RCMP Watch

(Cape Breton Post, Editorial) - A spokesman for Vladimir Putin, interviewed on CBC Radio, chose to take it as complimentary that the Russian president had been named Time magazine’s 2007 Person of the Year. Clearly, though, it is as much for his notoriety as for any laudatory aspects of his leadership that Putin made the cover. Putin’s spin doctors can make the best of an ambiguous choice but Canada’s RCMP would not have that luxury in explaining why news executives across this country chose the red-serged police force as Canadian Newsmaker of the Year.

It has been a rough year for the iconic police force, but in saying so we remind ourselves that Mountie troubles go back a lot further than this. We could date the rocky modern-day history from the late 1970s and the McDonald royal commission into RCMP wrongdoing, which led to the creation of CSIS (the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service) to take over much — but obviously not all — of security and spying duties for Canada.

In retrospect that was, at best, disastrous timing because the Air India bombing, which killed 329 people in 1985, came amid the transition of security responsibility to CSIS. That sloppy hand-off contributed greatly to the subsequent bungling of the criminal investigation and may even have unwittingly helped enable the worst act of terrorism in the world up to that time.

The consequences of the Air India bombing, both human and institutional, reverberate to this day, but that is by no means the only file that has tarnished the reputation of a police force which still taps a well-spring of respect and warm sentiment among Canadians. The ferocity of the public opposition to the ouster of the RCMP from municipal policing in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality some years ago owed much to the enduring power of this reputational heritage.

Though the Mountie remains one of this country’s most evocative symbols, reputation and public loyalty aren’t nearly enough to pull the force out of its current quagmire. A report just issued by the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP paints a stark picture of a force desperately in need of radical reform. Having canvassed the views of some 2,000 RCMP members over five months, the task force witnessed “fierce pride in the force” but also “despair, disillusionment and anger with an organization that is failing them,” according to chairman David Brown. The task force grew out of the scandal over mismanagement of RCMP pensions and insurance and has now flagged a myriad of other internal problems, but questions also swirl about less esoteric issues such as the RCMP’s role in Maher Arar affair, the adequacy of training (in the use of Tasers, for example, and the protection of officers), and the ability of the force to unravel political corruption and white collar crime.

Key task force recommendations call for separation of the Mounties from government through creation of powerful civilian management and oversight authorities which would aim to curb the nearly dictatorial power of the RCMP commissioner and make the force more accountable. Here is the Conservative government’s opportunity to make headway across the political spectrum on a law-and-order issue by moving aggressively on a reform plan thorough enough to restore the national police force to the high status that Canadians want for it.