RCMP Watch

Campbell Clark, Globe and Mail

New RCMP Commissioner William Elliott will enter the force’s top job armed with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s backing to shake up a force whose iconic status has been rocked by scandal, but acknowledging he faces a challenge to get rank-and-file Mounties’ support.

The appointment of a senior bureaucrat who began his government career as a Tory aide was immediately controversial with Mounties and political opponents, who questioned his lack of police experience and ties to Ottawa’s halls of power.

“There are certainly challenges. I don’t wear rose-coloured glasses. And certain members of the RCMP have expressed their wish to have a commissioner from inside,” Mr. Elliott said at a news conference yesterday.

He said he believes RCMP members will “pull together” to make the force better, but that he will have to rely more on professional police officers because he is not a cop.

“That is a challenge that my predecessors did not face. But I also believe strongly that I bring other experience and other skills to bear, and I think we can be a good combination.”

Mr. Harper turned to Mr. Elliott after the government-appointed investigator into the RCMP’s pension-fund scandal, David Brown, described the force’s paramilitary management structure as “horribly broken” and outdated.

It was the first time since the North West Mounted Police was formed in 1873 (from which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police evolved) that a commissioner was chosen from outside the uniformed ranks of the military or police.

But the possible tensions between a new commissioner and the rank and file were symbolized best by a question that no one in government, including Mr. Elliott, would answer: whether the new commissioner will be sworn in as a peace officer and don the red serge uniform of a Mountie.

A spokesman for the RCMP, Sergeant Nathalie Deschênes, said the force did not know how the provisions of the RCMP Act apply to such a case, or whether the commissioner will automatically be sworn in as a peace officer.

“This is the calls I’ve been getting now: ‘Don’t you dare give him a uniform,’ ” said retired staff sergeant Ron Lewis, a former staff relations officer and whistle-blower in the pension-fund scandal.

He said rank-and-file members of the RCMP are awarded their red serge and spurs in their 24-week academy training, and for them it is an important symbol. “You’ve got to earn your spurs,” he said.

Mr. Elliott will assume the commissioner’s position on July 16, filling a job left open last December when former commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned under fire over conflicting testimony in the Maher Arar affair.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day argued that Mr. Elliott’s political and management experience is needed to guide an organization with 24,000 police officers and employees to a new era. He has indicated a task force — charged with revamping the force, including creating a civilian-oversight body — will be struck soon.

“This is a time of transition. A time when somebody with the management skills and the experience that Mr. Elliott has is going to be required in this particular position as commissioner,” Mr. Day said.

Although the RCMP has long been one of Canada’s most respected institutions, it has been tarnished by a series of controversies.

It was blamed for playing a role in the United States’ deportation of Mr. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, to Syria. Mr. Brown’s report labelled Mr. Zaccardelli an autocrat who punished whistle-blowers trying to shed light on pension-fund abuses. And several Mounties have complained of a lax response to members found guilty of improper actions, and even crimes.

Some Mounties had come to believe that only an outsider could make real changes.

Laura Young, a lawyer representing the Mounted Police Association of Ontario, which is pushing for a union-style police association in the force, said many of the members believe that there is a “culture of impunity” in the senior ranks of the force.

“They are optimistic that an outsider’s perspective will bring some long-needed changes to the force,” she said.

But Mr. Lewis said there are concerns about the appointment because Mr. Elliott is taking over an organization he does not know “at a time of crisis” and will have to quickly choose a team of top officials.

And Mr. Elliott’s government and political background could be seen inside and outside RCMP ranks as reducing the arm’s-length status of the national police force: “The perception is that the arm’s length is not as long as it used to be.”

Mr. Elliott insisted that he will be a guardian of the force’s independence, and Mr. Day noted that his old Tory tie — he was chief of staff to former deputy prime minister Don Mazankowski — came long before he was appointed to senior posts under Liberal tenure. Liberal public safety critic Sue Barnes said: “I think that we have some concerns. It’s a former senior Mulroney government political staffer,” she said.

New Democrat MP David Christopherson said that choosing a non-police commissioner is “like sending a prizefighter into the ring with one hand tied behind his back,” and that his close ties to both Conservative and Liberal governments create the “risk of politicization” of the commissioner.