RCMP Watch

Omar El Akkad, Ottawa (Globe and Mail) - Months before Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned as RCMP commissioner in the wake of the force’s involvement in the Maher Arar case, the RCMP was closely monitoring calls in the media for the commissioner to quit.

Mr. Zaccardelli’s resignation from the force on Dec. 6, 2006, has been closely linked with the RCMP’s involvement in Mr. Arar’s case. But more than two months before he submitted his resignation, the RCMP was cataloguing the tone and placement of editorials and opinion pieces dealing with the O’Connor inquiry into the deportation and torture of Mr. Arar in Syria, with a special focus on how many pieces called on Mr. Zaccardelli to quit.
“The Commissioner remains under fire in the press, with three editorials calling for him to be replaced,” reads an Oct. 2, 2006, RCMP newspaper update. “Three letters also called for a resignation.”

Federal departments and agencies often monitor media reports. However, the RCMP newspaper-monitoring documents, obtained by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin, show the force was well aware of the intense public scrutiny it was under at the height of the Arar affair, and paid close attention to what was being said publicly.

“Today there were 15 items in the Opinion/Editorial section – 6 op/eds, 8 letters to the editor, and 1 editorial cartoon. 2 out of every 3 of these were negative in tone towards the RCMP,” the Oct. 2 newspaper update states. “There were no front page stories for the second day in a row.”

The RCMP kept a running tally of articles about Mr. Arar, and the proportion of those articles that mentioned the commissioner. Stories were broken down by language and region.

On Dec. 8, 2006, two days after Mr. Zaccardelli announced his resignation, a report on the tone and placement of media reports touched on issues that continue to plague the force today.

“News reporters, regardless of their portrayal [of] the Commissioner’s actions, are looking beyond his office to questions of oversight, procedures for National security investigations; and Mr. Arar’s civil lawsuit for damages,” the report states. “Editorial coverage, and letters, by a large majority were negative, proffering a litany of RCMP mistakes, and rarely mentioning the successful work performed by law enforcement.”

That discrepancy is evident in a media analysis of articles in the first quarter of 2006. The RCMP analyzed some 422 stories dealing with drugs and organized crime, an issue designated as a “top priority” by the force. But the analysis found that drug and organized crime stories accounted for only 8 per cent of the times Mr. Zaccardelli was quoted or referred to. Instead, references to the commissioner were made most often in stories about the RCMP’s decision to announce an investigation into the leaking of information about a tax change for income trusts. The announcement, which came in the middle of an election campaign, eventually sparked an investigation by the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP.

“To some extent these numbers undermine the key message asserting [drugs and organized crime] is a “top priority” of the RCMP and the Commissioner,” the report states.

The RCMP’s media-monitoring capabilities are likely to be tested again today, as Paul Kennedy, chairman of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, releases the results of the income-trust investigation.