The fading red serge

I'm afraid I have to agree with this (from a conservative Calgary professor):

...Compared to the federal police in Iraq or Colombia, the RCMP look pretty good.

Unfortunately, the only thing the RCMP of today have in common with the RCMP of old is the red serge uniform. Once, they were the best trained cops in the country. Once, they were incorruptible. Once, their commercial crime unit was feared by fraudsters. Once, they were non-political. Once, they were good at federal law enforcement.

But then something happened. Canadians have known for several years that senior management at A Division in Ottawa has been acting like backside-covering bureaucrats. The auditor general caught them breaking the law.

More politely, they failed to comply with provisions of the Financial Administration Act. Testimony before the Gomery Commission showed then RCMP boss, Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, to be evasive in his answers and his immediate subordinates to be highly economical with the truth. Zaccardelli's inconsistencies eventually got him fired.

The disarray at the bottom can be measured as much by the deaths of young Mounties as a result of faulty procedures and inadequate training as by the fate of Robert Dziekanski, the Polish visitor who was tasered and died in Vancouver airport, or Robert Knipstrom, who died in custody in Chilliwack, B.C.

These disasters are the final fruit of a management policy initiated a decade and a half ago that promoted "business efficiency" in police service delivery at the cost of effective policing and federal law enforcement.

[...]

Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a Fellow of the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.

What ruin all the "management" rot has wrought--and in the federal public service generally. Thank goodness Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Hillier seems to have taken a different course for the Canadian Forces.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at November 28, 2007 08:33 PM