Colonial Canada Now. (Part Two) The Canadian Police

Colonial Canada Now. (Part Two) The Canadian Police

Successive Canadian governments have broadcast their colonial subjection to the U.S.A. by purposefully crippling (on behalf of U.S. interests) the possibility of a robust Canadian film industry with a significant international audience. Equally suicidal and embarrassing, governments of Canada have permitted the once fabled Royal Canadian Mounted Police to have the public rights to its name and the commercial use thereof “sold” to the U.S. Disney Corporation.

That single act probably tells us more about the value governments of Canada put on Canadian traditions than any other of their colonial actions.

That betrayal of a major Canadian symbol has been paralleled by the visible, public degeneration of what we like to call “the national police force”.  The RCMP has always been a quasi-military institution – doing the bidding of real power in Canada, usually in cooperation with political institutions.  In the early twentieth century, for instance, when labour was gaining strength as a part of the Social Gospel Movement, the RCMP played a strange role.

The Movement wished to Christianize workers and bring capitalists to social responsibility.  Hardly a revolutionary idea.  Nonetheless, disguised RCMP officers spied on the worker churches.  The head of the RCMP even intervened in the reviewing of protestant minister Salem Bland’s 1920 book The New Christianity so that its message of Christian labour brotherhood and leadership wouldn’t offend Canada’s capitalist class.

Despite its class loyalty the RCMP could gain general approval as a force for national unity and cohesion.  That is true despite the fact that at the end of the Second World War and for twenty years thereafter the RCMP worked alongside Hal Banks – a U.S. imported thug, his confederates, and a noxious collaboration of Canadian and U.S. interests (and governments) to destroy the largest independent Canadian union (the Canadian Seaman’s Union) as a part of destroying (for U.S. interests) the third largest merchant marine fleet in the world – Canada’s merchant marine.

The life and death of the Canadian Seaman’s Union is perhaps the largest, most exciting labour story in Canada’s history – stretching through decades of conflict and across the world into the United Kingdom, India, Australia … and beyond.  But we are told almost nothing of that story.  No Canadian academic, no team of Canadian historians, no Canadian foundation or granting agency has even suggested establishing a project entitled something like “The Canadian Seaman’s Union Project” to record and make available that major national story.  Why not?  Because it is both an heroic and a shameful tale of Canada’s colonial subjection to the U.S.A.  And so the story isn’t told.

Not a single Canadian historian has published even a small book on the subject.  The two or three books available are the partial works of serious amateurs determined to keep shreds of the story alive.

The brutality of the RCMP in the task of destroying the Canadian Merchant Marine was probably possible because of the deluge of propaganda smearing the union as “Communist” and exalting the forces fighting it as working for peace and national unity.

Cracks of a different sort appeared in the RCMP armour during the
FLQ activities in Quebec when the force engaged in barn burning as well as illegal raiding of and theft from the parti quebecois offices.  At that time it even faced strong allegations that it formed fake, violent FLQ cells to sway public opinion against Quebec separatism.  A further allegation that the RCMP engaged in political assassination at the time – like the allegation of the manufacture of fake, violent “FLQ cells” - has never been permitted to face objective, public examination.

So much RCMP alleged criminality surfaced over the matter that a huge Royal Commission was struck. The Commissioner was a political appointee, his mandate castrated from the start.
The Commission’s title: “The Royal Commission of Inquiry Into Certain [but not into the really important] Activities of the RCMP” tells all. One might argue that a government which employed the RCMP to do criminal acts felt forced to protect it – and so began forging the RCMP/government alliance characterized by knowledge on both sides of the criminal guilt possessed by the other.

The outcome of David McDonald’s work was almost as bad.  It gave us the RCMP we have today, a force that – after the Commission Report – was protected by political power which, it seems, both feared an RCMP that might “tell all” and that wanted and needed the RCMP quasi-military organization as an ally in power.  The enormous illegalities engaged in by the RCMP were – at that time (as with the Canadian Seaman’s Union) - accepted and/or approved of by a large portion of Canadians.  Once again, propaganda told them the work of the RCMP was to hold Canada together; the force was working for national unity.  Canadian failure, at the time, to rebuild the force from the ground up was a serious error.

There is strong indication that the aftermath of all that – which is Now, the present we live in – presents us with an RCMP in which significant portions of the force will use – it seems - any convenient illegality to maintain its prerogatives, to support its corporate and government allies and to do the bidding of parallel forces in the U.S.A. 

RCMP behaviour and alliances seem to be more and more those of a State Police in a dangerous colonial dependency.  The record of the RCMP and other quasi-military forces in Canada tasering innocent people may be small potatoes – meaning the people killed wantonly are neither rich nor influential.  But the apparent brutal  disregard by police forces of the sanctity and the lives of ordinary Canadians is deeply disturbing – pointing to an ever-widening gap between the people of Canada and “their” police forces.

The record of the RCMP on many other matters, “matters of State”, are definitely not small potatoes.  The force shows itself increasingly to be one which operates for “North American” interests – which means it works for quasi-fascist, private corporate power on the continent – largely, that is, for U.S. policy and culture. The ordinary RCMP officer standing in Vancouver International Airport tasering innocent Robert Dziekanski doesn’t think of himself as working for those “North American” interests.  But every signal he receives daily in his RCMP milieu, I suggest, prepares him to behave in that fashion.

In the B.C. Gustafsen Lake “stand off” between the RCMP and about two dozen native people in the early 1990s, the patch of land involved was owned by an absent U.S. citizen.  RCMP behaviour was ugly and almost certainly repeatedly criminal.  On film RCMP officers boast of being experts in “smear and disinformation”.  A chief public relations officer is alleged to have misrepresented conditions and to have fraudulently received broadcast time from the CBC.  Secret, covert involvement of the Canadian army is alleged, as well as the creation of a large, banned area, blacked out so that RCMP could report whatever it pleased as happening in the area.

Press and media failed to research or report adequately, leaving the matter still desperately in need of open public inquiry.
That event was followed a little later by the APEC Scandal involving RCMP violence at UBC.  The international meeting hosted despot and criminal, president Suharto of Indonesia.  He was a close U.S. ally, unseated shortly after the APEC meetings.  He apparently demanded absolute protection in Canada from the public and demonstrators. Two memos on the matter from Washington to Ottawa (obtained by a Maclean’s Magazine reporter through Access to Information) were both completely blacked out.

The RCMP became a goon squad for the period of the APEC meetings, assaulting and falsely arresting an innocent person, a person they apparently didn’t like.  Then the manifest violence they did to UBC students prompted one of the most ludicrous Public Inquiries in Canadian history.  Chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (the CPC), then Shirley Heafey, interfered (so destructively apparently) that the chief investigators resigned. She moved to appoint the author of the subsequent 500 plus pages “Report”, an elaborate and embarrassing whitewash that assured – it would seem – that former judge Ted Hughes would be re-employed to do the same kind of work in the future.

After that, the RCMP worked assiduously (over-assiduously?) to gather “evidence” for the trial against wholly innocent Glen Clark, NDP premier of B.C. – concerning a few thousands of dollars spent (or not spent) on a small residential sundeck or veranda.  The original complaint about Glen Clark originated in Gordon Campbell’s constituency office.  (Campbell became – out of that ‘scandal’ - the premier of B.C.)

I wrote a formal complaint to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (the CPC) about the quality of the RCMP investigation.  Clark spent 130 days in what I call a fraudulent trial.  The RCMP had gathered something like 28 volumes of what they called “evidentiary material”. Clark was ruined, though he was cleared of all allegations of wrong-doing.  My complaint took over three years to be dealt with.  The CPC reported to me that two seasoned RCMP officers had wrongfully terminated the investigation I had asked for. The CPC concluded it would leave to the discretion of the RCMP whether it would reopen the investigation and complete it!

Since then examples of RCMP violence and wrong-doing have become epidemic.  The killing of Ian Bush and Robert Dziekanski in B.C. by RCMP officers are merely high profile examples.  Examples of needless police violence in Canada are legion.

Rot and corruption have reached into the heart of RCMP administration. Former RCMP Commissioner Juliano Zaccardelli had to resign his position in disgrace over the Maher Arar kidnap and torture affair – in which the RCMP seemed positively anxious to please U.S. Intelligence forces.  Zaccardelli also presided when a still-unclear pension scandal broke at headquarters.

Steps taken to deal with root and branch corruption in the RCMP have been dangerously manipulative in the hands of the Stephen Harper government. It is said to have benefitted in the last federal election by a strange and improper announcement (overseen by Zaccardelli) of a criminal investigation into the alleged leak of information about the taxation plans on Income Trusts.  Zaccardelli is alleged to have inserted minister Ralph Goodale’s name into the RCMP announcement.

To replace Juliano Zaccardelli, the Stephen Harper cabinet reached into the department overseen by Stockwell Day, minister of public safety, for one of his department members, William Elliott. Elliott, I believe, is, quietly, a stooge and servant of the Stephen Harper government.  I will be happy to have that suspicion proved false.

Very recently, the present Chair of CPC, Paul Kennedy (by no means a tough investigator), wanted to interview Zaccardelli and top officers involved in the strange Ralph Goodale/Income Trust affair.  Zaccardelli refused to be interviewed as did top RCMP officers.  Zaccardelli, apparently, is no longer subject to RCMP discipline.  But all the other officers who refused to be interviewed are responsible to William Elliott – who, apparently, permitted their refusal to assist a reasonable investigation.  Was Elliott under orders from Stephen Harper?  From Stockwell Day?  Or was he permitting officers to avoid reasonable examination for some other reason?

In Alberta, in the Kelly Marie Richard dental malpractice case involving a giant insurer and others, the RCMP – in my careful judgement – engaged in highly dubious activity, repeatedly, thus requiring a full, unfettered Public Inquiry.  Others involved include lawyers, professional and government bodies and judges of the
Court of Queen’s Bench, Calgary, underscoring the reach of alleged wrong-doing and the necessary scope of a Public Inquiry.

By persistent activity I was able to have an RCMP investigation (the RCMP investigating the RCMP) undertaken in the matter.  I informed William Elliott, RCMP Commissioner fully about the matter.  I have asked for a reply – and [under orders from Stephen Harper?] Elliott has not so much as acknowledged my communications.

The investigation of the RCMP (Calgary) by itself was a ludicrous farce, to my mind.  Major people named in the Complaint were not even interviewed.  No serious evidence was sought.  Officer’s verbal reports were accepted as truth; information (apparently) gained was not checked with my records or the abundant records of Kelly Marie Richard.  The “investigation” of RCMP and CPC treatment of Kelly Marie Richard was conducted without the slightest reference to me (who lodged the Complaint) or Kelly Marie Richard, principal in the matter.  The only question I was asked when contacted by an “investigating” officer was what my relation is to Kelly Marie Richard.  Nothing else.

All of that has been carefully and fully reported to RCMP Deputy Commissioner for the North West Region, R.R. Knecht, who informed me the “investigation” was going forward.  All copies of my correspondence to him have been copied to RCMP Commissioner William Elliott.  The two men constitute the top RCMP officers possible to be concerned with wrong-doing of RCMP officers in Calgary.  Neither will correspond with me, acknowledge my communications, or deal in any way with the ridiculous and obviously expensively sham “investigation”.

The conclusion is simple, is plain.  If the allegations of wrong-doing by the RCMP in Calgary have substance (and I am convinced that many of them may well have substance), then RCMP Commissioner William Elliott and Deputy Commissioner R.R. Knecht may be criminally implicated in the obstruction of the pursuit of justice in the Kelly Marie Richard matter. 

That possibility opens huge questions.  Who are top RCMP officials working for?  Do they consciously work lawlessly for their “masters”?

Those questions take us to the response by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP which also “investigated” the actions of the Force in the Kelly Marie Richard matter in Calgary. The CPC “reviews” investigations that the RCMP makes of itself.  The CPC always states in its reports that it is “an agency of the federal government, distinct and independent of the RCMP.”  That is, of course, rubbish.  It is a toothless legitimizer of RCMP wrong-doing a good part of the time, whatever else it may think or claim.

I will deal with the response of the CPC at greater length later.  For now I need only say that it dealt with two out of seven of the specific, enumerated parts of the complaint I set out.  It completely ignored all the rest.  In addition, it dropped from its reply the name of an RCMP officer whom – I suggest – was an embarrassment to the investigators and whom they couldn’t try to cover up for.  And so they erased him from existence in their reply.  Finally – but this will be dealt with in the later consideration – the argument made for the legitimacy of what I hold to have been plainly illegitimate conduct is deeply embarrassing and infantile.

To extenuate suspicion of RCMP/Stephen Harper collaboration, the Task Force inquiry into the Governance and Culture of the RCMP was severely limited in scope.  Nonetheless, an apparently honest task force group made strong recommendations (December 2007) and described the RCMP as seriously broken.  Stockwell Day has appointed a new five-person group to “rebuild” the force.  One of the members of the group is Beverly Busson, former RCMP Deputy Commissioner for B.C.  During her administration, RCMP delays, shuffles, incompetent actions – and more – are believed to have taken place in the investigation and the court hearings arising from the BC Rail Scandal. It involves premier Gordon Campbell, members of his cabinet -  and eventuated, late in 2004, in charges of breach of trust and fraud against (variously) David Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi – all former cabinet aides appointed by Orders-in-Council.

One of the burning questions hanging over the years of delay in the case is how much of it is the result of RCMP actions.  Certainly, others causes of delay enter the problem.  But one of the last people who should be included in a group working for the reconstruction of the RCMP, some believe, is Beverly Busson. 

The corrupt alienation of BC Rail from its rightful owners – the people of B.C.  – in 2003 on behalf of a huge U.S. corporation was the step of a willing group in the B.C. Gordon Campbell cabinet - devoted colonials, obviously dedicated to the growth of U.S. private corporate power in Canada.

Those are the kinds of forces the RCMP seems more and more willing to serve.  And so why should the RCMP have acted or be acting in the present matter of BC Rail in any way differently from the way it has been acting in the Kelly Marie Richard case (involving “North American” insurers, information technology interests, and both provincial and federal cabinet officers)?  Is the RCMP delaying, blocking, obstructing the BC Rail Scandal investigations in B.C. in order to keep Gordon Campbell’s colonial sell-out policies in place?  To whom does the U.S. Disney Corporation-related RCMP owe allegiance?  William Elliott, present political appointee as RCMP Commissioner, seems to give evidence that as far as he is concerned the force is not there to serve justice or the law or the needs of the Canadian people. 

Whatever the answers given to questions asked here may be, many will conclude that the “great” RCMP of the past is gone, replaced by a lawless, chaotic, opportunistic force serving what can only be described as private corporate, fascist groups – or, more tenderly stated – “North American interests”.