RCMP -- Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- Can Their Reputation Ever Be Redeemed?

"The overarching approach and response by the RCMP as an institution had many shortcomings. This must be addressed."

"The RCMP must finally undergo fundamental change that previous reports have called for."

Commissioner Leanne Fitch, Mass Casualty Commission, Portapique, N.S. Mass Shooting 

"The RCMP command group wrongly concluded that Portapique community members were mistaken when they reported seeing the perpetrator driving a fully marked RCMP cruiser. They were too quick to embrace an explanation that discounted the clear and consistent information that several eyewitnesses had provided independent of one another."

"Key information conveyed by 911 callers from Portapique was not accurately or fully captured within the RCMP incident activity logs, nor was it fully conveyed to first responders and the RCMP command group."

"The RCMP public communications during the evening of April 18, 2020, seriously understated the threat presented by the perpetrator and the associated risks to the public."

"As commissioners, we believe this lesson [gender-based, intimate-partner and family violence] to be the most important one to be learned from this mass casualty. Let us not look away again."

Report, Mass Casualty Commission

Twenty-two people died on April 18 and 19, 2020. Top row from left: Gina Goulet, Dawn Gulenchyn, Jolene Oliver, Frank Gulenchyn, Sean McLeod, Alanna Jenkins. Second row: John Zahl, Lisa McCully, Joey Webber, Heidi Stevenson, Heather O'Brien and Jamie Blair. Third row from top: Kristen Beaton, Lillian Campbell, Joanne Thomas, Peter Bond, Tom Bagley and Greg Blair. Bottom row: Emily Tuck, Joy Bond, Corrie Ellison and Aaron Tuck. (CBC)

 

Links were drawn by the commissioners in the report, between the mass shootings and the abuse of women by the killer. The first step, according to the report, in preventing mass violence is the recognition of danger in escalation inherent in all forms of violence, including gender-based, intimate-partner and family violence. Such forms of violence is to be declared an "epidemic". In that many mass violence events are initiated with an attack on a specific woman. 

 

The rampage that left 22 people dead around the small community of Portapique, extending to other nearby communities was carried out by a Halifax denturist, Gabriel Wortman, who owned a summer home in Portapique. He was well known to his neighbours and had fractious relationships with them. They knew him as a braggart and a wife-batterer. In the two days that comprised the murderous assault on people known to him, as well as with complete strangers, Gabriel Wortman faced little organized opposition.

The RCMP had failed to respond properly, professionally to the shooting of 22 people, among whom was an RCMP officer. On the afternoon of the second day of a continued mass slaughter, Gabriel Wortman was finally shot by two Mounties at an Enfield, Nova Scotia gas station, a full thirteen hours into his rampage. He had made use of a replica RCMP cruiser and wore the uniform of an RCMP officer. All information relayed by witnesses to the investigating RCMP officers, and all shrugged away.

 

After police shot and killed the gunman at a gas station in Enfield, N.S., they found five firearms in his possession, three handguns and two rifles. He obtained three of them in Houlton, Maine. (Mass Casualty Commission)

 

Considerable confusion  marked the event which began on April 18, 2020 and ended on April 19. Information reported to 911 failed to reach the officers consistently or quickly enough to be useful. Startlingly, though a system existed to alert the population, the RCMP failed to warn the public about the danger of an at-loose murderer. Random killings could have been averted had people been warned to remain indoors and not respond to any strangers or unknown knockers at the doors of their homes.

The commission concluded that the current 26-week training period is insufficiently adequate given the complex demands of policing. The training academy in Regina should, they recommend, be replaced with a three-year, degree-based model of education, similar to what exists in Finland for federal policing. The recommendation was made for the federal government to pass a law whose guiding principle would be "a prevention-first approach to public safety" with police as "collaborative partners".

Increased funding for rural mental health centres and front-line workers who deal with intimate-partner violence, another recommendation. An example was made of the experience of Brenda Forbes, a neighbour in Portapique who reported to the RCMP Wortman's violent abuse toward his common-law wife, Lisa Banfield. Despite that report nothing of any consequence ensued.

On the other hand, there were consequences for Brenda Forbes, with Wortman stalking, harassing and threatening her for years. Which eventually prompted her to leave the province for security to be found elsewhere. All five firearms found in Wortman's possession -- two semi-automatic handguns, a police-style carbine, a semi-automatic rifle and an RCMP-assigned pistol taken from the officer he killed -- were illegally obtained.

There was, as well, reference to the disturbing interactions between Nova Scotia senior RCMP officers and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki who pressured them for the release of information about the types of weapons used in the shooting rampage to be publicly released. The local RCMP officials declined, citing the ongoing investigation. Commissioner Lucki informed them that the Public Safety Minister, Bill Blair urged that the information be made public.

The Nova Scotia RCMP personnel rankled at their impression of political interference in RCMP operational investigations.The commission found commissioner Lucki's comments to represent an error in judgement that constrained the relations between herself and senior provincial RCMP officials.

"Luki's audio recorded remarks about the benefits to police of proposed firearms legislation were ill timed and poorly expressed, but they were not partisan and they do not show that there had been attempted political interference", they commented nonetheless. Commissioner Lucki has since resigned her position. It will be a new commissioner who will doubtless shelve the report. 

 

The RCMP is badly in need of a resolute, intelligent chief operative to move it from its current state of incompetence to one that resurrects the force to a semblance of its former well-earned reputation of excellence in policing.

Friends, family and supporters of the victims of the mass killings in rural Nova Scotia in 2020 react at the beginning of the final report of the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry in Truro, N.S. on March 30, 2023. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)

Israel's Diplomatic Mission to Canada

"The RCMP's Protective Operations [branch] is constantly assessing and adapting its security and protective posture."

"This is done in a manner that is based on current and evolving threat and risk environments."

Royal Canadian Mounted Police, federal policing agency 

"History reveals that antisemitism intensifies at times of social disruption. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen an alarming increase in antisemitic acts. In 2019, Statistics Canada found police-reported hate crimes against Jewish people accounted for the highest number of religion-based hate crime in Canada. Recently, the B’nai Brith Canada 2020 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents reported a record number of antisemitism cases last year, up 18.3% from 2019. In 2020, over 44% of antisemitic violence was COVID-related, including incidents of Jewish people being spat on and assaulted with weapons."

"More severe forms of creed-based prejudice, including antisemitism, have emerged in recent times, often shaped by international events and transmitted through media, especially social media. A pernicious theme repeated this past year was to blame the Jewish community for the pandemic. For example, Bnai Brith reported graffiti on a trail sign in Milton that said: “There is no deadly virus. The Jew owned media lies to you.” Other graffiti in public sites included “Blame the Jews” and “Jews should be ashamed"."

"Ontario has witnessed an unprecedented increase in antisemitic incidents this past year, such as the vandalism of the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa. A Jewish person in Toronto was randomly hit in the face by a man who shouted “f--- Jews.” In North York, a city worker threatened to circumcise a Jewish boy for “a second and a third time.” In the Hamilton area, someone painted a red swastika on the hood of a car parked near a synagogue."

"The media is full of reports of the many ways Jewish communities continue to be the targets of hate. We have seen antisemitism erupting at pro-Palestine events in Toronto and Montreal, hateful banners unfurled in Vaughan and businesses, parks and schools defaced with antisemitic graffiti. We see assaults and other life-threatening behaviour that has no place in Ontario."

"Denouncing and fighting hate and discrimination, especially antisemitism, was why the Ontario Human Rights Code was enacted in the first place. In the early 1960s, the world was still dealing with the shocking aftermath of the Holocaust. Jewish people were barred from entry to Canada, including at times of greatest need fleeing Nazi Germany in WWII. They were routinely denied access to jobs, facilities and services, because of virulent antisemitism. The first Code, in 1962, envisioned a better path forward for Ontario and the majority of the complaints the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) pursued in the 1960s were on behalf of Jewish people."

"Governments and community leaders have consistently spoken out against the hate that continues to erupt in our communities – all because of someone’s beliefs. But history has shown that saying the right things is meaningless, unless the words are tied to action."

OHRC (Ontario Human Rights Commission) statement on the National Summit on Antisemitism

The Israeli flag flies with the Peace Tower in the background as thousands of Israeli supporters gathered on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Sunday, April 21, 2002 to show solidarity with Israel. About two hours later, Palestinian supporters were planning a rally. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)

 Jews are targets on an ever-increasing scale for aggravated persecution in the public sphere in Canada. The rising incidence of antisemitism makes that clear. Verbal harassment, public mischief in the desecration of a monument to the Holocaust, synagogues and Jewish centres being marked with Nazi symbols, and BDS sweeping through academia, from grade school to university campuses. Palestinian groups living in Canada as landed immigrants and/or citizens focus exclusively on demonizing Israel, slandering the Jewish state, and targeting Jewish Canadians with venomous blame and hatred.

Annual al-Quds marches lamenting the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland with the re-establishment of the State of Israel is commemorated by Palestinians in Israel and elsewhere around the world including Canada as a catastrophe for Arabs living in the geography of the Jewish homeland, claiming it for their own. In this venomous atmosphere of libelous slander where Israel is called an Apartheid State despite that 20 percent of the population of the Jewish state is not Jewish, with millions of Arab 'Palestinians' having Israeli citizenship, the right to vote and have representation in the Israeli parliament, hatred booms.

That venomous hatred incited by Canadians of Arab-Palestinian background creates an atmosphere of suspicion, accusation and victimhood that spells danger for Israeli diplomats assigned to Canada. Where it makes sense that the federal government through its department of Foreign Affairs and its federal policing agency would place a special emphasis on security for Israeli diplomatic missions in Canada and their personnel.

As a multicultural society with a population as diverse as the global community, Canada has an obligation to be aware of its responsibilities as a host country of diplomats abroad and within. In 1982 the Turkish ambassador to Canada was assassinated on his way to the Turkish embassy from his home in Ottawa. Ottawa, on a world scale, is considered a 'safe' country for foreign diplomatic assignments. But that depends on circumstances and the temperature of world affairs. Jews increasingly feel unsafe in their home country of Canada despite living there for generations.

And nor does the Israeli embassy in Ottawa staff feel comfortable with the level of security assigned to its personnel. It has attempted for years to persuade the federal government in Canada to increase the level of security assigned to the embassy. Diplomats representing Israel in Canada are wary and prefer to stay out of any news because of the hostility the diplomatic mission knows is directed its way which could readily become a violent attack against its staff. 

When the Israeli head of mission returned to Israel from Canada in 2019, security was relaxed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the RCMP. Following the appointment of the current Israeli ambassador to Canada in 2021, Israeli Embassy officials requested protection be restored at the level it had been provided for his predecessor. Canada's Foreign Affairs and the RCMP both rebuffed the formal diplomatic request. 

This, despite the embassy making media postings available to the RCMP; of activists engaged in opposing Israeli policies viz a viz Palestinians. Where floor maps of the embassy's location in an office building are published along with photographs of the building hallway leading to the embassy offices. In a recent voice mail, an unidentified voice warns: "We will kill you wherever you are; we will get you".

What is Article 22 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations?

The person of a diplomatic agent shall be inviolable. He shall not be liable to any form of arrest or detention. The receiving State shall treat him with due respect and shall take all appropriate steps to prevent any attack on his person, freedom or dignity.

Protesters carrying a large sign that reads 'Justice for Palestine' marched dpwn Elgin Street in downtown Ottawa August 2022. (Uday Rana/CBC )