Daniel Leblanc and Bill Curry (Globe and Mail) – The Harper government is giving more bite to a new RCMP watchdog, including the power to obtain documents and compel Mounties to testify during investigations into public complaints against the police force.
The legislation to create the RCMP Review and Complaints Commission comes after years of controversies involving Mounties and members of the public, and just days before the release of major reports into the Air India bombing and the tasering death of a Polish traveller in Vancouver.
The new bill got an early endorsement on its broad outlines from Paul Kennedy, a frequent critic of the system when he chaired the current RCMP watchdog.
“In principle, this is going in the right direction,” said Mr. Kennedy, who added that he still wants to verify all the details of the new bill.
Mr. Kennedy said he would have appreciated having extra powers in his time, saying he could not compel former RCMP commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli to testify during an investigation into a scandal involving the force’s pension plan.
But the opposition quickly criticized the Conservative plan, saying the new RCMP Review and Complaints Commission will lack the necessary tools to keep the Mounties in check after controversies involving Maher Arar, Ian Bush and Robert Dziekanski.
NDP MP Nathan Cullen said the changes are cosmetic and only “provide a false assurance to the public that something has fundamentally changed.”
He added that the new commission will be a far cry from the gold standard, pointing to the well-established Special Investigations Unit in Ontario.
The new federal body will have a budget of $10-million a year, including $5-million in new annual funding to review complaints against the RCMP. It will be made up of five members, including a chair, and frequently rely on provincial bodies to conduct its investigations in a bid to prevent cases in which RCMP officers investigate their own colleagues.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the new watchdog will be “robust,” especially since it will have more powers to obtain evidence during its investigations. However, there are questions remaining about the extent of the powers of the commission in cases involving national security, such as the past case of Mr. Arar.
“I don’t want to get into too many details, but there are always national-security exemptions in any type of a tribunal,” Mr. Toews said.
He also defended the fact that the commission’s recommendations will not be binding, saying the commissioner of the RCMP remains in charge of the national police force.
“It’s clear if … recommendations on a regular basis are ignored, that would then call for some kind of political intervention, and that is allowed under the statute,” Mr. Toews said.
The Conservative government had sat for nearly four years on the Arar inquiry’s specific recommendations for a sweeping overhaul of the RCMP’s oversight mechanism, arguing that it had to wait for the recommendations of Justice John Major’s inquiry into the Air India terrorist bombing. However, that report will only come out on Thursday.
Mr. Toews said he has not seen the Major report, and that if anything new comes out at that point, the legislation will be amended.
The report of the Arar inquiry, led by commissioner Dennis O’Connor, recommended very specific changes, including a new Independent Complaints and National Security Review Agency for the RCMP, with powers to also oversee the Canada Border Services Agency.
The report also recommended expanding the powers of the civilian agency currently overseeing Canada’s spy agency, CSIS. That report called for new powers to include oversight of intelligence operations at Immigration Canada, Transport Canada, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre and Foreign Affairs.
In his report, Justice O’Connor predicted that future one-off public inquiries – which cost millions – could be avoided by implementing these recommendations.
“I believe that a credible review process that is able to fully address integrated national security activities should obviate the need for public inquiries or ad hoc reviews of individual cases,” he wrote.
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