Globe and Mail - July 23, 2007
By Colin Kenny
When Governor General Michaëlle Jean arrived for Canada Day ceremonies on Parliament Hill a few weeks ago, a mounted honour guard of RCMP officers preceded her carriage.
As the Mounties approached the crowd on Wellington Ave., several of them looked apprehensive. When waves of applause rang out for them well before the Governor-General’s carriage came into view, many of their faces broke out into wide smiles.
Were those wide relieved smiles? Did the Mounties really think the crowd would jeer?
The RCMP is a treasured Canadian institution. But a series of negative incidents – stretching from the slaughter of four unprepared officers on an Alberta farm in 2005 to the recent resignation of Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli – have left the force’s self-image in tatters.
The final indignity – or so many officers felt – was the unprecedented appointment of a civil servant with no police experience to replace Mr. Zaccardelli. Not one of 16,000 members of the RCMP was deemed by the Prime Minister to be a worthy successor.
As a civilian, new commissioner William Elliott has wisely chosen not to don the red RCMP tunic. But he needs to bring back respect for that tunic. He cannot accomplish that mission if he does not speak truth to power.
An important part of Mr. Elliott’s job is going to be telling his political master the truth. That could be delicate in this case, because there is an important truth that Prime Minister Steven Harper may not want to hear.
Mr. Harper surely will want to hear that Mr. Elliott is having success at cleaning up the ethical malignancies that appear to have crept into the RCMP’s command structure. That is seen as Mr. Elliott’s primary mission, and it is a worthy one given the vital role that public trust plays in the force’s ability to police the nation.
But Mr. Harper is unlikely to want to hear another very important truth: that the Mounties are badly understaffed and underfunded. If this institution – so essential to the peace, order and good government of Canada – is to function well enough to instill pride both within its own ranks and among Canadian public, it is going to need more resources. A lot more resources.
OECD statistics show that Canada ranks 25th out of 29 countries in police per capita. Some Canadians will applaud that, and so would I if Canadians weren’t faced with the same threats from guns, drugs and terrorists as most of the other countries in the survey.
In fact, these kinds of problems are going to get a lot worse in Canada if a British Columbia provincial court judge’s ruling that border guards can’t search vehicles without search warrants isn’t overthrown.
Testimony before the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence shows that the Mounties try to tackle duties like policing Canada’s ports, coastlines and the Great Lakes with handfuls of officers, in what amounts to token, ineffectual gestures.
One example: the U.S. Coast Guard has the same constabulary responsibilities on the Great Lakes as our Mounties do. The Americans do the job with 2,200 Coast Guard officers. We do it with 14 Mounties.
Another example: Assist Commissioner Raf Souccar told our committee that to properly police Canada’s ports – which are riddled with corruption and vulnerable to terrorist attack – he would need another 900 officers.
Then Commissioner Zaccardelli told us that with current resources the RCMP could only keep tabs on one-third of the organized crime organizations in Canada that he knew existed.
Some people argue that the RCMP’s problems would be solved if the force would abandon contract policing in the majority of Canadian provinces.
That’s nonsense. The beat work those officers do is essential training to climbing the RCMP ladder to more focused responsibilities. It provides surge capacity in times of a crisis in any part of the country.
Furthermore, the more integrated policing is in any province the better chance there is for cooperation in solving cases and dealing with crises. RCMP contract policing is a good deal for the RCMP, for the provinces that buy into it, and for Canadians generally.
It is the committee’s best estimate that Canada needs an additional 5,000-7,000 Mounties, and they don’t come cheap. They certainly shouldn’t come as cheap as we try to get them – unlike other police forces like the Ontario Provincial Police, new Mounties get only room and board while they train for the first six months. What a wonderful way for a young officer with a family to go into debt! If the RCMP is going to recruit the best, it should pay human wages from the start.
Steven Harper promised 1,000 new Mounties in the last Speech from the Throne. The RCMP got 600, and they only filled vacant positions. That means they didn’t get any. There were 400 other people hired, but they didn’t become Mounties. They were instead sent of to fill civilian positions within the federal security bureaucracy.
If the government wants Canadians to continue to cheer the RCMP – and depend on the RCMP for our security – the Prime Minister is going to have to hear some words from Mr. Elliott that he may not want to hear: pay up, or shut up.
Much has been made as to whether the handpicked Mr. Elliott’s first loyalty will be to the RCMP, or to Mr. Harper. It shouldn’t be either. Mr. Elliott’s first loyalty must be to Canadians.
Colin Kenny is Chair of the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. He can be reached via email at kennyco@sen.parl.gc.ca