The Waterloo Record (Kitchener Ontario)
Both rank-and-file members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Canadians generally have reason to be appalled at what has happened to their once-proud national police force.
A report on the force by David Brown, former head of the Ontario Securities Commission, has confirmed the worst fears that have arisen about the Mounties in recent months. Brown criticized former commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli and he concluded the force’s corporate culture and management structure require drastic reforms.
He described the structure of the force as “horribly broken.” Those are sad words to describe a police force that has come to symbolize integrity not just in policing but in the entire nation. Regrettably, at least at the senior level of the RCMP, the concept of integrity seems to have been lacking in substance recently.
Brown said that Zaccardelli’s autocratic style exacerbated problems in the administration of the Mounties’ $12-billion pension fund. He said that Zaccardelli fostered a culture in which displeasing the commissioner ended careers. Brown also found that an investigation of pension problems, supposedly undertaken by Ottawa police, wasn’t really independent.
That is a very serious allegation. In short, Brown concluded that a “fundamental breach of trust” had occurred between senior RCMP management and rank-and-file Mounties.
The first public hint of problems at RCMP headquarters arose when auditor general Sheila Fraser reported last year that there were millions of dollars in inappropriate charges to the force’s pension and insurance plans. The problems appear to be so fundamental that they may not easily be corrected. They appear to reflect problems in the culture at the RCMP’s headquarters that go beyond Zaccardelli. They seem to reflect a self-centred organization.
Brown might have been expected to recommend that the government set up a full public inquiry into the force but, instead, he suggested the government form a task force of police, public servants and private experts to examine the RCMP’s structure.
Whether the present government, which has only minority status, has the strength to launch a proper review of the force and then implement changes is an open question. If there is one lesson to draw from this episode of the Mounties’ history, it is that the force has not been subject to sufficient scrutiny. Political leaders may have felt too intimidated by the force’s power and mystique to challenge it. This is unacceptable. It’s time to police the police.
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