The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are an undisputed national symbol. Their story is tightly intertwined with Canadian history and has been since its predecessor forces, the Dominion Police and the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, were organized in the early years after Confederation. They have played their part in some of our country’s brightest days as well as its darkest. They brought law and order to our western frontier and prevented it from becoming another “Wild West”, but persecuted aboriginals. They kept Canada safe from foreign intrusion during two World Wars, but actively participated in the internment of Germans and Japanese immigrants.
Last month, former Supreme Court justice John Major shed new light on a dark chapter of the RCMP’s history. He blamed the RCMP and Canada’s domestic intelligence agency, CSIS, for making a series of catastrophic mistakes that led to the bombing of Air India flight 182 by Sikh separatists in late June, 1985. The bombing remains the largest mass murder in modern Canadian history with 320 dead, 280 of whom were Canadians. Major warned that, though the bombing had happened 25 years ago, little has changed about how the RCMP conducts its counter-terrorism activities and that the tragic mistakes that led to the bombing could easily reoccur.
Just days before Major issued his chilling warning, Public Safety minister Vic Toews announced proposed changes to how complaints about the RCMP will be investigated. The changes, which would include creating a powerful new complaints commission would bring much needed accountability to the RCMP, argued Toews. They would do little, however, to prevent another Air India-type bombing. Though the investigation leads the RCMP to change its policies, we cannot afford to wait for another devastating terrorist attack to review them. Instead, we need a commission which would both be able to investigate complaints and initiate its own reviews of RCMP policies, especially those related to national security.
This is precisely what Ontario Court of Appeal judge Dennis O’Connor called for in his own report on Canada’s role in the kidnapping and torture of Maher Arar by American officials in cooperation with Syrian intelligence authorities. He argued that the mandate of CSIS’s oversight committee, composed of five distinguished lawyers, should be expanded to include the RCMP’s national security activities. Such a solution might cause more problems than it would solve, however, since it would distract CSIS’s committee from its principal mission.
It would not be hard to come up with an alternative solution. For instance, the government’s proposed commission could be established, but along with it another review body could be organized to review the RCMP’s national security activities. However, this approach ignores the fundamental problem which Major flagged in his report. The kind of ordinary law enforcement that makes up much of the RCMP’s core activities requires a very different relationship than counter-terrorism. National security activities are far more politically sensitive and require more direct control because they can easily put the rights of Canadians in jeopardy.
While the RCMP’s oversight system leaves a lot to be desired, the most important problem with the organization is its structure. In Canada, the RCMP is not only the federal police force (charged with investigating federal crimes like counterfeiting and organized crime), but is sometimes also the local police force on contract with either the municipality, province, or territory in question. Combining such different functions, which in other countries would be split between multiple agencies, creates a significant headache for political leaders, because while they need to intervene heavily in areas like counter-terrorism, they need to steer clear of unduly influencing ordinary law enforcement.
The only solution to this problem is to split the RCMP into two different agencies. The first would be responsible for investigating federal crimes, including terrorism. The second would be responsible for carrying out duties which other municipal, provincial, and territorial governments in Canada. In most provinces, especially large ones like Alberta and British Columbia, local policing should be transferred to provincial police forces, but current budgetary pressures might make that unlikely. Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario and Quebec already have provincial police forces.
Reforming the RCMP will not be easy or popular, but this does not make it any less necessary. Unless the government moves swiftly to do so, any effort it makes to implement Justice Major’s recommendations to prevent another Air India bombing will leave Canada dangerously vulnerable to attack. Separating counterterrorism from local law enforcement is the only way that the government can make good on what has so far been a costly commitment to safeguard Canadians from terrorism.
