Deafening silence on RCMP scandal
If there's any consensus in Ottawa, it's that the still unexplained RCMP income trust intervention was the turning point in a 2006 election that sent Liberals packing and brought Conservatives to power.
By: James Travers Published on Thu Apr 03 2008
Ottawa- I f there's any consensus here, it's that the still unexplained RCMP income trust intervention was the turning point in a 2006 election that sent Liberals packing and brought Conservatives to power. So why is there near silence about one scandal that changed everything and so much noise about another, the Chuck Cadman affair, that changed nothing?
It's a question that touches democracy's sustaining legitimacy and needs to be answered before voters again exercise the sovereign right to choose who leads them through what increasingly looks like a rough patch. Sadly, fear of political embarrassment and the search for partisan advantage are stifling curiosity and the need to know.
As David Herle wisely argued this week, every political party as well as every citizen shares an interest in exposing Giuliano Zaccardelli's shadowy actions to full daylight. Paul Martin's campaign co-chair put it this way: If the federal force can defeat one government, it can defeat them all.
The problem is the parties also have reasons to perpetuate ignorance. In effect, if not necessarily by intent, they are holding broad national concerns hostage to their narrow worries. Instead of obsessing over what or wasn't offered for Cadman's vote, they should be demanding that the defrocked commissioner fully explain his motivation for ensuring an RCMP criminal investigation became public in the heat of the winter campaign.
Zaccardelli's revealing refusal to co-operate with this week's public complaints report can't be left unchallenged. By not clarifying what happened and why, Zaccardelli is further eroding public trust in a crumbling icon while fuelling speculation that the force was settling old Liberal scores while making like-minded Conservatives come-from-behind winners.
Even by Ottawa standards, those theories are unusually toxic. They suggest Liberals, Conservatives and NDP prefer not to draw public attention to abuses more typical of Third World dictatorships than First World democracies.
Here's what's germinating in the space left by Zaccardelli's missing evidence. Liberals who lost the most are so fearful of picking scabs off old internal wounds that they prefer not to revisit events that can't be reversed. Conservatives who won the most don't want to raise the spectre of a victory that might not have been quite fair or square. And the left-tilting NDP wants to forget its role in bringing to power the most ideologically right-leaning party in our history.
Two threads bind those theories. One is that Zaccardelli, a Jean Chrétien appointment, seized the moment to skewer Martin for ordering inquiries into the Quebec sponsorship scheme and the Maher Arar affair that his Liberal predecessor resisted and badly damaged the RCMP. The other, strengthened by Stephen Harper's post-election visit to RCMP headquarters and budget generosity, holds that the force did what it could to elect a law-and-order government.
No self-respecting democracy can leave those hypotheses untested. If either is even partly true, Canada faces the threat of a politicized police force and the challenge of reforming a vital institution rotting from the top.
Urgency is added by a rapidly approaching election and by the risky Conservative decision to appoint a bureaucrat with old Tory ties to lead the RCMP. Canadians need quick and convincing proof the federal police force isn't so partisan that it can't be trusted to stay out of federal elections.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2008/04/03/deafening_silence_on_rcmp_scandal.html
It's a question that touches democracy's sustaining legitimacy and needs to be answered before voters again exercise the sovereign right to choose who leads them through what increasingly looks like a rough patch. Sadly, fear of political embarrassment and the search for partisan advantage are stifling curiosity and the need to know.
As David Herle wisely argued this week, every political party as well as every citizen shares an interest in exposing Giuliano Zaccardelli's shadowy actions to full daylight. Paul Martin's campaign co-chair put it this way: If the federal force can defeat one government, it can defeat them all.
The problem is the parties also have reasons to perpetuate ignorance. In effect, if not necessarily by intent, they are holding broad national concerns hostage to their narrow worries. Instead of obsessing over what or wasn't offered for Cadman's vote, they should be demanding that the defrocked commissioner fully explain his motivation for ensuring an RCMP criminal investigation became public in the heat of the winter campaign.
Zaccardelli's revealing refusal to co-operate with this week's public complaints report can't be left unchallenged. By not clarifying what happened and why, Zaccardelli is further eroding public trust in a crumbling icon while fuelling speculation that the force was settling old Liberal scores while making like-minded Conservatives come-from-behind winners.
Even by Ottawa standards, those theories are unusually toxic. They suggest Liberals, Conservatives and NDP prefer not to draw public attention to abuses more typical of Third World dictatorships than First World democracies.
Here's what's germinating in the space left by Zaccardelli's missing evidence. Liberals who lost the most are so fearful of picking scabs off old internal wounds that they prefer not to revisit events that can't be reversed. Conservatives who won the most don't want to raise the spectre of a victory that might not have been quite fair or square. And the left-tilting NDP wants to forget its role in bringing to power the most ideologically right-leaning party in our history.
Two threads bind those theories. One is that Zaccardelli, a Jean Chrétien appointment, seized the moment to skewer Martin for ordering inquiries into the Quebec sponsorship scheme and the Maher Arar affair that his Liberal predecessor resisted and badly damaged the RCMP. The other, strengthened by Stephen Harper's post-election visit to RCMP headquarters and budget generosity, holds that the force did what it could to elect a law-and-order government.
No self-respecting democracy can leave those hypotheses untested. If either is even partly true, Canada faces the threat of a politicized police force and the challenge of reforming a vital institution rotting from the top.
Urgency is added by a rapidly approaching election and by the risky Conservative decision to appoint a bureaucrat with old Tory ties to lead the RCMP. Canadians need quick and convincing proof the federal police force isn't so partisan that it can't be trusted to stay out of federal elections.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/2008/04/03/deafening_silence_on_rcmp_scandal.html
