Sun, June 5, 2005
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?

Good question, no?

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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