Tonda MacCharles, Ottawa (Toronto Star) – Luc Portelance, border security chief at the Canada Border Services Agency, is on the inside track for the job of top Mountie, sources tell the Toronto Star.
Portelance’s name surfaced as a likely prospect to become the new RCMP commissioner as critics voiced concerns about Harper government foot-dragging.
Fluently bilingual, Portelance was deputy operations director for CSIS before being groomed in his post as CBSA president by his predecessor, Stephen Rigby, who is now Stephen Harper’s national security advisor.
More important, from the rank-and-file’s point of view: Portelance is a former Mountie who understands the RCMP as an insider and can wear the uniform — something Bill Elliott, the RCMP’s first civilian commissioner, could never do.
The knock against him, two sources said, is he just got the top job at the border agency last year, and border security “perimeter” talks with the U.S. are now heating up.
The search for a replacement for Elliott has proceeded at a snail’s pace.
The Toronto Star has learned that months of delays prompted a recent high-level intervention with the prime minister’s office to “fix it,” a policing source said.
Former Harper transition advisor Derek Burney, a past chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, urged Harper’s office to kick the search into high gear.
Concerns about Elliott’s “verbally abusive” management style first emerged last summer.
Yet nearly a year after retiring senior deputy commissioner Bill Sweeney revealed Elliott’s bullying behaviour to deputy cabinet secretary Patricia Hassard in the privy council office, Elliott is still running the RCMP. Six more senior commanders have left since.
Elliott says his departure, announced in February, has now been delayed until September.
In fact, a search committee that is to identify a replacement met for the first time only last week. It will probably take several more weeks to identify and screen candidates, with the help of a headhunting firm and general advertising.
Several sources said the election call slowed the search, though it came two months after Elliott announced his resignation. A senior government source, on background, also pointed to a Harper commitment requiring consultation with a parliamentary committee. The committees are yet to be set up.
The decision has become more urgent with the decision of Elliott’s second-in-command, senior deputy commissioner Rod Knecht, to take the job of Edmonton police chief.
Critics like Sen. Colin Kenny suggest the Prime Minister’s Office has deliberately dragged its feet to save face.
“Absolutely everything (at the RCMP) is on hold,” said Kenny. He said the PMO knew last August how urgent it was to replace Elliott but decided that the “later we move Elliott the less it will seem like the prime minister made a lousy decision in picking him in the first place.”
Kenny said Sweeney’s concerns about Elliott were backed up not only by 10 senior brass but also 18 others who had worked with him at the departments of transport and public safety and stepped forward.
Kenny contends privy council clerk Wayne Wouters stepped in to do “damage control” and limit the number of people actually interviewed by consultant Reid Morden.
Morden denied to the Star that anyone cut off his inquiries. But he says his job was not to do an all-encompassing examination of Elliott’s leadership, but rather to determine whether the RCMP’s senior management team could still function effectively.
“Everyone knows there were problems with Elliott; it was all over the papers,” Morden said.
In the end, he made recommendations based on interviews with past and current RCMP leaders. He would not reveal his conclusions.
Morden says it’s better the government takes its time now.
“I’d personally prefer they get it right. It’s too important an institution for us. It’s had its problems and had enough negative publicity in recent times, and it has to start again to rebuild.”
Margaret Beare, a professor of law and sociology at York University, agreed, but said the government should also look “outside the old guard” of “old, white men” for a successor, for a leader with “people skills, management skills, and knowledge of a policing organization.” She sees younger worthy candidates within the RCMP’s senior ranks, but doesn’t rule out someone from another police organization, or even a knowledgable civilian.
Portelance declined comment on what he said was a “highly speculative” story.
His is not the only new name to surface in recent days. Rob Wright, once national security advisor to Paul Martin, has been named as a candidate under consideration.
Knecht names three who should be on the shortlist: former Edmonton police chief Norman Lipinski, now assistant commissioner running the RCMP’s Lower B.C. Mainland operations; Kevin Brosseau, director of contract and aboriginal policing, previously with the RCMP’s watchdog, the Commission for Public Complaints; and the force’s professional integrity officer Joe Hincke, formerly with the Canadian air force at DND headquarters.
Portelance’s resumé has the right stuff
Canada’s chief of border security Luc Portelance may well be on track for the job of top cop.
Portelance is well known to Harper’s national security advisor, Stephen Rigby, his predecessor as head of the Canada Border Services Agency.
Fluently bilingual, he has been a rising star with a long career in law enforcement and security.
Portelance joined the Mounties in 1979, serving in New Brunswick and in the Quebec region’s security service before joining the fledgling Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 1984.
At CSIS, Portelance moved quickly up the ranks, becoming deputy director of the counter-intelligence branch; director of the Quebec region; and assistant corporate director at headquarters. He was the deputy director of operations when he was recruited to join CBSA in August 2008.
Portelance holds a degree in political science and is media-savvy. He was the face of CSIS operations at a joint CSIS-RCMP news conference at the arrest of the Toronto 18 terror suspects, where he and assistant RCMP commissioner Mike McDonnell revealed the terror plot to Canadians.
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