Janice Tibbetts, Ottawa (Montreal Gazette) – Canada’s new civilian watchdog of the RCMP says that he has to be given new and enhanced powers to keep an eye on the force and to help eliminate its “credibility challenge.”
Ian McPhail, a former Tory organizer who the Harper government recently named chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, said he agrees with his predecessor, Paul Kennedy, that the oversight group needs to be strengthened to restore public faith in the Mounties.
The government announced in the March budget that it is going ahead with a new independent, civilian oversight body to monitor the RCMP, committing $8 million over two years.
McPhail, speaking for the first time to the House of Commons public safety committee, said he thinks that the public complaints commission, among other things, needs greater access to RCMP files and it should be empowered to summon witnesses and order surrender of evidence when probing complaints.
“The commission should be able to determine what information it requires and to access it as of right,” he told the committee.
The existing RCMP public complaints commission has been repeatedly decried as a toothless body that depends on the force’s voluntary co-operation for its investigations and has no power to probe whether the force is overstepping its power involving national security and organized crime.
McPhail said he could not enlighten the committee on when the government will announce the new oversight powers, but he assured MPs that “it is on a front burner at this time.”
The opposition Liberals attacked McPhail’s appointment in January, when he was named as interim chair for at least one year.
McPhail, a Toronto real-estate lawyer with no experience in police matters, told the committee that in past appointments, in which he chaired Ontario government agencies, he preferred to take a “non-confrontational” approach to his job.
Kennedy, who adopted a more outspoken approach and issued a hard-hitting, critical report on Mountie Taser use at the end of his term, was widely considered to be a thorn in the RCMP’s side.
McPhail, in listing five recommendations for a stronger oversight body, did not include the authority to probe national security files — one of the elements on Kennedy’s wish list during his tenure.
The Mounties have been under intense public scrutiny in recent years, arising from their use of Taser stun guns, deaths in custody, involvement in the Maher Arar affair and a pension scandal that rocked the upper echelons of the force, prompting a major federal review and modernization drive.
In December 2006, the judge who led the inquiry into Arar’s deportation to Syria from the United States after the RCMP passed on faulty intelligence to the Americans, recommended that the RCMP public complaints commission be revamped and given the power to review all national security activities by the RCMP.
Arar, a Syrian-Canadian, was put on a plane and sent to Damascus after being arrested during a stopover at a New York airport.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/RCMP+watchdog+asks+enhanced+powers+tackle+credibility+challenge/2911833/story.html#ixzz0lDQ1HRyP
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