Get ready for the Royal Conservative Mounted Police

Stephen Maher (Postmedia News) – Last week, Tonda MacCharles of the Toronto Star received a brown envelope containing a leaked copy of the new Communications Protocol Between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Public Safety Canada.

The two-page document outlines a new, closer relationship between the Mounties and the government, and raises the worrying possibility that the Tories will rebrand the force as the Royal Conservative Mounted Police.

The Conservatives are trying to change Canada’s brand, because the Liberals had been so effective at manipulating the country’s image in their bilingual, multicultural, red-tie-wearing ways that the Tories always seemed somehow un-Canadian.

Canada was the only country in the world where the conservative party wasn’t the party associated with patriotism, so Stephen Harper’s people have worked hard to link the Conservative brand with the flag, the military, the police and the monarchy.

The Liberals did something similar. It’s no coincidence that two governors general in a row were visible minority women from the CBC.

It’s one thing to hang pictures of the Queen all over the place. It’s another thing to order the RCMP to do “integrated government of Canada messaging.”

I don’t want the RCMP to deliver “integrated government of Canada messaging.” I want them to serve the people and tell the truth.

I also don’t think they should busy themselves “flagging communications opportunities for consideration and upon request from Public Safety Canada, drafting a ministerial event proposal [MEP] within established timelines.”

As Jeff Davis of the Hill Times reported last year, MEPs are documents that public servants have to create for their political masters.

Bureaucrats must outline a “desired headline,” “desired sound bite,” “key questions and answers,” and “official talking points.”

I don’t think RCMP officers ought to do that kind of political work, not only because they’ve got better things to do, but because they shouldn’t be thinking about how to make their political masters look good.

We don’t need puppets in red serge mouthing government talking points, but that’s what we’re going to get.

Traditionally, the Mounties have had some independence in communications, since they possess specialized information that they have a duty to give to the public without political spin.

This government doesn’t seem to like that.

Last year, Chief Superintendent Marty Cheliak, director general of the Canadian Firearms Program, was sent to French training — a kind of bureaucratic limbo — after he arranged to release a positive report on the long-gun registry to a meeting of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Cheliak, who had been considered a possible future commissioner, passed his French course in June — which should be helpful when he retires in 2014 — and has spent six months waiting for his next assignment.

The Firearms Act requires that the RCMP present a report to the government “as soon as possible after the end of each calendar year,” at which point the minister has 15 days to table it.

Last year, it was released in August, after the government was accused of sitting on it because it contradicted their message about the “ineffective, wasteful” registry.

The RCMP report said: “Overall, the Canadian Firearms Program is cost-effective in reducing firearms-related crime and promoting public safety.”

This year, the RCMP has yet to finish the report. That means they are either incompetent boobs or they are sitting on it so that it doesn’t come out before the Conservatives vote to abolish the registry.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the outgoing commissioner, William Elliott, a former Tory staffer, may have been helping Harper, who gave him his job and arranged for his post-Mountie gig, a three-year stint as Special Representative of INTERPOL to the United Nations. For some reason, the government of Canada is paying his salary.

See how it works? Write a report that praises the gun registry and you can spend the rest of your career brushing up on the subjonctif. This is one of the ways that politicians exert their will over nominally arm’s-length bodies like the RCMP, and it hasn’t changed since the days of the pharaohs.

But this new level of co-operation that the government is demanding of the horsemen is new.

Stephanie Durand, the director general of communications for Public Safety Canada, whose signature is at the bottom of the new protocol, was, of course, too busy on Monday to explain the new policy, so I called Tom Stamatakis, president of the Canadian Police Association.

Stamatakis, a Vancouver constable, says we should be watchful, but there’s no reason to be paranoid about the government turning the Mounties into their mouthpieces.

“It’s not possible,” he said. “With social media now, the sort of real time reporting of what will happen, I don’t know if it’s possible for any government now to control messaging, because there are still people, like me for example, who will speak out if the government is getting involved in what should be operational policing decisions. And there are people like you that will continue to receive brown envelopes or tips.”

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