| Well, it was an apology of sorts.
"Mr. Arar, I wish to take this opportunity to express publicly to you, to your wife and to your children how truly sorry I am," said RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli last Thursday, breaking his silence in the wake of the O’Connor inquiry’s report on the Mounties’ role in the deportation, imprisonment and torture of Maher Arar three years ago.
Yet even as he uttered these words of regret, Zaccardelli stopped short of apologizing for the actual conduct of his officers. On the contrary, while the commissioner acknowledged that the force could expect to face criticism following O’Connor’s report, he himself remained "proud of the professional manner in which RCMP personnel responded throughout the complex and exhaustive process." At the same time, Zaccardelli announced that no individual officers would be disciplined for their part in passing on faulty intelligence reports to the American authorities.
Case closed, it seems. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day certainly thinks so, expressing his confidence in "all men and women of the RCMP, right across the country." Arar himself has been more than gracious in accepting the Commissioner’s apology. "I did not seek revenge," Arar told reporters last week. "I want better institutions in Canada. That’s what I want."
The Globe and Mail went even further, calling for Zaccaredlli to resign as the start of any renewal of trust in the force. "The RCMP did not act ethically in the Arar case," it argued. "Someone needs to say on behalf of the RCMP that it understands it went wrong, that it has learned from its mistakes, that it is keen to show it still deserves the faith Canadians have placed in it over the decades."
Nice words, but just how likely is it that that’s going to happen? Even a brief look at the RCMP’s past record gives little cause for optimism.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the McDonald Commission, the last major investigation into RCMP activities. Led by Justice David McDonald, this inquiry examined a number of allegations made against the force in the 1970s, including its theft of the Parti Quebecois membership list, the illegal opening of mail and conducting of electronic surveillance, and the burning of a barn in Quebec where the Black Panthers and the FLQ were rumoured to be gathering.
The McDonald Commission came down heavily on the RCMP. It recommended that the force be stripped of responsibility for overseeing national security, a role it had assumed piecemeal since the 1920s. Instead, a new organization, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), was created to fulfil this function, staffed by civilian personnel with no police powers.
Under this new arrangement, the RCMP should never have been collecting intelligence on Maher Arar — faulty or otherwise — in the first place. However, since 9/11, the lines between the RCMP, CSIS and numerous other agencies have been blurred, and the Mounties had once again become front line agents in the fight against terrorism.
Such a role had not been anticipated by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald when he created the North West Mounted Police in 1873. Rather, the sole purpose of this temporary police force was to ensure the peaceful settlement of western Canada — meaning the eviction of American whisky traders and the relocation of the region’s Native population. Once that was done, the NWMP would be disbanded.
The force proved to be too useful, however, and was soon upgraded to the Royal North West Mounted Police. With the creation of Alberta and Saskatchewan in 1905, the RNWMP became the official police force for the new provinces.
Western settlement was more or less complete by World War One, making redundant the Mounties’ original function. However, the rise of socialist and communist agitation in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution gave the force a new job: the task of spying on and infiltrating radical organizations across Canada.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (it was renamed once more in 1920) embraced this role in the 1920s and ’30s. After World War Two, the onset of the Cold War kept the Mounties busier than ever, as they developed close links with the FBI to root out spies and sympathizers. By the 1960s, student radicals, labour organizations and the PQ had been added to this list. In the process, the RCMP increasingly operated above the law, engaging in the practices that led to the McDonald Commission.
The point is that, left to its own devices, the RCMP has never been willing or able to restrain its own excesses. Official investigations and inquiries may shine a spotlight on the force’s wrongdoings and offer short-term remedies but, as the whole Arar affair has demonstrated, a culture of unaccountability continues to thrive within the RCMP, right up to the top.
Perhaps it’s time to disband the Mounties entirely. Created at a specific time and for a limited purpose, they have no more right to claim immortality than any other organization.
Of course, there are bound to be objections to such a proposal. How would Canada survive without a national police force? Well, plenty of nations do just that, relying instead (or at least mainly) on smaller regional forces. In Canada, too, policing is properly a provincial responsibility. Even today Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland run their own provincial police forces. The other provinces get around the constitutional problem simply by employing the RCMP as their own provincial force.
Others might object that the RCMP is a cherished national symbol, too precious to lose. Fair enough. But if the only reason to preserve the RCMP is its symbolic importance, then the argument for it being a necessary police force is already lost.
Or maybe the RCMP shouldn’t be disbanded, simply trimmed down and made more accountable. At present, there are more than 22,500 RCMP personnel, roughly one Mountie for every 1200 Canadians. We don’t need that much policing. And even if we did, we need to be policed better than the RCMP is capable of.
Just ask Maher Arar. |
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