RCMP Watch

Bill Curry, Ottawa (Globe and Mail) - Police and spies should be put back on the same team, former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli told the Air India inquiry yesterday, as he called for a major shakeup of Canada’s approach to national security.
Returning to the public eye nearly one year after leaving the force, Mr. Zaccardelli [...]

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Kim Bolan (Vancouver Sun) - Urgent legislative changes are needed to improve the information flow between CSIS and the RCMP to keep Canadians safe from an increasing terrorist threat, former RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli told the Air India inquiry Friday.
Zaccardelli said many of the same problems between the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the [...]

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Ottawa (Canadian Press) - Canadian law restricts the flow of information between the Mounties and Canada’s spy agency, putting Canadians at greater risk of another terrorist attack, says former commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli.
And with the threat “at Canada’s doorstep,” the risk of an attack is greater today than it was more than two decades ago when [...]

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Former RCMP commissioner Norm Inkster has acknowledged the force put a positive spin on its relations with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and soft-pedalled conflicts with the spy agency during a 1992 review of the Air India bombing.
“It didn’t serve any organization well, whether the RCMP or CSIS, to be criticizing one another,” Inkster told [...]

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Kim Bolan (Vancouver Sun) - The Air India investigation was hampered by the lack of co-operation by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in handing over information it had collected on suspects, former RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster told the bombing inquiry Thursday.
Mr. Inkster, who headed the [...]

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Kim Bolan (Vancouver Sun) - RCMP security cameras installed at the Surrey home of newspaper publisher Tara Singh Hayer were not working the night he was assassinated in 1998, the Air India inquiry heard Thursday.
And Hayer’s son Dave and daughter-in-law Isabelle told the inquiry they learned about the faulty equipment only this week when [...]

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Kim Bolan (CanWest News Service) - RCMP security cameras installed at the house of Tara Singh Hayer were not working the night he was assassinated — Nov. 18, 1998 — the Air India inquiry heard yesterday.
Mr. Hayer’s son Dave and daughter-in-law Isabelle only learned about the faulty equipment this week when they arrived in Ottawa [...]

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Kim Bolan (CanWest News Service) - The body that investigates complaints against the RCMP has no power to prevent someone from being kicked out of the witness protection program or to review whether they were unfairly denied entry into it, the Air India inquiry heard Wednesday.
Paul Kennedy, chairman of the Commission for Public Complaints [...]

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Ottawa (Canadian Press) — A former RCMP officer says life in the federal witness protection program can be so difficult he wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy.
Geoff Frisby told the Air India inquiry the psychological strain of assuming a new identity and a new lifestyle can be even greater for members of ethnic or [...]

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Ajit Jain (Rediff) - In an shocking testimony at the public inquiry into the1985 Kanishka bombing, former Federal lawyer Graham Pinos said on Thursday that the then director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Services had told him a few days before the incident that, “Sikhs are going to take a plane out of the sky.”
Canadian [...]

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