Who will save the RCMP?

The Mounties are quickly losing credibility as wave after wave of scandals have hit every level of the force.

There’s very little good news coming out of the offices of the RCMP these days. Scandal after scandal have hit the force, ranging from bizarre sexual exploits at the local level to disarray and disobedience at the top ranks of the force. It wouldn’t be unfair to say the Mounties are in crisis.

Much criticism has been leveled at Commissioner William Elliot after several officers broke ranks to complain about him to the Prime Minister’s Office. A workplace assessment was ordered, but according to the National Post’s Licia Corbella, “the process in which the workplace assessment was held was so flawed it can only be described, at best, as incompetent … and at worst, vindictive.” She notes that the assessment team heard complaints about Elliot in a glass-walled conference room on the same floor as Elliot’s office, exposing whistleblowers to possible retribution. Elliot was hired to clean up the force after years of disastrous leadership, but he’s “a cure much worse than the disease.”

Writing for the Ottawa Citizen, Colin Kenny says “one of Canada's most important institutions … is unravelling, and nobody seems to care.” He argues that the government has the power to stop the RCMP’s decay by reorganizing the command structure and injecting more funds into the cash-strapped force. Instead the Conservatives have just announced a multi-billion dollar plan to build jails, despite the fact that “anyone acquainted with the penal system knows that it is far cheaper and more effective to invest in prevention (such as more cops on the beat) than in prisons.”

Public confidence in the RCMP is so low that in Alberta, which has used the Mounties as its provincial police since 1932, commentators like Brian Purdy are urging the government not to renew the force’s contract. “(T)he RCMP has changed, for the worse,” Purdy writes in the Calgary Chronicle Herald. “At the headquarters level there hasn't been a good report in years. Various inquiries have found incompetence, poor training, poor discipline, poor co-ordination and communication, and outright dishonesty” and it’s time Alberta had a trustworthy police force.