I agree that the RCMP has become a bit of a mixed bag, and that's one of the problems it faces--besides a corrupted corporate culture, bad training, unaccountability...well, don't get me started.
There is still a need for a national police force, which should, in my opinion, be rebuilt from the ground up, and have a much narrower mandate, as suggested here. It might be able to take on more than one of the responsibilities listed.
With respect to the territories, it would be nice to see local people trained for the job. In Nunavut, fluent Inuktitut/Inuinnaqtun should be a basic requirement.
Good post. There seems to be a lot of convergence on this one.
I'll add in that I think we ought to dismantle the thing too. I'd say that your 5 areas of responsibility are about what I'd agree on with the exception of (4). We lack harmonized securities rules so that may be best suited to the province until we get the national securities and exchange body that everyone keeps on about.
Posted at 2007-11-29 17:25:36 [PermaLink]Things I omitted that perhaps should also have a separate federal agency:
National forensic lab; DNA, fingerprint data base; hand gun registry; and matters of that sort (profiling centre?). The Criminal Intelligence Service Canada would be under the organized crime/national security service.
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We already have FINTRAC as a distinct agency, for what it's worth:
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And maritime policing would fall under 2), the CBSA, with the Canadian Coast Guard providing the "platforms" (i.e. vessels).
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Mark
Ottawa
Regional policing is a huge open sore, out here in the Lower Mainland ( commonly referred to as Lotusland for a very good reason.)
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Sounds reasonable Mark but I'm a bit concerned about the policing of the territories and for that matter, the tops of the provinces.
The coming years will be warmer and this will likely lead to boom and bust towns in the North as the resources become accessible. A patchwork system of independent police departments would be hamstrung by jurisdictional red tape and having to go through inter-force bureaucracies to get access to advanced (expensive) policing tools. Without the promise of advancement into something more than a municipal force, the bottom of the barrel will be worn through. Growth and contraction costs would also be a continuous drain on already tight budgets.
As bad as the RCMP already suffer from these inevitable maladies of their "market" up north, at least they've got gas in their cars and bullets in their guns.
But I will grant that they seem to suck at a lot of things that they're supposed to be doing.
I think there needs to be one more item on the list though:
A federally coordinated law enforcement networked information management system. It has to be secure and even more importantly, open. The police should at least catch up to the 16 year olds in communications technology.
Dara: IT would, in my mind, go with the labs etc.
Mark
Ottawa
Mark,
For what I envision that we need (and can achieve), law enforcement agency control over it is a non-starter.
If law enforcement is anything more than a client of a neutral system, the Orwellian aspects would be unacceptable to the public. This has to be civilian and seperate from any agency with a direct interest in the system's contents.
Also, I have no confidence that existing agencies could contribute anything useful other than a shopping list of requirements. Implementation from within would create security loopholes and inefficient hierarchies. For it to work, the access data must be as carefully kept as the data the system would hold.
"The rest of the province" is about half of it, population-wise: the RNC and RCMP each have about 50% of the NL population in their geographical beats.
Posted at 2007-11-30 22:32:54 [PermaLink]