(Toronto Star Editorial) – A human rights ruling in favour of a former RCMP cadet who suffered taunts and discrimination while at the force’s Regina training depot in 1999 should serve as a wake-up call to Canada’s national police.
In a decision this week, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found Ali Tahmourpour, who is Muslim, was singled out by a training officer for wearing a religious pendant, ridiculed by another officer for signing his name in the Persian style he learned as a child in Iran, and verbally abused. Finding that the RCMP’s decision to toss him out of the program was based on discriminatory assessments of his skills, the tribunal ordered the force to reimburse him for lost wages, suffering and legal costs, and allow him to re-enrol in the cadet program. It also told the RCMP to develop protocols for dealing with harassment and discrimination, and provide diversity training to cadets and staff.
Yet this may not be an isolated case. The tribunal heard evidence that in the year Tahmourpour was in training, the attrition rate for visible minority cadets was more than double that of non-visible minorities. Even now, only 7 per cent of the force’s members are visible minorities, compared to about 16 per cent of Canada’s total population.
Common sense dictates that Canada’s national police force should represent the population it serves. Tahmourpour’s case is a timely reminder that the RCMP needs to do better.
Do not forget the guidlines that all fedeeral departments work under. Finances come from the treasury board which is the government of the day. Hiring directives also come from the government of the day. The Commissioner is appointed by the government. The Commissioner is a Deputy Minister of justice. The government started and enforces the political correctness doctrine.
I do not think that if left to ones own devices the RCMP would continue with those disastrous policies. However, you have indoctrinated a great number of the managers and promoted a great number of managers with that philosophy. It will take as long to correct if you separate the RCMP into a ’separate employer status if you initiate merit based HR policy.
Don’t forget how all this starts in the first place. People whine to the government to ‘do something’ and put regulations in place for this or that.
So much for 67 years ago in1941 and 47 years ago in1961, what have you got for recent history?
Raising the standards would be an excellent idea except for the fact the general outlook for the day is anybody can do anything if they want, and if I can’t my lawyer will make it so, while the government of the day panders to pressure groups.
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Calvin, I think bad apples are everywhere not just in the RCMP.
Maybe the RCMP have more than their fair share, how that came about must be addressed and I agree, not by setting racial or religious hiring quotas.
How too much power and so much influence got into the hands of the bad apples is germane for Stockwell Day’s panel.
We have a very good model to look at culturally and geographically where affirmative action principles have cost quite a few lives, and they weren’t of “DARK COMPLEXION” or “black men”.
In the U.S. military’s Iraq war “whites are overrepresented in casualties by 16 percentage points”. “Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and “multiple” are all underrepresented.”
By looking at these death rates we see the equal opportunity to die is a bad thing but not in the way you would expect. The same goes for the RCMP, it is not a bad thing having a “long history of White RCMP members” in a country that is 84% white.
Were the four deaths at Mayenthorpe equally represented ethnically?
Myths about ruling whites have a way of self perpetuating themselves. Vietnam and the myth of black cannon-fodder is a prime example, “86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races.” In the Iraq war, 9% have been black, with an even greater disparity.
It would be interesting to see what the RCMP death rates would be if the lines were drawn along ethnicity or along the lines of religion.
The RCMP ethnicity and religion issues are not issues created by a “long history of White RCMP members keeping non-white applicants out “, Canada is 84% white.
The RCMP ethnicity and religion issues are a matter of bad apples, and how the RCMP got more than their fair share is the real issue and the crux of RCMP dysfunction.
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In relation to the previous comments I am making the following statement:
It is the age old question. Which came first the chicken or the egg?
I want to take you back to October 20, 1941. There was an RCMP memo written about two black men who were attempting to be engaged in the RCMP. The memo reads in part: “WHILE IT IS FELT THAT THESE MEN ARE ELIGIBLE, I WOULD BE PLEASED TO HAVE YOUR COMMENTS BEFORE PROCEEDING FURTHER WITH THEIR APPLICATION”. The response was the following: “THE COMMISSIONER DIRECTS THAT THESE MEN SHOULD BE AFFORDED THE OPPORTUNITY OF WRITING THE EDUCATIONAL TEST WITH THE HOPE THAT THEY SHALL FIND THAT THEY HAVE NOT SUCCESSFULLY PASSED, AS TO DEFINITELY REFUSE THEM THE OPPORTUNITY OF APPLYING ON ACCOUNT OF THEIR COLOUR WOULD RAISE THE QUESTION OF POLICY WHICH THE COMMISSIONER DOES NOT WISH TO SO DO”.
Now let’s fast forward to April 25, 1961. The following memo reads in part: HE HAS BEEN RECOMMENDED FOR ENGAGEMENT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT HE IS OF INDIAN ORIGIN, HIS PARENTS HAVING COME TO THIS COUNTRY FROM THE PUNJAB IN INDIA AND POSSESSES THE DARK COMPLEXION YOU MAY WISH TO REFER THIS FILE TO THE COMMISSIONER FOR HIS COMMENTS AND FEELINGS TOWARD ENGAGEMENT OF A PERSON WHO RACE IS OTHER THAN WHITE”.
(Sources of memos: National Archives, Ottawa)
What I would like you to notice about these memos is they were not solicited. It was assumed that this was the policy of the day. There is a long history of White RCMP members keeping non-white applicants out of the RCMP. Would there be an RCMP Employment equity program if non-white applicants were allowed to be all they could be in the past? Do these same covert actions happen today in the refinement stage of racist behavior? That debate will never be resolved.
Today we have Multiculturalism, diversity, pluralistic society, de-policing, racial profiling etc. It is about time we got over the silliness of it all. There is racist behavior and there is justice. Nothing in between. The RCMP does not have to lower their standards when employing non-white members. Raise the standers and see what happens. The two applicants in 1943 had a grade 12 education and look what happened to them.
Managers of the RCMP should remove Employment Equity programs and replace it with Individual Accountability of all RCMP Members.
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I am glad this case happened.
It has finally brought to the surface a very disturbing RCMP trend that needs to be addressed.
The RCMP hiring and recruitment department have been, rather than building professionally with proven human resource techniques, taking the politically correct route.
We all know that political correctness can have devastating consequences and the RCMP can be taken as a prime example with its indications of widepsread and systemic failures.
If a company targeted a demographic for hiring that contains a cluster of medical and psychiatric problems such as MRSA, AIDS, HIV, neurosyphylis, Hep-C, Hep-B and drug abuse, that company would soon be overwhelmed with dysfunction. Sick days, higher insurance rates, manpower and staffing problems are just a few of the hurdles the company would face.
One of the main breakdowns now occuring within the RCMP, as witnessed by the above article, is the inability of the RCMP to deal with political correctness.
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Don’t forget the politically correct zealots will not be happy until the RCMP has the same percentage of ‘minorities’ as the population itself, regardless of individual wishes or competency. Of course then they will decry the lack of advancement, the lack of senior rank, ad nauseum.
This kind of affirmative action policy breeds inefficiency and initiates is own discrimination difficulties. You make the cut you wear the hat. You don’t, thanks for coming out.
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I don’t agree with harassment of anyone. However, you have to take this on a case by case basis. Just because the attrition rate is high fore minorities does not mean it is based on discrimination. Lets face it the RCMP has to hire from certain target groups. In the process they have focused more on quantity vs quality. Some of the ones I have seen flush out have been because they could do nothing right the first time. If they can’t pass the written exams or hit the target, this isn’t systematic discrimination. The same variables are true of white cadets when incompetence is the case with them.
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