Don Martin (National Post) – There are poor excuses, bad rationalizations, feeble fabrications or, when all else fails to justify inexplicable behaviour, pathetic lies.
When RCMP Commissioner William Elliott dumped Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak as head of the Canadian Firearms Program, the move was justified because this senior officer was a tad too unilingual for a bilingual position.
This job change came nine months after Supt. Cheliak was presumably interviewed and promoted to that position despite any linguistic shortcomings.
There’s no excuse, justification or half-decent rationalization for Mr. Elliott’s actions on Wednesday. Bring on the laughable lie, a wallop of obvious nose-stretching that’s all the more alarming emanating from a national police force which seems to be axing senior staff in anticipation of the government’s wishes.
Supt. Cheliak was openly hostile to a Conservative MP’s bill that would abolish the 15-year-old long-gun registry. He was shuffled aside on the eve of a meeting of police chiefs where he was expected to present a comprehensive pro-registry report. That comes a month before a House of Commons vote on the controversial agency’s fate.
While the government may have felt like breaking into a happy dance at the news, it casually washed its hands of any role in his unexpected vanishing act.
“The RCMP makes its own decisions with respect to its personnel,” shrugged Prime Minister Stephen Harper. “This is not a political issue.”
Who is he kidding? When the top cop for a firearms program leads the charge to support a registry the government aims to abolish suddenly disappears for language training and reassignment, that’s no easy sale as a coincidence.
The spinners argued, with a barely contained straight face, this was praise-worthy proof of the RMCP practicing official bilingualism. A senior officer scheduled for French lessons was taking French lessons, they insisted. How could the media object? Well, tee hee, nice try.
While this government’s zero tolerance for contrarian positions is legendary and the stuffing of socks into any open mouthing of disagreement is habitual, this is a particularly disturbing precedent.
It’s not just the queasy fact an officer with a clean record was dropped from the RCMP senior officers organization chart just three months after he insisted the gun registry “serves a very real purpose and contributes to police officer safety and the safety of all Canadians.”
The remarkable feat is how the government appeared to dispatch a policy antagonist to the firing line without getting any blood on its hands, leaving only suspicious traces of gunpowder.
Redeploying or replacing obstructionist deputy ministers happens all the time, usually as the first order of organizational business by new governments.
And the Conservatives have proudly taken agenda control to a freakish new level by silencing scientists, ditching safety agency heads, forcing resignations on statisticians, changing committee chairs and blocking contract extensions for troublesome appointees.
But this appears to be an arms-length move done independently to appease the political masters. If so, it will send a shiver deep into departments or agencies orbiting the government’s axis of direct or indirect influence.
If nothing else, Supt. Cheliak could become a polar-opposite example of how the Harper government treats its appointees.
Veterans Ombudsman Pat Stogran is one extreme. He became an angry thorn for a government that promptly denied him a contract extension after one term.
William Elliott may prove to be the other extreme. For doing the government this very big personnel transfer favour, the troubled civilian police commissioner is now officially bulletproof from premature contract termination and may be a very safe bet for an extension.
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I think the term that best describes what Calvin explained is “Volun-told”.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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There are RCMP members who legitimately attend French Language Training or are transferred to Special Projects. This process is also code for “the member being transferred having fallen in disfavour with the RCMP organization”.
What is the case here? Let the public decide.
Calvin Lawrence
CGL Consulting
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This goes to show it doesn’t matter who you vote for.
It is examples such as this why the Reform party was founded. People were tired of this nonsense and Harper was helping lead the charge. Once the new politicians get in office, nothing ever changes.
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Harper’s growing ‘black list’ a threat to democracy: Critics
Mark Kennedy
Postmedia News/Montreal Gazette
August 18, 2010
They are the people who seem to have found themselves on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s political black list: A nuclear regulator, a watchdog of the RCMP, an ombudsmen for victims of crime, a champion for military veterans. And now — say Harper’s critics — a senior Mountie who had the temerity to defend the long-gun registry.
Their supposed political crime? To argue their case too forcefully, or to adopt a position frowned upon by the Harper government. Their punishment? In some cases, a pink slip. In others, banishment. This is the reputation — rightly or wrongly — that Harper is earning for his government. But has he gone too far? Critics say they’re counting on Canadians to rise up and to stop what they say is a style of governing that threatens democracy.
“I think we’re getting to the tipping point,” Liberal MP Mark Holland said Wednesday.
“The precedent is so dangerous. If you have a government that gets away with this stuff, that gets away with purging any dissenting voices, purging anybody who disagrees with them, then how can we say that we have a democracy? It really cuts that deep.”
New Democrat MP Joe Comartin was just as furious, saying he was disgusted by the news the RCMP is replacing a senior officer, Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak, who is responsible for the long-gun registry and who has been a strong advocate for the system. The Harper government is hoping a private member’s bill to abolish the registry will pass when Parliament resumes sitting next month.
Comartin and others contend Harper wanted to silence Cheliak, so orders were given to RCMP Commissioner William Elliott to push him aside.
“It’s all part of a pattern,” said Comartin. “If they can’t get their way, they try to bully and intimidate people into remaining silent. It’s part of the obsessive, excessive control by the PMO, specifically by Mr. Harper and his immediate entourage. People are told you absolutely must toe the line on everything. That is very, very dangerous for democracy.”
The governing Conservatives reject the accusation that dissenters are being punished. Rather, they note that every elected government has the right and responsibility to make staffing decisions. Moreover, they say that in many cases of supposed punishment, people are merely not having their terms renewed so they can be replaced with others who bring fresh ideas.
“The government appoints thousands of people and these appointments are for fixed terms,” Harper’s press secretary, Andrew MacDougall, said Wednesday. “They’re not for life. And we always strive to appoint qualified people.”
Also on Wednesday, Harper denied any political interference in the reassignment of Cheliak.
“This is an RCMP staffing matter. It’s not a political matter,” the prime minister said.
Still, critics are unimpressed and point to a growing list of examples of political interference. Among those affected:
- Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, which shut down the nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont., over safety concerns. The government, worried about the impact on medical isotopes, said it had lost confidence in her and terminated her appointment in January 2008.
- Pat Stogran, a vocal veterans’ ombudsman who complained of bureaucratic obstruction and whose term will not be renewed this fall, it has emerged.
- Steve Sullivan, the victims of crime ombudsmen, whose term was not renewed in April and who publicly took issue with the Harper government’s tough-on-crime agenda.
- Sheridan Scott, the Competition Bureau head who ran afoul of the environment minister and quit last December after being told her appointment would not be renewed.
- Paul Kennedy, the head of the RCMP Public Complaints Commission, who lobbied for more power for his commission and whose term was not renewed, it was announced in November.
- Peter Tinsley, the chair of the Military Complaints Commission, whose appointment was not renewed in December 2009, just as his commission was investigating the controversial issue of Afghan detainee transfers.
- Adrian Measner, president of the Canadian Wheat Board, whose appointment was terminated in December 2006, after disagreeing with the government on the board’s monopoly over the sale of barley and wheat.
- Bernard Shapiro, the ethics commissioner who clashed repeatedly with Harper and quit suddenly in March 2007.
- Munir Sheikh, the chief statistician of Statistics Canada, who quit this summer after the government killed the long-form census and then defended the move by publicly (and inaccurately) suggesting it had the support of Sheikh’s agency.