RCMP Watch

Mark Bonokoski (Winnipeg Sun) - On the first of November, Richard Drouin, QC, a member of the federal government’s task force on governance and cultural change in the RCMP, was up in the Baffin Island outpost of Kimmirut where he was given a tour of the small Nunavut community (Pop: 400) by a young RCMP constable named Doug Scott.

Four days later, Scott was shot dead.

Less than two weeks ago, the same Richard Drouin, a prominent Quebec lawyer who has represented the government side in contract negotiations with Quebec’s provincial police force, told a gathering of RCMP officers at Montreal’s RCMP headquarters that he was saddened to hear days later that 20-year-old Doug Scott, the young officer who had acted as his tour guide in Kimmirut, had died in an “accident.”
From the middle of the room that day, one of the 75 to 100 officers gathered at Montreal’s C-Division to hear Drouin speak on the task force’s progress, as well as receive their input, muttered aloud that it was a “homicide,” not an “accident,” that had claimed young Scott’s life.

And then, loud enough for all to hear, another officer shouted out from the front of the room that it was “murder.”

Drouin, according to witnesses, simply “kept on going,” ignored the outbursts, and claimed that, despite media reports, the force was not “horribly broken.”

‘MURDER’

The officer who shouted out “murder” was RCMP Staff-Sgt. Gaetan Delisle who, in a major Sun Media expose on Sunday, pushed the envelope with accusations that the RCMP authorities were hanging young recruits like Doug Scott out to dry, and that isolated two-man outposts such as Kimmirut should be shut down.

The task force on which Drouin sits is chaired by David Brown, QC, former head of the Ontario Securities Commission and, besides Drouin, also includes Norman Inkster, a former RCMP commissioner.

“It’s about as close to a pro-management panel as you can get,” criticized Staff-Sgt. Delisle.

While the RCMP will reportedly table a written policy on officer back-up and response guidelines this week, supposedly coincidental to the scenario which ended up with Const. Doug Scott being murdered, there remains a great push within the RCMP rank-and-file to get a full-fledged union in place.

“But we were told in that meeting in Montreal last week, by Richard Drouin, that he opposes a union,” said Staff-Sgt. Delisle. “He said a strike by the QPF (Quebec Police Force) back in the ’80s was one of the reasons for opposing a union.

“But it wasn’t a strike,” said Delisle. “All emergency calls were dealt with by the QPF. It wasn’t a strike, it was a work to rule campaign.

“And, do you know what the issue was?

“It was all about the need for two-man police vehicles in Quebec,” said Delisle. “Two officers had recently been killed on duty back then, all because they were driving around alone, and without back-up.

“Two-man cars and two-man outposts.

“The similarities of these issues should be lost on no one.”