Hansard May 4, 05: Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Hansard May 4, 05

Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Mrs. Susan Kadis (Thornhill, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, yesterday the opposition justice critic attacked the integrity and independence of the RCMP. His attack suggested the RCMP was nothing but a third rate country's third rate police squad.

Could the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness assure the House that the RCMP remains as committed as ever to its mandate to protect Canadians?

Hon. Anne McLellan (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, the attack on the RCMP commissioner yesterday made by the member for Provencher is an abuse of parliamentary privilege and is shameful. It is all the more shocking because that man was a former provincial attorney general.

More concerning is the fact that members of his own party, with the separatist Bloc, are the ones asking the House to overturn the RCMP's deployment plan. They want to reverse an independently made operational
decision of an agency which must and does operate at arm's length from the government of the day.

The member's outrageous comments are undermining the integrity of our national police force.

(End of Hansard excerpt)

My Comments:

This is the minister who is still underfunding, undermanning and hence, undermining our RCMP. This is the Minister who has seen several RCMP detachments closed in areas of Quebec where they should be open. Did it ever cross her mind that the Bloc may be fed up with the feds for reasons other than separation. I would think that Quebeckers feel their security has been compromised and that the corruption was Liberal corruption involving some Quebeckers, not Quebeckers' corruption. The political process has been abused by the federal Liberals.

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