The greasy nexus between policing and politics
Acurious bit of good news erupted on Thursday out of Nova Scotia: A recording of a very controversial telephone call involving RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and Chief Supt. Darren Campbell, thought to have been deleted and lost forever among the subatomic interstices, suddenly turned up.
What a curious thing. Isn't it amazing what they can do with computers nowadays?
Testifying earlier this year at the Mass Casualty Commission into the April 2020 massacre of 22 Nova Scotians by a deranged denturist, Campbell dropped jaws when he said Lucki had pressured the Nova Scotia Mounties to release information about the killer's weapons, over their objections it might compromise the investigation. Lucki's sense of urgency, Campbell had testified, was because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then public safety minister Bill Blair thought that information would bolster their gun-control agenda, and she had promised to help them with that. Lucki, and the politicians in questions, all denied there was any such pressure.
We only had Campbell's notes and recollection to go by. Now we have the audio. But not everyone hears quite the same thing.
One take is that there's no smoking gun. The portions of the conversation now officially on the record do not precisely corroborate what Campbell told the Mass Casualty Commission in August. There was no mention specifically in the recordings of a “promise” that Lucki had made to politicians. Nor does anyone use the word “pressure,” which former Nova Scotia RCMP communications director Lia Scanlan said Lucki had used to describe Blair's influence.
Another much more obvious take is that in every way that matters, the tape does corroborate Campbell's story. “It was a request that I got from the minister's (Blair's) office,” Lucki says on the tape. “And I shared with the minister that in fact it (the weapons information) was going to (be) in the news release and it wasn't.”
“I was very frustrated, very disappointed,” she added. “I have apologized to the minister. I'm waiting for the prime minister to call me so I can apologize.”
To be fair, it's not 100-percent clear whether she is apologizing to them specifically for the failure to publicize the shooter's weapons. But this much is unambiguous: Lucki told her subordinates that Ottawa had requested the weapons information be made public; Campbell and others in Nova Scotia felt that would be inappropriate; and Lucki was most displeased about it. Politicians aside, she essentially suggested they were letting down the side: “That (gun control) legislation is supposed to actually help police,” she admonished them.
This is not how policing is supposed to work. Or legislating. It's revolting to think Liberal politicians would see 22 corpses as an advertising opportunity, particularly when their gun-control legislation is so incoherent and feelings-based. It's alarming to think the RCMP would do their bidding — and more alarming to think what other similar arrangements exist. There likely wasn't any real harm in releasing the weapons information, after all. Secrecy is simply the default setting in Canada, for government and police alike (which is a scandal of its own). So it's all the more insulting that this rare exception that Blair and Trudeau sought to impose on the RCMP was allegedly to further their own political interests.
This uncommon glimpse into the greasy nexus between politics and policing comes at a time when two Canadian cities have marked unfortunate milestones: Ottawa's and Vancouver's police associations inserted themselves directly into their city's politics.
Vancouver's police union endorsed the eventual winner, Ken Sim, whose platform involved hiring 100 more officers. Ottawa's merely heaped scorn on candidate Catherine Mckenney, who as a city councillor has been very critical of the police's performance, especially during the convoy debacle. The union accused Mckenney of having an “extensive history of using harmful and misleading rhetoric against police officers.”
The timing is bad. Ottawa is still coming to grips with the astonishing failure of its police force (among others) to deal with the Freedom Convoy in any reasonable fashion at any reasonable speed; further embarrassing details are emerging every day at the federal Emergencies Act inquiry. Vancouver, meanwhile, is suffering at the very least a serious perceived breakdown in law and order.
Timing aside, however, the undesirability of this ought to be obvious. Your MP or MLA should take your call and help you out no matter who you voted for. But it's absolutely essential that police do, and that people believe they will. We are already a long way from that reality, especially in certain communities. This can only take us further.
The devil's advocate in me almost wants to suggest it might be better to get this all out in the open. It's no secret that police brass support more gun control. Of course police unions will support candidates who want to hire more officers. We all know that when the prime minister or public safety minister calls up the RCMP commissioner in the middle of a red-hot crisis, their queries, concerns and requests for reconsideration are really orders. And we all know each such interaction will involve a quid pro quo somewhere down the line.
Would police reform be easier if we made it purely partisan? Vote NDP and we'll disarm or maybe even defund the police. Vote Conservative and we'll buy them tanks.
No, it wouldn't be. The devil's advocate in me is being an idiot. Lucki's phone call is just another data point in the case for wholesale, top-to-bottom police reform — with as little politics as possible involved.