(CBC News) – The Conservative ties and lack of criminal law experience of the man charged with handling public complaints about the conduct of RCMP officers could weaken his authority, opposition members say.
Ian McPhail was appointed interim chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP by Minister of Public Safety Peter Van Loan on Jan. 18, after his predecessor’s term expired in December.
The B.C. native is a real estate lawyer who has served on the boards of a number of organizations, including the Ontario Environmental Review Tribunal, Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and Toronto Grace Hospital. He has also served as acting chair of the Ontario Educational Communications Authority.
But he doesn’t have much criminal law experience, and the Liberals suspect McPhail’s donations to the Ontario Conservative Party — nearly $5,000, the Liberals claim — may have been behind his hiring.
“We have very serious questions about whether [the Conservative] government is taking civilian oversight of the RCMP seriously,” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Tuesday.
McPhail’s predecessor, Paul Kennedy, a criminal lawyer by training, agreed.
“I am not a person you would come to if you had an issue of real estate or wills, yet I am a lawyer,” said Kennedy, who was appointed to the position in October 2005. “The converse equally applies.
“This is an area of specialization where there is a unique decision-making power given to the chair,” he said.
McPhail released a statement on Tuesday in which he vowed “to ensure that the fine work of the commission continues.”
“The commission will continue to fairly and impartially accept and review public complaints made about the conduct of RCMP members,” he wrote. “Moreover, I will exercise my full powers as acting chair in the public interest where and when necessary.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s spokesman, Dimitri Soudas, suggested on Tuesday that Kennedy himself was acting in a partisan way, citing Kennedy’s attendance at a Liberal meeting on governance on Parliament Hill.
“We saw this gentleman today participate in a partisan activity of the Liberal Party of Canada,” said Soudas.
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