Keeping Police And Army At Arm's Length Is What Separates Democracies From Banan

Here's the problem: The Conservative party that benefited most from the peculiar RCMP action is now inexplicably protecting the commissioner's job. By any reasonable measure, Zaccardelli should have resigned — or been fired — in September when Justice Dennis O'Connor released his devastating report into the Maher Arar affair. On Zaccardelli's watch, the fabled, sometimes infamous, horsemen fingered an innocent Canadian to U.S. officials and then concealed the blunder from their political masters. Arar paid for the mistake with a year in a Syrian prison. Zaccardelli finally apologized but nearly two months after O'Connor's revelations is still on the job. Two questions leap to mind. One is just what is a federal firing offence; the other is why is Stephen Harper balking at the public service accountability he promised and seems so clearly in Conservative interest? Answer one is that responsibility in Ottawa is a theory, not a practice. Resigning on principle is no longer in the ministerial or mandarin repertoire and, by tolerating RCMP failures far beyond Arar, this Prime Minister is extending that easy-going doctrine to the federal police. http://tinyurl.com/yyey2t

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