Toronto Star: Zaccardelli's silence a puzzle to Liberals

[tuvor]

RCMP chief is uncharacteristically quiet on Arar. Is this another gag order by Tories?

OTTAWA—The continuing silence of RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, who has been mute since a damning report last week on the extradition and torture of Maher Arar, is raising concerns about whether there's political interference in the national police force.

Anne McLellan, the former minister in charge of the RCMP, said she is surprised and disappointed that Zaccardelli hasn't made any public statements and says she can't imagine that he's chosen to muzzle himself.

"I think Canadians want to hear from the commissioner of the police. They want to hear from this institution that they actually believe in and want to believe in," McLellan, now a private citizen, said in an interview yesterday.

(snip)

...even his friends are puzzled about the silence, saying it goes against all Zaccardelli's convictions about being a vocal advocate for the RCMP.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1159048209043&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

[Spazito]

1. There is no IF question regarding political interference re the RCMP, imo

It was clear that the RCMP was playing the political game when they publicly announced the "investigation" of the Liberal finance minister during the last election yet have said nothing since about it.

I'm not puzzled at all, I am, however, outraged.

[MrPrax]

2. Lots of political inteference lately...

I would love to know who set this 'protest' off and whether we will get a real investigation...union or no union...heads should roll...

B.C. border guards to return after safety threat

The backlog at four B.C. border crossings has been cleared after about 60 border officers walked off the job on Sunday.

Motorists were left with massive lineups yesterday when the unarmed guards left their posts south of Vancouver and in the Fraser Valley in response to a security scare.

...

The situation on Sunday started in the afternoon when U.S. Homeland Security officials told the RCMP that a suspected killer from California, who should be considered armed and dangerous, might try to cross the Canadian border.

They thought he was heading northward towards Anacortes, Wa. on a motorcycle -- located about 60 kilometres due south of the border, but sharing a ferry route with Sidney, B.C. -- where a motorcycle rally was taking place. Many Canadians attended the Oyster Run, as it's called.

The RCMP informed the border guards, who walked off first at Huntington at 2:15 p.m., then the other three crossings.

CTV

So why didn't the RCMP provide their usual backup as is procedure? It was last year? Moreover, simply giving them guns wouldn't change this procedure anyway. The RCMP would still be informed and dispatched. :shrug:

This may seem mean, but this wasn't a labour action, but a political action in my opinion. Moreover, if we are to accept the big bad threat of terrorism like our current government seems think is an overrriding concern (for everything), then this should weigh in on any punishment handed out to these 'workers'.

Dollars to donuts, the Tories don't see the abandoning of our border during a 'war' as being all that important and will defend it as a 'labour action' (hehe) instead of denouncing it as more interference of a largely 'liberal bias' bureacracy like they have been doing with everyone from the environment ministry all the way to the press gallery.

This was pretty outrageous if you think about it -- the information was originally present by Homeland Security...if simply some report can shut down this country's border economically for 6 hours, then there is a major major problem of this 'fear' tactic being deployed at the American leisure, while we have a traitor government gaming it for domestic political purposes...

Who runs our borders? Us or them?

[Spazito]

3. Good point re political move on the part of the border guards

It is interesting that, prior to the terra, terra, terra, the guards never walked off the job when informed that an armed and dangerous suspect may try to cross the border into Canada. Now, all of a sudden, they need guns or they will walk? Garbage!

[daleo]

5. I wonder if that isn't a stink bomb that will yet go off in Harper's face?

I am still pretty outraged by that myself.

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Deep, Embedded Corruption in the RCMP

Maher Arar, "Four Nuns on Yonge Street", and Deep, Embedded Corruption in the RCMP
Contributed by: Robin Mathews

SNIP

One. Some top levels of the RCMP are corrupt. RCMP police-on-the-street are often honest, admirable, responsible men and women. But not all. The corruption at top levels is slowly infecting the quality of police officers at the lower levels (infecting quality in all police forces, for oversight of police activity in Canada is generally close to a sham). Canadians have been so “smoked” on the honesty of the police forces they think one police force investigating another is not farce but serious business.

SNIP

Two. The RCMP has become a “Palace Army”. That means it has become a tool of the government, above the law, unexaminable from day to day, and – at some top levels – corrupt. Its corruption, so far, does not involve drug running and such things (as far as we can tell). It involves gathering of power to itself, serving government illegally, and working with reactionary political forces across North America. (Could that be why Stephen Harper has promised the force an additional one thousand officers?)

Three. That condition creates a situation in which the government overlooks what are, in fact, crimes committed by the RCMP in a trade-off that requires the RCMP to answer government demands upon it, however illegal. (The APEC RCMP criminality is an example, as is, probably, police action at the Quebec Summit of the Americas. RCMP and Army assault on Natives at Gustafsen Lake,B.C. was certainly of that kind.)

SNIP

Four. As the Maher Arar evidence reveals the RCMP considers itself a North American force, an adjunct to U.S. police, security, and investigative operations. It works, in effect, against Canadian interests to further U.S. interests in Canada. Stephen Harper does so as well. As a result the future does not look bright for a clean, honest, upright RCMP serving the Canadian people.

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20060921141524638