Poilievre's Descpicable Attack

On Thursday, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said that the “leadership of the RCMP is frankly just despicable when it comes to enforcing laws against the Liberal government.” Coming just weeks after the indictment of former FBI director James Comey south of the border, this should be ringing alarm bells across our country.

Poilievre has modelled his leadership off of Donald Trump for years, and he is playing the long game, setting up narratives for when he figures he will eventually win. If he can hang on, he knows the Canadian people will eventually tire of the Liberals enough to give him a shot, and, when that happens, he has every intention of consolidating power just as his American idol is doing.

Could It Happen Here?

Accusing the RCMP, or any other government agency, of political bias is a deliberate part of laying the groundwork for that consolidation, however far into the future it is. If he successfully paints RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme as a Liberal hack, then it becomes easy — obvious even — for Poilievre to fire him on the day he takes office, to install a loyalist in his place willing to enforce the laws as he sees them.

Poilievre does have a point, though. In theory, the RCMP could be a partisan tool of the government, and the only reason it is not is because both the current government and the RCMP fundamentally believe in the rule of law, and behaving in that manner would be illegal.

RCMP Commissioner Michael Duheme is a 35-year veteran of the force, a committed officer and public servant. Ten years ago, he was the first Superintendent of the Parliamentary Protective Service after its consolidation following the October 22nd, 2014 shooting death of Corporal Nathan Cirillo at the war memorial and subsequent shoot-out in the Hall of Honour in Parliament.

That event had laid bare the dysfunctional collection of independent security agencies involved in protecting Parliament. The House of Commons and Senate each had their own security service inside the buildings under the direction of the Sergeant-at-Arms (Commons) and Usher of the Black Rod (Senate) while the RCMP patrolled the grounds outside. They had poor inter-agency communication and strict jurisdictional rules to the point that when the Prime Minister arrived at Parliament, his RCMP security detail would hand him off to the House of Commons plain-clothes division at the door, with neither allowed to operate on the other’s territory. The indoor services were also, except for the plain-clothes division, unarmed until the 2014 shooting, during which House of Commons security constable Samearn Son was shot at the door wrestling for the shooter’s gun, buying time for the RCMP to enter the building in hot pursuit.

The purpose of all those separate agencies was specifically to maintain the independence of Parliament. Having the federal police force, the RCMP, control Parliamentary security was an existential — if entirely theoretical — threat to our democracy. It was imperative to have every branch of Parliament secure themselves, to ensure the supremacy of Parliament over that of the government.

In 2015, when the agencies were consolidated, it brought the newly-formed Parliamentary Protective Service (PPS) under the leadership of a Director. For expedience — the RCMP was already present, and on the surface it was obvious to use them — the law stated that the director of PPS had to be a uniformed member of the RCMP. Under the RCMP’s own enabling legislation, that meant that the Director of PPS had to report to the Commissioner of the RCMP, who in turn reports to the government through Cabinet rather than to Parliament through the Speaker.

This raised significant concerns that a future government could order the RCMP Commissioner to order the PPS Director to order the security officers on Parliament Hill to interfere with parliamentarians in the performance of their duties, to violate their privilege with no immediate recourse. Having the people with guns on the Hill be under the control of the government, rather than under Parliament, is a direct threat to our democracy. Michael Duheme, during his short tenure as the first Director of PPS, was keenly aware of this concern.

Parliamentary Privilege and Security

I have been frustrated for years that the government has not fixed the Parliament of Canada Act to eliminate the requirement that the director be a member of the RCMP. I proposed Bill C-445 in 2019 to add the word “not” to the act, so that the director could not be a member of the RCMP for these very reasons. Unfortunately, this existential threat to the independence of Parliament remains, and is now at risk of being exploited.

While I have never doubted the integrity of the directors of PPS or the Commissioner of the RCMP, the door is open to the very interference many MPs from that era warned about. The RCMP and cabinet today operate independently because both respect the other’s role and the steep legal and constitutional traditions that protect their independence. We have seen from the US this year that, should a government cease to believe in the rule of law, such ethical limitations will not survive.

If Pierre Poilievre is allowed to set up a narrative that the professional and independent RCMP is a partisan Liberal (or Conservative) organisation, and use that narrative to replace the Commissioner with a Poilievre loyalist, the very structure of Parliament would give him direct and immediate physical control over our country’s two national legislative chambers, as well as direct control over the national police force with all that implies.

While the director of PPS must be a uniformed member of the RCMP, there is no such requirement for the role of Commissioner. A future Prime Minister Poilievre could just as easily appoint, say, his mentor Ezra Levant to the role, emulating the Fox News host appointments to Trump’s cabinet.

Attacking the independence of the RCMP is not simply a matter of scoring political points against the Liberal government. It is vastly more sinister and speaks to Pierre Poilievre’s Trumpian agenda for Canada.

This is not something we can just accept as regular political discourse. It is a warning for the future health of our democracy under this wannabe-autocrat — and one that the government has been negligent in protecting against for the past ten years.