Scandal after scandal, including the RCMP’s alleged role in the deportation of Maher Arar to Syria by the American government and the death of Robert Dziekanski in the Vancouver airport, have tarnished what had been an excellent reputation for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Calls for major house cleaning and reform have come from all sides of the political spectrum and all levels of government. Canada’s national police force is in disarray and public confidence is at an all-time low.
We are very much in the same boat as we were over 30 years ago when revelations of illegal investigations by the RCMP counterterrorism branch into Quebec separatist groups forced the Trudeau government to appoint the McDonald Commission to investigate their activities. In their final report in 1982, the commissioners recommended the transfer of much of the RCMP’s national security activities to a new civilian domestic intelligence agency, which would have strong external oversight. This recommendation led to the creation of Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 1984. And while not without its own share of scandals in its early years, CSIS is now widely regarded as the model for a civilianized, well-overseen domestic intelligence service.
When the Conservative government presented its budget on March 4, it provided $8 million for the creation of a new external oversight system for the RCMP. But the budget included few details on how the new oversight body will be structured, or how it will relate to the existing RCMP complaints commission.
Current oversight of the RCMP is quite limited compared to that of security and intelligence agencies in other countries, as it is mostly focused on investigating specific complaints against the RCMP. By contrast, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which is responsible for the oversight of CSIS, has extensive powers to conduct general review of CSIS activities in addition to investigating a variety of individual complaints. It reports annually to Parliament and issues classified reports to the Minister of Public Safety as it sees fit. Since the RCMP exercises such a variety of functions, it must be overseen by a body like SIRC with extensive powers to investigate all aspects of the Mounties’ activities.
The opposition should work with the government to ensure a proper oversight system for the RCMP before the year is out. Parliament should be careful, however, not to endorse the creation of an oversight system lacking the necessary resources to do its work effectively.
This is no easy task because of the unique design challenges facing those who will draft the amendments to the RCMP Act. First, the RCMP is a national police force with the primary responsibility of investigating a variety of crimes—including those that cross provincial and territorial lines and most “white collar” crimes. Outside Ontario, Québec, and large cities in the rest of the country, the RCMP is responsible for all policing.
Second, since Canada enacted the Antiterrorism Act in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the RCMP has taken on a major national security role and investigates a variety of terrorism-related crimes. It has also developed close relationships with other parts of the security and intelligence community, prompting concerns about the conditions under which information is shared between the RCMP and other agencies.
Third, recent investigations into RCMP scandals have revealed that its organizational culture is extremely hostile to oversight. This all means that those who will design the new oversight system will need to ensure that the system’s powers are broad enough to cover all these activities, yet substantial enough to probe questions that few have asked of the RCMP since the McDonald Commission.
The opposition must also ensure that the oversight body has the budget necessary to retain the staff and expert consultants it needs. The new RCMP oversight body should be allocated a much larger budget than the $2 million a year the government has provided in the new budget. If its budget followed the same proportion as the SIRC budget does to CSIS, it would exceed $25 million.
The RCMP is a police force like no other. The way we oversee its work must be appropriate to the size and scope of its activities. This is challenging, but crucial. The thorny issues involved in setting up a new oversight system are such that the debate can be easily delayed or sidetracked, but this cannot be allowed to happen, because the longer the RCMP operates unobserved, the more opportunity there will be for it to make costly mistakes. This is not a question of partisanship, but one of national interest.
