Colin Kenny, Globe and Mail
When Governor-General Michaëlle Jean arrived for Canada Day ceremonies on Parliament Hill a few weeks ago, a mounted RCMP honour guard preceded her carriage.As the Mounties approached the crowd on Wellington Street, several looked apprehensive. When waves of applause rang out for them, well before the Governor-General’s carriage came into view, many broke into wide smiles.
Were those wide relieved smiles? Did the Mounties really think the crowd would jeer?
The RCMP is a treasured Canadian institution. But a series of negative incidents, stretching from the slaughter of four unprepared officers on an Alberta farm in 2005 to the recent resignation of commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, have left the force’s self-image in tatters.
Many officers felt the final indignity was the unprecedented appointment of a civil servant with no police experience to replace Mr. Zaccardelli. Not one of the force’s 16,000 members was deemed a worthy successor by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
As a civilian, new commissioner William Elliott has wisely chosen not to don the red RCMP tunic. But he needs to bring back respect for that tunic. He cannot accomplish that mission if he does not speak truth to power.
A big part of Mr. Elliott’s job is going to be telling his political master the truth. That could be delicate, because there is an important truth Mr. Harper may not want to hear.
The Prime Minister surely will want to hear that Mr. Elliott is cleaning up the ethical malignancies that appear to have crept into the RCMP command structure. That’s seen as Mr. Elliott’s primary mission – a worthy one given the vital role public trust plays in the force’s ability to police the country.
But Mr. Harper is unlikely to want to hear another very important truth: that the Mounties are badly understaffed and underfunded. If this institution is to function well enough to instill pride within its own ranks and among the Canadian public, it is going to need more resources. A lot more.
OECD statistics show that Canada ranks 25th out of 29 countries in police per capita. Some Canadians will applaud that, and so would I, were Canadians not faced with the same threats from guns, drugs and terrorists as most of the other countries in the survey.
In fact, these kinds of problems are going to get a lot worse if a British Columbia provincial court judge’s recent ruling that border guards can’t search vehicles without search warrants isn’t overthrown.
Testimony before the Senate committee on national security and defence shows that the Mounties police ports, coastlines and the Great Lakes with handfuls of officers, in what amounts to token gestures.
An example: The U.S. Coast Guard has the same constabulary responsibilities on the Great Lakes as do our Mounties. The Americans do the job with 2,200 Coast Guard officers. We have 14 Mounties.
Another: Assistant Commissioner Raf Souccar told the committee that to properly police our ports, which are riddled with corruption and vulnerable to terrorists, he would need 900 more officers. And Mr. Zaccardelli told us that given its resources, the RCMP could only keep tabs on one-third of Canada’s known organized-crime groups.
Some people say the force’s problems would be solved if it would abandon provincial contract policing.
That’s nonsense. The beat work those officers do is essential training to climbing the RCMP ladder to more focused responsibilities. It provides surge capacity in times of a crisis in any part of the country.
Furthermore, the more integrated policing is in any province, the better chance there is for co-operation. RCMP contract policing is a good deal for the Mounties, for the provinces that buy into it, and for Canadians generally.
It is the committee’s best estimate that Canada needs 5,000 to 7,000 more Mounties, and they won’t come cheap. They certainly shouldn’t come as cheap as we try to get them – unlike other forces (such as the Ontario Provincial Police), new Mounties get only room and board in their first six months of training. What a wonderful way for a young officer with a family to go into debt! If the RCMP is going to recruit the best, it should pay human wages from the start.
Mr. Harper promised 1,000 new Mounties in the last Speech from the Throne. The RCMP got 600, and just to fill vacant positions. That means they didn’t get any. There were 400 other people hired, but they were sent off to fill civilian positions within the federal security bureaucracy.
If the government wants Canadians to continue to cheer the RCMP, and to depend on the force for security, the Prime Minister is going to have to hear some words from Mr. Elliott that he may not like: Pay up or shut up.
Much has been made as to whether the handpicked Mr. Elliott’s first loyalty will be to the RCMP or to Mr. Harper. It shouldn’t be either. Mr. Elliott’s first loyalty must be to Canadians.
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