Just announced a independent investigation into the RCMP pension/insurance allegations, to report back in 8 – 12 weeks, with additional powers granted if required.
Let’s hope it signals a pull back from that peculiar fondness of Canadian politicians for
interminable legal community “make work programs” like Gomery and Milgaard – costing millions, accomplishing little.
CTV story here.
Poll at G&M, Have you lost faith in the RCMP
So far the no side is ahead, but not by much.
If the RCMP are ruined, who will take over. Maybe that is the payoff dion promised a certain group, to get sharia law into Canada.
free hortons
…I guess they learned from the Lieberals..I mean Libbrannos.
Who’d a thought?
Well Bruce, sadly, it’s in our human nature to describe the famous and powerful in favourable terms, once we’ve had the honour and privelege of meeting them.
This uncontrollable impulse is almost certainly genetically adaptable, somewhere back down the line. You can see it in the fact that anyone who’s met, say, Vladimir Putin or Cesar Chavez or Tony Ayala are always about fifty-thousand times more likely than the next guy to say “actually, he’s good people“, or “actually, he’s a really decent/nice guy” or some such variant.
The Liberals have comprehensively used this reflexive limbic rumination-on-one’s-own-significance — it’s the teeniest bit gallic, in an old-world sense — and they’ve abused it, back and forth across the proverbial room, in a million positions. Our nation has become compromised as a result, and our active forgetfulness is ongoing evidence of that.
I mean, Canadians have paid for giddy reporters to repeatedly insinuate that the head of the syndicate was actually a really nice guy — they’d met him — and a lot of other people have made a sniffing case that that mean, gross guy in opposition — that protestant — (bleuch? blechhhh? bleuchh?) was of that reflexively, absolutely despisable ilk who didn’t “get” that.
It takes a really good person, I guess, to understand that good people and their offspring bow to guys in robes, and then look the other way, and that this understanding is so self-evidently the basis for any possible further development in the humanity department that it obviates all other, more important and more morally consistant considerations.
Hey, whatever works. Judge not, lest ye be…in the position of meeting someone powerful, or if you’re the offspring of those who reflexively make such claims without a moment’s pause….
Those without the moral stomach for ugly-work can still defend the indefensible without ever stepping up to the plate and defending it: all they have to do is comprehensively ignore its existence, and its long-term consequence on our moral culture, and instead do flank-work in the dark, by oh, say, zeroing in — in an ultimately non-digestible way — on the avowedly self-evident ickiness of those who feel duty-bound to work tirelessly behind the scenes to root out corruption.
Take your pick, it’s a good gig — makes one proud.
But Bruce — can I call you Bruce? — let me quote without his permission from a Greg Weston column, one of many that could be considered a primer on memory (loss) and morality, and mortality, in the Canadian context:
“If there is one chapter in Zac’s tenure that rankles almost as much as Arar, it is surely the collusion of the Mounties in the shameful hounding and intimidation of Francois Beaudoin, the former head of the federal Business Development Bank.
Beaudoin was the honest banker whom Chretien repeatedly tried to pressure into approving a $650,000 federal loan to the then-PM’s pal and Shawinigan inkeeper at the center of what became known as the ‘Shawinigate’ fiasco.
When Beaudoin refused to approve the loan as a bad risk, and threatened to blow the whistle on Chretien, the RCMP were called in to help hound the banker out of his job and through years of personal hell.
Two cronies Chretien had appointed to the federal bank appealed directly to Zaccardelli to turn the Mounties loose on Beaudoin for all kinds of unfounded wrongdoing.
Before Beaudoin finally got his day in court, he had been subjected to three years of a smear campaign, aided and abetted by RCMP raids on his family home, cottage and — as a final act of attempted public humiliation — his Montreal golf club.”
(Note: They were merely checking his wife’s membership).
Now, this is not to insult the character of Zack, Bruce; he’s good people, as you noted, and a lot of people don’t understand that.
Personally, I’m honoured to have brushed up, in this thread, against someone who’s met him. I can only take you at your word when you say that we should not allow those who’ve not actually met the man to sully his good name. For those people not only don’t understand that he’s loyal, and discreet, and strong, they don’t understand that you’ve met him.
So who’s on a bike? Right? Huh? C’mon, who?
sigh….it’s no surprise, really.
After all, Canada, under the Libs, had become just another banana republic minus the decent climate.
the rcmp thought it was just fine that a lawyer would have a receipt written on a paper napkin.
the rcmp thought it was just fine that a lawyer would have a receipt written on a paper napkin.
Bruce, were you a member of the RCMP?
Bruce, were you a member of the RCMP?
Yes, I am afraid the enquiry need go no further than the paper napkin signature.Get behind this part of the enquiry and 90% of the truth comes out.
Yes, I am afraid the enquiry need go no further than the paper napkin signature.Get behind this part of the enquiry and 90% of the truth comes out.
Harper must have at least half a dozen inquiries he could open similar to this one.
1) Two billion missing from Public Works under Jane Stewart.
2)Gun Registry 2 Billion
3) Shawinigate as noted above
4) Any of the crazy testimony at Adscam, like Cretien’s brother and every other POS liberal driving around Quebec delivering envlopes of cash.
5) Gagliano’s indictment by the New Jersey State Prosecutor for being a made memeber of the Bonano mafia family.
6) Income Trust tipping
As Steyn said, Harper is an incremantalist.
Wait for things to look like majority territory and open up yet another can of previously ignored liberal crime (and what better place to start cleaning than at the cop shop).The ensuing election should give Harper a mandate to change the corrupt culture of elitist crack whores who grab our wallets every chance they get.
How can any crime be punished if our cops are themselves complicit.
Clean up the RCMP and than you clean up the gubmint.
Go Priminister Steve!
It seems that the justice industry is most corrupted segment of Canadian society.
About 14 years ago this is what happened in Calgary.
A rookie policeman noticed that other police, who know their way about, were stealing booze or some such from the confiscation room. Following what any decent person would do, he let his superiors know about the situation. You got one chance to guess who the bad guy was in the eyes of the police rank and file.
Trouble is that we have a no fault society, if there is any fault to be found it usually turns out to be the victim of those who perpetrate the deed.
Because we in Canada live in no fault society, nothing will happen to anyone doing bad things, because they just could not help themselves poor dears. It is a gravy train for the justice industry in fact there is no better way to make money because there is no investment on your part, just government millions waiting for you.
the “government” should read your money.
Ross posted: “Well Bruce, I put my ass on the line for 28 yrs. How many years did you sit your ass in a comfy chair in Ottawa feasting your adoring eyes on Zac? Are you inferring that the two gutsy RCMP officers who are putting their reputations on the line for the sake of the RCMP are liars? If you are not, then you must believe they are telling the truth. If they are telling the truth, then your idol is a disgrace to the RCMP uniform (again), and might even deserve jail. So which is it?”
Well let’s see…I only did a few months on detachment duties because they selected me for an undercover operation directed against the bikers…I was undercover for 10 months.
Followed by 7 years on drug enforcement, then another 5 years on GIS, primarily investigating homicides. In that period of time I was shot at several times, shot at people several times (mercifully no-one got hit), I’ve been stabbed twice, one fairly minor, the other requiring a hospital stay of about 10 days…
I, and my wife, spent more than a year, in Calgary, dealing with unending threats of death because I busted a particularly powerful biker-gang member for importation.
After that, I spent more years in the field on CCS and Proceeds of Crime…
Out of 29 years, I spent 7 years in HQ in Ottawa because I wanted to insert an operational experience into policy matters…and it worked.
So if that fits your profile of “sitting in a comfy chair in Ottawa”, hey…let’s meet…maybe we can compare scars…assuming you have any…
Oh and RBD…Zacc and I worked together if Calgary when we were both Corporalks in the RCMP…hardly a “brush with greatness”….
Idiot.
Well, sorry Bruce. When you said you’ve “known him for years” I didn’t realize that you meant that you had just worked with him years ago.
The point I was trying to make wasn’t about Zaccardelli or Bruce or RBD anyway but about the manner in which the Liberals under Chretien used the RCMP, and about how otherwise good people seem to gloss this sort of thing over under some subsumed, national, unexamined presupposition that it’s all for a good cause.
Which is to say, I kinda used your post as a rhetorical device, and I didn’t mean it personally. Sorry about that.
But I’m curious about your opinion, as a member or former member of the RCMP; specifically, how do you feel about the way Francois Beaudoin and his wife were treated? And what would your opinion of Mr. Zaccardelli be if you were Mr. Beaudoin?
These aren’t rhetorical questions, BTW.
Actually EBD…on reflection, no offense taken…I guess I was more than a little upset about the implication of Ross’ post implying that I was ensconced in a comfy HQ chair etcetcetc.
And to be accurate, we worked together as Corporals…and throughout the years he and I kept in touch…We were both Inspectors in HQ Ottawa, albeit on different programs. And when he was in charge of the RCMP in Ontario, I called him on a number of occasions to urge him to apply for the top job, given that I knew the other candidates and that he was just so much more superior to them (at the time I had already retired)…
As to the Beaudoin matter, personally I’m troubled by it, and I don’t understand it. I confess I do not have information as to the details that led to the RCMP searches. In my previous life, I was in charge of a number of investigations concerning political figures…given the political sensitivities, I routinely authored briefing notes for the senior management of the RCMP as to what we were discovering. But I can honestly say that, at NO time, was I ever directed from above to change course or even cease a certain line of inquiry. Now, the senior management of the time knew me, knew that I would never sacrifice the integrity of a criminal investigation without putting up an enormous public fuss…but yet, they left ,me in place to do what I did, and even kept,on promoting me, and urged me to apply for a position in senior management…until I realized that I didn’t want to be a “suit” and took early retirement…
Oh and EBD, I apologize for calling you an idiot…