RCMP Watch

Richard Foot (CanWest News Service) - When Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned in disgrace as RCMP commissioner in December, 2006, he declared at his outgoing news conference: “The RCMP is the greatest police force in the world.”

One year later, those words sound as naive and fanciful as a Christmas fairy tale.

In the 12 months since Zaccardelli left office - after misleading Parliament about the Mounties’ role in the Maher Arar scandal - things have grown worse, not better for one of Canada’s most famous institutions.

Rather than recover from the shame of having helped send a Canadian citizen to a foreign torture cell, the force has instead slipped further into a quagmire of scandal and controversy.

“Canadians are still proud of their national police force. But they’re not happy with what they see,” says John Merriam, a retired Nova Scotian who served in the RCMP - and once guarded Prime Minister Lester Pearson - in the 1960s.

Merriam says he never imagined the force would suffer the blows to its reputation it has this year, and figures 2007 could arguably be called the worst in the RCMP’s 130-year history. “I was viewed with a great deal of respect when I was a Mountie. Years afterwards whenever I mentioned I had been in the force, people would say, ‘Really!’ We were held in very high regard. Now people look at the Mounties with concern and disillusionment.”

The most bruising scandal of the year was the news that a project to outsource the pension and benefits plans for the RCMP’s 27,000 members had been mired in corruption and nepotism. Senior RCMP bureaucrats had cheated federal procedures by hiring friends and allies, awarded contracts for work already performed, and circumvented competition rules.

Money also was improperly taken from the funds to pay for hospitality costs and other unrelated items, and meeting minutes were fudged to cover up such acts.

Even more damaging was the ensuing investigation of the House of Commons Public Accounts committee, which lifted the lid on a breathtaking culture of mismanagement, contempt for the law and reprisals against whistle blowers, at the highest levels of the RCMP.

Officers who tried to complain about wrongdoing were persecuted and those suspected of impropriety were promoted. An independent criminal investigation into the pension fund problems also was stymied, and related requests for documents under the Access to Information law were ignored.

“RCMP senior management allowed an ethical culture to develop which discouraged the disclosure of wrongdoing and did not hold individuals to account for unethical behaviour,” wrote the committee in its December report. “This has led to a crisis of confidence amongst the RCMP rank and file members.”

As the pension fund scandal unfolded in Ottawa, so did a parade of other disturbing news:

– At the inquiry into the Air India bombing, witnesses testified there was a lack of co-operation between the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) which hampered the investigation into Canada’s most deadly terrorist attack.

Former Ontario lieutenant governor James Bartleman also claimed that when he was in charge of the intelligence branch at the Department of Foreign Affairs, the RCMP ignored documents he showed them warning of an airline attack the same as the Air India bombing.

Worse, not a single RCMP bomb-sniffing dog or handler had been on duty to screen the Air India flight before it departed with its deadly cargo.

o In April, the RCMP and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day called in the media to watch, as officers swarmed a container ship in Halifax, claiming dozens of Portuguese stowaways were on board. None was found.

o Auditor general Sheila Fraser issued a report condemning the RCMP’s forensic labs as slow, inept, and backlogged - contradicting earlier parliamentary testimony from Zaccardelli.

o In B.C., a coroner’s inquest into the 2005 fatal shooting of Ian Bush in RCMP custody revealed internal investigators had failed to question Const. Paul Koester about the shooting until three months after the incident - and provided their questions to him in advance.

o In October, Const. Chris Warden was gunned down in the Northwest Territories while responding alone to a domestic disturbance call. A month later in Nunavut another young officer, Const. Doug Scott, was murdered, alone in his cruiser, while investigating a similar incident involving alcohol and guns.

The deaths prompted angry questions - including from Warden’s own widow - about the RCMP’s chronic manpower shortages, its assignment of inexperienced officers to isolated northern postings, and its policy allowing officers to respond to calls alone.

o A week after Scott’s death, Maclean’s magazine published allegations by three Mounties - former members of an elite, anti-crime unit in southern Ontario - of racism and bullying inside the RCMP, and the revelation that such dysfunction had derailed the prosecution of several organized crime figures.

o Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski died at Vancouver airport after being tasered, twice, by four uniformed Mounties.

And just when the news couldn’t get any worse, a disturbing video of the incident emerged, sparking international outrage and showing that Dziekanski, although agitated, posed no apparent threat to the officers or anyone else at the airport.

By this time the whole country was aware the national police force, a supposed symbol of strength and virtue, was in desperate need of repair. When David Brown - the lawyer tasked by Ottawa, in the wake of the pension scandal, with charting a path to recovery - presented his report on Dec. 14, his words were an anticlimactic conclusion to a year of painful news.

“As we travelled across Canada,” said Brown of his five-member task force, “we witnessed fierce pride in the force, incredible dedication to the people they serve and a powerful determination to the policing services they know are required to keep our communities and country safe.

“But we also witnessed despair, disillusionment and anger with an organization that is failing them … we heard of chronic shortages of people and equipment, of overwork and fatigue … basic human management systems that haven’t worked for years … unpaid overtime, discipline and grievance systems that don’t work, a promotion system with little or no credibility.”

Brown’s list of recommendations for fixing the RCMP is as long as the Mounties’ catalogue of documented failings, and include major structural change and new civilian oversight.

John Merriam thinks a simple return to the “Mounted” tradition, a lost aspect of basic officer training, also would do the organization good.

“When I went through my training, every new recruit was schooled in horsemanship. I think it creates discipline in the individual,” he says. “I can remember my first day I got thrown off the horse eight times.”

Neither Day nor the Mounties have said exactly when and how the RCMP will be restructured, although William Elliot, the civilian commissioner, has made it clear major changes are coming. He’s also said enough goodwill remains on the part of Canadians to rebuild the force’s public trust.

“These are difficult and challenging times for the RCMP,” Elliot said recently. “All of us are aware of the need for change. One thing is certain: the status quo is not an option.”