"Ottawa and Victoria have resolved financial disputes that prompted the federal government to threaten to withdraw the RCMP from its role [of] policing the province, but have yet to resolve issues around management."
Ian Bailey and Daniel LeBlanc, Globe and Mail, Nov. 3
BY the time you read this, we should know whether B.C. SolicitorGeneral Shirley Bond met the federal deadline for a decision on renewal of the RCMP contract with British Columbia.
If she did not, and if the Harper government makes good on its threat to withdraw the force when the current contract expires on Mar. 31, 2012, what is the "Plan B" Premier Christy Clark has in her back pocket?
Although the contract has been under negotiation since 2007, details have been kept from British Columbians - including those of the apparently resolved dispute over the cost implications of a new contract.
What we do know is that the RCMP in this province is in trouble. From the compromised investigation into the shooting of Ian Bush while in custody to the shooting deaths of Kevin St. Arnaud and Donald Dwayne Lewis, from the mishandled Pickton investigation into missing and murdered women - a case that is the subject of the ongoing Oppal inquiry - to the tasering death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver Airport, too many members of E-Division are under a cloud.
Just as we thought we'd heard the worst of it, RCMP Cpl. Catherine Galliford went live with allegations of sexual and other harassments within the ranks.
The good news for us is that Galliford told me she enjoyed the time she spent with the North Vancouver detachment from 1992 to 1997.
Not so for a female civilian employee who, as Jane Seyd reported in the North Shore News on Nov. 18, alleged at an RCMP Code of Conduct hearing that North Vancouver "Staff Sgt. Travis Pearson had forced her into a sexual relationship, stalked her and implied she would be harmed if she broke off her affair with him."
To those who ask why it has taken more than 10 years for these allegations to surface, Galliford said, "There is a code of silence at work. People who speak up become known as a problem. It affects their careers, their families and their relationships, so they put up with the abuse or move. Or, if they're like me, they break."
Break she did in 2007.
After enduring years of harassments, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and remains on leave to this day.
As a member of the missing women's task force, Galliford is scheduled to testify at the Pickton inquiry in early 2012 but she emphasizes the diagnosis had nothing to do with her work - not on the street, not on the Air India file and not on the Pickton case.
"What I want to do now," she said, "is use my knowledge and experience to help the families of the missing women; to let them know I support them; and then to get through my lawsuit and move on."
What an end to a fine career.
Approached for his opinion on the imminent RCMP contract, District of North Vancouver Coun. Doug MacKay-Dunn confirmed his long-held opinion that, "If the RCMP will not subordinate itself to the community it serves, then, yes! I favour a provincial police force."
A day later, police psychologist Dr. Mike Webster, who until his contract was cancelled after he testified at the Braidwood Inquiry had worked with the RCMP since 1988, was even more outspoken:
"The organization has been plagued with failed management for decades," he wrote.
He suggested that it was time for something different, "perhaps a board of eminent and qualified Canadians to come in and clean house.
Until that happens, if British Columbia signs that contract, [we] would be buying a pig in a poke."
Then, echoing two words from lawyer David Brown's 2007 review of the RCMP pension scandal commissioned by the Harper government, Webster asked, "Would your readers buy a 'horribly broken' vehicle for full price?"
No matter the decisions at the code of conduct hearing, the Oppal inquiry and in Galliford's lawsuit, demands that the RCMP be made directly accountable to the communities they serve are justified.
So while our solicitorgeneral and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews play poker to see who blinks first, we are left waiting to find out what the politicians plan to bind us to until 2032.
Although references have always been to "the contract," what that really means is a three-part agreement:
- the umbrella police services agreement between each province and the federal government;
-the sub-agreements which allow provinces to contract services to municipalities; and,
- the municipal-provincial agreements which allow communities with populations greater than 5,000 to receive RCMP services through that provincial sub-contract.
Municipalities are in limbo until they know what policing costs they will face in the 2012/2013 fiscal year.
Bond has requested a twoyear extension to the existing contract to allow for seamless police services until a new deal can be finalized - or not.
But whether or not the federal government accedes to that request, there is much more about RCMP services to be answered than the issues of costs and management.
This is a 20-year contract. British Columbians are entitled to the numbers and a choice: Plan A for the RCMP or Plan B for a provincial police force.
