Sun, June 5, 2005
Canada's puppet police force
Don't ask Mounties to get their man if he is connected to the
Liberal party
By Licia Corbella -- Calgary Sun
Back in 1998, I wrote how I didn't trust the RCMP as a corporation
anymore when it came to investigating anything to do with the
federal Liberals.
I wrote the same thing again in 2001 and 2002, each time listing a
whole new host of reasons why.
The sponsorship scandal served to tie a pretty ribbon around this
statement. After all, the RCMP is now given the task of
investigating its own
corruption and that of its politically corrupt benefactors.
Clearly, such an arrangement is an enormous conflict of interest.
It's important to state that individual RCMP officers still
deserve
and receive my respect -- and that of most Canadians.
But consider what a friend said to me a couple of days ago.
We were discussing the Gurmant Grewal affair.
I said something like: "If it's true Grewal was approached by the
Liberals to defect prior to the non-confidence vote in the House
for
a plum political position, instead of just taping his calls and
meetings with the Liberals, he should have got the RCMP to do it,
then the veracity of his claims would not be questioned."
My friend's response: "The RCMP would have just tipped off the
Liberals as to what was happening. The RCMP is a Liberal puppet."
Example after example appears to prove him right.
What's more, how diligently can we expect the RCMP to investigate
AdScam when it's known the RCMP helped launder money for the
federal
Liberals to help Liberal-friendly advertising companies in Quebec,
who then funneled the money back into Liberal party coffers?
Federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser unveiled in April 2004 the
feds pumped $1.3 million of the $3 million earmarked for the
Mounties' 125th anniversary celebration into the coffers of
Liberal-friendly ad firms.
In turn, the RCMP deposited its $1.7-million share of the
sponsorships in a separate non-government bank account that was
discovered by Fraser's probe.
"We were unable to verify the transactions from the Quebec bank
account, because some of the supporting documents had been
destroyed," the AG report said.
Fraser concluded Crown corporations like the RCMP were used to
quietly pour money into the coffers of ad agencies and we've since
learned through the inquiry into AdScam, led by Justice John
Gomery,
that those ad agencies kicked back money to the Liberals by
putting
Liberal party workers on their payrolls, handing over envelopes
filled with tens of thousands of dollars of cash and making
"legitimate" donations with taxpayer dollars.
But the RCMP's decline of esteem in the eyes of the Canadian public
has been going on throughout the entire 12 years of Liberal rule,
long before Fraser's explosive report or Gomery's inquiry.
For 12 years, the RCMP has increasingly flouted the laws of this
country and has become the PMO's own private goon squad.
Most of us would be right to assume the Mounties have a mandate to
uphold the laws of this country -- not trample them underfoot at
the
whim of the PM.
However, the investigation into the 1997 APEC summit debacle in
which the RCMP abused peaceful Canadian protesters, found the
Mounties discarded the rule of law and embraced orders sent from
Chretien's office to protect now-deposed Indonesian despot Suharto
-- not just from security risks, but from any embarrassment.
Then, in the summer of 1998, the RCMP started building a second road
into Chretien's summer cottage in Lac-de-Piles, Que., without
obtaining the necessary permits from the municipality.
Even though the misappropriation or stealing of federal money
through the feds and Quebec advertising firms was first revealed
in
1999, the RCMP did nothing for three years until Fraser asked them
to criminally investigate in 2002.
Then, what did the Mounties do?
Instead of using surprise -- though by then you can be sure the
players in the scandal had already shredded and destroyed much of
the damning evidence -- the RCMP didn't get a search warrant first
and then seize all they could.
No, they put out a press release announcing they would look into the
$1.6 million in federal contracts awarded to Groupaction Marketing
Inc. for writing three virtually identical reports (one of which
doesn't even exist) that contained information readily available
on
the federal government website.
That trial begins this month.
Then there's their investigation into Chretien's Shawinigate scandal
-- or, rather, the lack of one.
Documents related to the scandal that implicated Chretien were
dismissed by the RCMP, who stated they "couldn't prove the
documents
weren't forgeries"!
Is it any wonder there's never any real accountability in this
country?
Then, as if to prove their bias, the Mounties raided the home and
cottage of Francois Beaudoin, the former BDC president who was
fired
after saying "no" to Chretien and blowing the whistle on the
Grand-Mere loan fiasco.
Beaudoin's reputation was restored in a 2003 court case where Quebec
Judge Andre Denis lambasted Jean Carle, Chretien's former director
of operations who was appointed by Chretien as the bank's senior
vice-president of public affairs and Michel Vennat, whom Chretien
appointed as the BDC's chairman.
Judge Denis described the testimony of the two men as unreliable and
their actions against Beaudoin as "an unspeakable injustice"
designed to "break him and ruin his career." So, the RCMP
investigated Beaudoin, but why not Chretien, Carle and Vennat?
Canadians no longer have much confidence in
the Mounties getting
their man -- especially if that man has anything to do with the
Liberal party.
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