Last week, the RCMP’s highest-ranking official, Commissioner William Elliott announced his early resignation. In comments he made after the announcement, Elliott expressed his wish that the prime minister not appoint another civilian to replace him. Instead, he argued that the government should look for new leadership from within the ranks in order to smooth the path of reform he himself spearheaded since taking charge. Combined with revelations by another retiring Mountie about plummeting morale, Elliott’s resignation puts the RCMP’s future deeply in doubt. Paradoxically, this might be just the right time for the government to take action to shake up the force.
The government should start by respectfully declining to follow Elliott’s advice and appointing another outsider to lead the force, unless it can find an insider who can play the reform game without caving into the RCMP’s notoriously narrow-minded corporate culture. The search for an outsider should extend beyond the federal public service. Perhaps there is such an outsider to be found among the leadership of the Ontario Provincial Police or the Sûreté du Québec (Quebec’s provincial police force). It is more likely, however, that the government could find someone within the Canadian Forces, preferably a tough leader with military police experience.
Once the government finds a suitable candidate, it should work hard to ensure that the new commissioner wins the confidence of the RCMP’s upper brass and the rank and file. As Elliott found, this will not be easy to do, but is crucial for any reform efforts. The commissioner needs to make clear that, while he or she respects the RCMP’s culture and history, Canada has changed since the 1920s and the foce must change with it in order to remain releveant. This means first and foremost: real civilian control.
The Conservatives should expedite legislation they introduced in the spring to overhaul the RCMP’s complaints commission and ensure that the new commission has the funding and staff it needs to do its work. Moreover, they should also clarify that commission’s duty to oversee the RCMP’s whole portfolio of responsibilities, including counter-terrorism. The commission’s staff should be trained by Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit, which has set the gold standard in civilian police oversight. Federal prosecutors should also make clear their intention to punish misbehaviour in the ranks. “Tough on crime” means tough on all crime, including crimes committed by police officers.
The government should also support the implementation of Elliott’s internal reform plans for the RCMP, including the creation of regional command structures which would give provincial RCMP leadership greater independence in exchange for greater responsibility. The government should not give into the temptation fuelled by Elliott’s speculation last autumn that the RCMP should be made into an arms-length agency like the Canada Revenue Agency or Statistics Canada. While clarifying the agency’s independence from politicians is an admirable goal, it should come at the end, rather than at the beginning of a major reform process. Until then, the federal government needs to assert strong external control.
The path to medium and long-term reform for the RCMP is less clear, but should certainly attempt to tame the force’s reckless and secretive culture. Eventually, the government should encourage cities and provincial governments to take over their own policing as budgets and populations warrant. Though there is a risk that the proliferation of new police forces could lead to oversight shortfalls, greater local ownership over the police might well help curb abuses. A fair number of the problems plaguing the RCMP come from the difficulty of managing a force responsible for everything from stolen cars in Surrey, to counterfeiting in Toronto, to counterterrorism in Montreal.
A leaner RCMP could focus more clearly on what should be its core responsibilities. It would be easier to monitor because the civilian oversight staff would have fewer types of cases to review and could develop the expertise which characterises the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s review body. The government should express its intention to explore possibilities for change by commissioning a major public report on national policing arrangements in other countries, especially federations like Australia and the United States. This would provide the basis for much-needed, but very difficult reforms the RCMP.
None of these changes will be easy, but they are deeply needed. Nowhere is this clearer than in the countless communities where the stories of RCMP abuses are so com monplace that bad apples alone cannot be to blame. The RCMP and the Canadian public deserve to be proud of the force’s future as well as its history. We must demand that the government assert its control over the Mounties and ensure that they get moving on these crucial reforms. The first step is a new commissioner, but as we saw with Elliott, he or she will get nowhere without serious government support.
