Thursday, March 29, 2007

Royal Corruption/Cronyism/CoverUp Mounted Police

Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day, himself under shadow of an RCMP investigation into allegations as to whether he paid off Con Jim Hart with public funds in order to replace him in a previous federal election, has declined demands for a judicial inquiry into the RCMP pension scandal.

Nope, instead he'll be appointing an independent investigator - meaning no subpoenas.

Some other RCMP scandals which have also escaped judicial inquiry :

1) The passing of false information about Maher Arar to US authorites, the subsequent cover-up of RCMP involvement, and their leaking of smears about Arar to the press after his release.

2) The public RCMP announcement in the middle of a federal election campaign of an investigation into members of the Liberal party over an alleged tax-policy leak. Goodale was later found innocent of all charges.

3) Shooting an unarmed BC man in the back of the head "in self-defence".

4) The pepper spraying at the APEC protests

5) Waiting over a year to investigate an RCMP officer accused of having sex with underage girls and then ruling that too much time had passed to launch an investigation.

6) Blowing the Airbus investigation so badly we wound up paying Brian Mulroney $2M in libel damages for accepting $300,000 from an arms dealer.

Well, I'm sure you have your own list.

At the emergency parliamentary committee hearing yesterday, NaPo reports :
"Witnesses alleged anyone who complained or raised concerns about abuses was quietly shuffled aside or moved.
Denise Revine, the whistleblower who first stumbled on irregularities in the pension plan's books, took her concerns to her boss, Chief Superintendent Fraser Macaulay. Ms. Levine lost her job, and Chief Supt. Macaulay was reassigned to National Defence."
Four others also lost their jobs.

RCMP Commissioner Zaccardelli presided over that particular pension fund investigation. He has called the allegations "baseless" and said he would like to make a statement. Previous statements from Zaccardelli included the wildly conflicting $25,000 PR-fluffed testimony he gave on RCMP mistreatment of Arar and for which he had to resign.

This time I think we'd like to see a judicial inquiry and some subpoenas.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Day says the private investigator will report to him and Vic Toews and the report will be made public.
If it's anything like previous reports on the RCMP that have been made public, most of it will be blacked out for "security reasons".

You're quite right about the subpoenas. In a climate where finking is verboten, subpoenas would force members to testify, something many of them obviously want to do anyway, without the stigma of being seen as finks.

PS Alan Eagleson

Anonymous said...

Couldn't get into your comments again today.

What a lot of partisan crap all the pols are talking - as if the most important thing was laying blame on a political party.
We've had four of these investigations into the mounties' pension plan now - just figure out what will make one successful this time.
Do you know what private company the $3 mil was paid to?

Anonymous said...

who are we going to trust? If not the RCMP, who? Yikes!

Cliff said...

I still don't understand how you can shoot someone in the back of the head in self defence. If anybody other than a cop had pulled the trigger, the police would have described it as 'execution style'.

I think a lot of this stems from the big reversal of the last few decades where the RCMP went from the elite that all city police force members aspired to, to the reversal where its now the farm team that pays less and has less cred than city police forces.

RossK said...

Cliff makes a good point.

You can definitely see that strange inverted dichotomy in the Lower Mainland in general and way out on the Western edge of Vancouver in particular.

Regardless, I'm with Alison and would like to see real, honest to goddess subpeonas this time around.

.

Blog Archive