Colin Kenny (Montreal Gazette) – I have a story to tell you. But first allow me to say a few words on one of humanity’s finest jewels: democracy.
Governments in countries like Syria have Draconian ways of dealing with citizens who dare to speak openly without their approval. They send out snipers.
Governments in countries like Canada aren’t like the government in Syria. Western governments celebrate free speech, openness and transparency. Our governments fund activities around the world that promote the kind of civic discourse that is at the core of democracy.
All governments, however, are at times tempted to circumvent democratic principles when those principles threaten their own grip on power. The Harper government, as many have noted before me, has succumbed to such temptation with unprecedented passion.
The result is that control is out of control, as it were. Ministers are scripted; committees are neutered; debate is cut off; public servants are muzzled; laws and court edicts are ignored; official watchdogs are fired; bills are adulterated with agenda-filling provisions unconnected to their rationale; opposition amendments are dismissed out of hand; provincial premiers are avoided; and the prime minister’s communications-control team grows at a steroidal pace in an era of fiscal restraint.
There is no public outcry about these abuses of process. The polls show that none of this disturbs the drowsy comfort of Canadians in the same way that a tax hike might.
It was in 1957 that John Diefenbaker was swept to power simply because the governing Liberals invoked closure to close down debate on construction of – is this too ironic? – a pipeline. Not these days. Closure – shutting down dissent – has become a political crime tantamount to jaywalking as a criminal act.
But I promised you a story. As a parliamentarian I try to tackle issues that interest me and are of importance to Canadians, like national security. As former chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, I presided over the publication of many reports leading to changes in government policy. Two of these reports dealt with improving the performance of the RCMP. I have met privately with nine RCMP commissioners during my time in the Senate. I have listened to them; I have learned from them; I have offered advice to them.
After Bob Paulson was confirmed last month as the new commissioner of the RCMP, I sent him a friendly email saying that I would like to meet with him, so we could share insights. At first, commissioner Paulson said he would like to meet with me. Then he got back to say that he couldn’t do that until he had cleared the meeting with the ministry of public safety.
Whoa! The commissioner of the RCMP has always been a very powerful position, held at arm’s length from government. The reasons are obvious. If a member of a government is alleged to have broken the law, the Mounties are the people called in to investigate. Although funded by the government, the RCMP cannot become the instrument of government.
I told Paulson that he was being muzzled. He said he didn’t think he was – that the government was just managing fair relationships between parliamentarians and public officials.
Mark Johnson, an assistant to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, contacted my staff. He advised them that the reason I could not meet with the commissioner alone was to assure that all Parliamentarians had equal access to government officials, so that all official parties would have to be represented at any meeting with those officials, including the commissioner of the RCMP.
I replied that, of course, all parliamentarians should have access to public officials, but at their own requests and on their own time to pursue their own issues. I told Mr. Johnson the following:
“The concept infringes on my Parliamentary rights to have a conversation with an Official without two-thirds of the time being consumed by people with a different agenda and even if you were to suggest that they were simply going to sit in the room and audit the conversation that I am having with the Official the concept is totally unacceptable.
“Particularly in the case of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police it is conceivable that I might have issues of a nature that would be inappropriate to share with others than the Police.”
Mr. Johnson’s reply? He said he would take my perspectives under advisement, but that the policy remained.
It is clear to me that this government is diminishing both the commissioner and the Parliament of Canada by imposing ridiculous chaperon restrictions on private meetings that can serve no other purpose than to control all exchanges of information.
The Canadian public had better wake up soon. You don’t have to send out snipers to damage democracy. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper well knows, all you have to do is lull people to sleep.
Colin Kenny is a Liberal senator and former chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence.
[Source]
“We have cases where police officers will fly across the Atlantic to another country like Poland to get dirt on someone they just shocked to death in a British Columbia airport, just to make sure they are cleared. ”
You obvious did not read the Braidwood report.
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I agree the optics regarding having to filter the Commr. meetings does not show Independence from government interference.
The RCMP promotional system being a dismal failure didn’t need help from a so called quota system.
“Simply hiring and promoting the best qualified candidates regardless of any imposed govt criteria should be the only standard.”
DT Quote
The part of the above statement being left out is:
“and holding individual RCMP members who practise harassment accountable”.
You can hardly say that systemic harassment is not entrenched when a hot line is set up for female RCMP members to call. This does not say much about the effectiveness of the Oaths, Mission Vision and Values of the RCMP, and the Div. Rep Program.
Again, I would ask how the hiring and promoting of Women resolves harassment in the RCMP. I don’t see the Female MP’s or Female Commissioned Officers showing public outrage on mass.
I guess most of them are hiding behind a tree and peering out to see what going to happen next.
Calvin Lawrence
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The Marin, Brown and Duxbury Reports all state that it is imperative that the RCMP be independent of government and it must be clearly seen to be so.
The governments denial to institute an independent oversight body, then muzzling and leashing the new Commissioner doesn’t seem to be a positive step in rebuilding the trust for canadians.
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Yet another example of why the office of the Commissioner of the RCMP should not be in the government of the day. Much is said of optics in society. The fact that the Commissioner is not independent of the government speaks volumes, most of it not impressing to the average citizen.
How is the RCMP to remain above interference when issues and concerns have to be filtered through a ministry? We have all witnessed the government and its quota system hobble the recruitment process and by all appearances affecting the promotion process in the RCMP. The latest offering being to hire more women as stated a short time ago. Simply hiring and promoting the best qualified candidates regardless of any imposed govt criteria should be the only standard.
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