RCMP Watch

James Travers, Toronto Star

Canada’s first civilian RCMP commissioner has two identity problems. One is that Bill Elliott is sometimes mistaken for the NASCAR driver of that name; the other is that no one confuses him with a policeman.

Elliott laughs off the first; the second isn’t so funny or easily dismissed.

There’s precious little merriment among the Mounties as they wait for the civil servant and former Tory staffer to take command Monday. Neither the time since Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the surprise decision nor Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day’s bizarre direct appeal for support are easing resistance.

Instead, an institutional stubborn streak is surfacing in questions outsiders consider merely irritants. Is someone who didn’t rise through the ranks fit for the famous red serge? Should a commissioner who never collared a crook be a peace officer?

Whatever the answers, the questions measure the overwhelming obstacles Elliott faces. Organizations as large, complex and cultish as the RCMP have boundless capacity to reject a transplant.

A favourite is to bury them in minutiae. Before a new boss can tackle structure, personnel or performance, the critical months when change is possible vanish into the status quo.

Consider this: A commissioner hired after serial scandals and charged with restoring public confidence is now distracted by which uniform to wear and what administrative powers to exercise.

That’s private sector nitpicking. But these things matter in a paramilitary organization where tradition and respect are preconditions for obedience, and decisions are not about profit and loss, but life and death.

Remarkably, there’s an emerging rationale here that Elliott can somehow renew the RCMP while leaving policing to the police. That’s absurd.

Accountability and human nature dictate that officers overlooked to lead the RCMP will push difficult operational and political decisions up the chain of command. At some point, Elliott will be forced to manage an internal crisis and before the next election he must decide how to remove external suspicion the force shaped the last. How he leads under stress will determine credibility within the force. How he explains the still unexplained RCMP decision to make its income trust investigation public during the campaign will determine credibility with Canadians.

A commissioner can’t delegate pivotal decisions any more than a former party loyalist can avoid reassuring the country that the federal force he now commands stands above the partisan fray. Taking charge is as essential to the job as freedom from political interference is pivotal to public confidence in justice and democracy.

Elliott must pass those tests before graduating to the bigger job of making the RCMP’s future consistent with its past. Success is problematic.

A skill-set that impressed the search committee more than Mounties is an odd fit with the extraordinary demands of commanding a force that Canada expects to provide many of the services shared in the U.S. by state and local police, the FBI and CIA.

And it won’t be easy for an old Tory to muster the courage to deconstruct events that helped bring Conservatives who appointed him to power.

But to fail at either means Elliott won’t convince colleagues or the country to identify him not with NASCAR, the public service or politics, but as RCMP commissioner.