Governance and the Guardians: The RCMP

The following was published in 1998; I suspect it still has relevance.

[. . . . ] The government was so impressed by the early results that, by 1995 it expanded the legislation to include a wide range of offences that could be classified as proceeds offences under Section 462.3 of the Criminal Code. they were consensual -- or "victimless" -- crimes, mainly offences under the Customs and Excise Act, dealing with profiteering from the smuggling of alcohol and tobacco. But the profits from crimes such as gambling, prostitution, and immigrant smuggling, among other things, were for some reason not covered under the legislation. In 1997 the government expanded the three original units and created ten new ones across the country injecting another $18 million into the project, for an extended four year "trial". There are currently [1998] 450 mounties across the country involved in the IPOC project.

[. . . . ] The money the RCMP seizes goes directly to the Seized Property management Directorate, a department of the federal government.

There is so much more. The above is from pages 157-8 of Paul Palango: The Last Guardians: The Crisis in the RCMP -- and in Canada: McClelland & Stewart, 1998, ISBN: 0-7710-6906-5

There are gems of information, for example, on the influence of privacy laws, SCOC decisions, the 1991 Stitchcombe decision, de-specialization, the government's using budget restrictions to prevent the RCMP from doing its job as well as it can, the increasing emphasis upon "running the RCMP like a business" (Trudeau, Mulroney and Chretien), community policing as opposed to federal law enforcement--e.g. Pierre Cadieux, in his "Police-Challenge 2000"

recommended that federal law enforcement by the RCMP be de-emphasized in favour of community-based policing. [201]

At a time when organized crime, fraud, and corruption are costing the economy billions of dollars a year, the RCMP, pushed by government, is focusing more and more on the little things. [202]

Two commissions profoundly influenced the RCMP: Glassco (e.g. page 289) and McDonald.

But the real effect of the McDonald Commission was that it knocked the RCMP off the course on which it was headed in the early seventies: that is, enhancing its capabilities as a federal law enforcement agency. After McDonald, the RCMP found that it was not only under political control, but that this control was being exercised largely by or at the direction of Quebec politicians and bureaucrats in Ottawa. Armed with the McDonald Commission recommendations, such as they were, these political and bureaucratic leaders implemented, in an incremental fashion, policies that have served to dismantle the RCMP as a federal institution.

Do not miss reading pages 290-1 on the "outrageous fraud" which resulted in the McDonald Commission instigated by two former Quebec-based Security Service agents, one of whom was revealed to have been a Soviet spy. (1991, Fifth Estate) Also, pages 99-101 have observations worth reading, as well as the author's recommendations on pages 292-293.

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