonald's plans and the transfer of the North-West to Canadian control

It is the RCMP who during the 1919 General Strike shot unarmed workers. Who did it again in 1931 this time shooting workers and their families on strike in Estevan, Saskatchewan.

Who spied on the labour movement in Canada, and on the radical left, who burnt barns and sabotaged the nationalist movement in Quebec.

While doing nothing about organized crime instead allowing gangsters to become corporate bigwigs like Sam Bronfman. Nor did they ever investigate or disrupt the fascist movement in Canada or the radical right which the Reform Party and Harpers Conservatives have ties too.

After all that would conflict with their motto; Maintiens le droit.

The RCMP are a stale dated para-military force that should have been discarded back at the turn of last century. Without a frontier to patrol they became Canada's Stazi, Stat-Poliz by any other name. Their purpose was not crime fighting, but like the FBI in the U.S. they became a security force to deal with perceived enemies of the State.

This unorthodox but creative plan suited all parties until the First World War disrupted it. The war brought new duties for the Mounted Police in the form of security and intelligence operations directed at enemy aliens, radical labour unions, and, particularly after the Bolshevik takeover in Russia, left-wing political groups. By the end of the war the RNWMP were a major component in Canada's rather ramshackle intelligence organisation with responsibility for all of the country west of Ontario.

Meanwhile the atmosphere of moral fervour generated by the war helped prohibitionists convince all the provinces except Quebec to ban the sale of liquor. Between 1873 and 1891 prohibition had existed in the North West Territories and the experience of attempting to enforce abstinence had been difficult for the police. By the time the experiment ended, most senior officers were convinced that it had been both futile and destructive of trust between the force and the public. The announcement that the two provinces would outlaw the sale of liquor led the RNWMP to exercise the option both parties had to cancel contracts for provincial policing in Alberta and Saskatchewan on a year's notice. The official reason given was manpower shortages. This abandonment of their criminal policing roots left the future of the Mounted Police very much in question. The Federal cabinet debated integrating the police into the army, maintaining it as a small frontier force in the far north or disbanding it. In the end it was the great wave of labour unrest that swept the country in 1919, with strikes in most cities, that saved the Mounties. The most serious of the strikes took place in Winnipeg, where the city police themselves joined the strikers. The RNWMP were called in, and, after a major riot in which several people were killed by police bullets, order was restored.

The perceived necessity to have a national police force that could be called upon to back up local authority when order was threatened brought about a new government plan for the police. In 1919 the RNWMP merged with another, much smaller, force, the Dominion Police, to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The primary mandate of the new organisation was to keep watch on potentially subversive labour and political organisations and to act as a mobile reserve in case local police forces could not cope. As it happened the Winnipeg general strike was the high point of radical protest. By the early 1920s the conservative craft unions affiliated to the American Federation of Labor had regained their dominance and had decisively defeated the militants of the One Big Union. Through the 1920s the RCMP dutifully kept track of unions, the Communist Party of Canada and a large number of ephemeral socialist parties. The only political resistance to the new national police force came, not surprisingly, from the tiny Labour contingent in Canada's House of Commons, led by J.S. Woodsworth.

The discovery of a large spy ring operating out of the Soviet embassy in Ottawa after the defection of a Russian code clerk named Igor Gouzenko in 1945 ensured that providing security checks for government employees would be the biggest growth area for the RCMP in the decades after the Second WorldWar. In 1945 the Intelligence Section was a small adjunct of the Criminal Investigation Branch, consisting of two inspectors and a handful of men. In 1947 it separated from the CIB and was reorganised as Special Branch. Continued growth led to its renaming as the Directorate of Security and Intelligence in 1956. By the 1970s the once again renamed Security Service employed well over a thousand policemen. The combination of rapid growth, Cold War tensions and increased Quebec separatism created unprecedented difficulties for the RGMP. There were a number of embarrassing and highly publicised incidents in which it was clear that the Security Service lacked the sophistication to distinguish between subversion and legitimate dissent.

After the murder of Quebec cabinet minister Pierre Laporte and the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Gross by Quebec separatists in 1970, the Security Service stepped up its efforts in that province. The most damaging Mountie blunder came in 1972 when several Mounties broke into the offices of a separatist news agency and made off with the organisation's files. No search warrants had been obtained and the operation was apparently not authorised by senior police officials. The Security Service, which had historically maintained close ties with the FBI, seems to have taken its cue from current practices in the United States. This was the era of Watergate: the golden age of `dirty tricks' and `deniability'. The Quebec misadventures in the 1970s led to a major investigation, the McDonald Commission, which demanded a civilian agency to handle such sensitive security work. In 1984 the RGMP finally relinquished its operations in this area to the new Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.

Articles referenced;

RCMP

New Math

Why The Tories Want Tory Judges

More Foreign Affairs Incompetency

Statist Anti-Terrorism Act

Paranoia and the Security State

Fascists were CSIS Front

CSIS vs. CUPW

Canada’s Long History of Criminalizing Dissent

Also See:

CIA

Torture

RCMP

CSIS

Arar

Crime

Terrorism



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