David Akin, Ottawa (Canwest News Service) – The RCMP are under investigation for the way it handled a politically sensitive file last spring.
The Commission for Public Complaints Against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police opened the investigation after the federal NDP complained that RCMP officers did not perform a thorough investigation of a politically embarrassing eavesdropping incident connected to the aborted Liberal-NDP coalition government of last winter.
“Given the publicity of the event and the potential for democratic institutions to be undermined by the Prime Minister’s Office, the RCMP investigation was exceedingly limited,” the NDP wrote. “At a minimum, we would expect that an interview would have been conducted with the person or persons who recorded the call and distributed it.”
Last November, as Jack Layton and the NDP prepared to join Stephane Dion’s Liberals in a coalition government and unseat the governing Conservatives, Layton’s office e-mailed an invitation for a secret strategy conference call to his MPs. One of those e-mails, however, was accidentally received by a Conservative MP.
The NDP accused Vancouver Island Conservative MP John Duncan of illegally taping the call and, now, they say RCMP investigators did not question Duncan about the incident.
The Conservatives taped the call and members of the prime minister’s communications staff distributed copies of the call and transcripts to the national media. The Conservatives argued that Layton admitted to planning a coalition government well before the the release of the government’s disastrous economic update. In that update, not only did Conservatives insist that the federal treasury would remain in surplus this year, they also announced their intention to roll back wage gains negotiated by public sector unions and to end public subsidies of federal political parties.
The update infuriated all three parties and, in their anger, a Liberal-NDP coalition was formed. The Bloc Quebecois did not formally join the coalition but agreed to support it for a period of time.
On the phone call taped by the Conservatives, Layton appears to suggest that he and the NDP had been working to upset the government with a coalition government even before the economic update. Layton also discussed how the NDP was “the glue” that brought the Bloc Quebecois and Liberals together.
After reviewing their own e-mail records, the NDP accused Duncan of being the eavesdropper. Duncan’s parliamentary e-mail address — duncaj@parl.gc.ca — would be similar to Edmonton NDP MP Linda Duncan’s e-mail address — duncal@parl.gc.ca.
Duncan has never spoken about the matter and was not available for comment Friday.
But even if the e-mail was misaddressed, the NDP contend that the Conservatives should not have dialed in to what was a private call.
“A member of Parliament had accidentally received contact information for the (NDP) caucus discussion, and he or others were able to make a recording of this private conversation,” the NDP writes in its complaint “At no point during the call had these uninvited guests made their presence known. And the invitation made it clear that it was intended for members of the NDP caucus.”
The NDP subsequently asked the RCMP to investigate what they said was illegal and unauthorized eavesdropping
Two RCMP officers looked into the matter but, in March, concluded there were no grounds to lay any charges or continue with the investigation.
The NDP, not satisfied with the results of that investigation, filed a complaint on Oct. 6 with the commission for public complaints.
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