Ian Mulgrew: Farnworth owes First Nations an apology. The RCMP deserves being disbanded
Opinion: B.C.'s public safety minister ought to resign after sitting on a scathing report from the RCMP's complaint commission
Article content
Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth looked uncomfortable with camera lights blinding him and his mouth full of crow.
Pretending nothing was wrong clearly unnerved him. It appeared he couldn’t wait to flee the scrum.
The NDP-MLA from Port Coquitlam is in a mess and the repercussions could cost him dearly. For Farnworth made it rain on Premier David Eby’s carefully scripted, happy-days-are-here-again, first-100-days parade.
In November, Eby was courting voters with billions of their own money, tossing $230 million to the RCMP to increase manpower and resources.
Meanwhile, Farnworth was trying to defuse a timebomb — an unpublicized, five-year-old report of the RCMP’s Civilian Review and Complaints Commission indicting B.C. Mounties.
About a dozen mainly poor, vulnerable, First Nations girls in the early 2000s made allegations implicating Prince George Mounties in heinous crimes — the rape of a 12-year-old and sometimes-violent racist harassment from about 1992 to 2004.
They named others, too, including infamous former judge David Ramsay. He was the only individual prosecuted. Jailed for seven years in 2004, the disgraced Ramsay died in prison.
The complaint commission report reopened that wound, slamming senior B.C. Mounties for failing to assess, much less investigate, renewed allegations in 2011.
An interim report with the disturbing findings went to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki for a response in 2018 but she sat on it for nearly three years. In 2021, she signed off, and accepted its recommendations.
Lucki said the 20-year-old accusations would be assessed, and, if warranted, charges laid. The RCMP said the assessments were underway.
The officers denied wrongdoing, and the allegations have not been proven.
As the Mounties also act as the provincial police and as civic law enforcement for many municipalities, the report was sent to Victoria.
The public was kept in the dark.
In spite of generation-long demands from Indigenous people for an inquiry into the RCMP, that has not happened, and neither government appears to have provided the report to First Nations.
In October, the retired Mountie who filed the complaint that triggered the commission investigation in 2015, Garry Kerr, sent the report to reporters.
Farnworth acted as if the entire affair had nothing to do with him, when first queried in November. His staff replied to questions in a Dec. 2 email: “While the province is aware of the report, the CRCC is ultimately the responsibility of the federal government.”
The minister remained mute until last Thursday’s announcement: “The director of police services has ordered an independent investigation by an external agency.”
He would not say what external agency, but it sounded like more of the same — police officers or former police officers investigating other police officers.
The minister referred to the legislature’s special committee on reforming the Police Act as if he were enacting its recommendations. Like almost every review in the last half-century, the committee called for a radical overhaul of the dysfunctional system, a provincial police force to replace the RCMP, and regional policing in metropolitan areas.
The policing fiasco in Surrey could have been avoided had Farnworth gotten on with it and moved Metro Vancouver towards a regional force.
After Eby’s largesse, it doesn’t look as if the RCMP will be dumped in B.C..
Farnworth has avoided answering questions: “As this matter is now the subject of an independent investigation, I will not be commenting further.”
The ministry did not respond to requests for clarification.
The structural flaws in B.C.’s patchwork policing have been known since the 1980s, but fixing them is a nettlesome and complicated process that requires federal and provincial cooperation.
That has proven even more difficult because of the number of ex-Mounties in positions within government and Crown corporations.
Former Liberal cabinet minister Rich Coleman was an ex-Mountie.
Most provincial directors of policing have been Mounties. Appointed in Feb. 2021 after a 34-year career with the RCMP, Wayne Rideout recently resigned. Brenda Butterworth-Carr, former commander of the RCMP B.C. division, left the director’s job after a short stint in Dec. 2020. Clayton Pecknold was director from March 2011 to Feb. 14, 2019, after an RCMP career that began in 1986. He moved on to become police complaints commissioner.
Numerous former Mounties testified at the recent B.C. inquiry into money laundering — Larry Vander Graaf, former executive director of investigations for the gaming enforcement branch, Joe Schalk, an ex-director of casino investigations, and Robert Kroeker who worked for the government, B.C. Lotteries, ands casinos, and now is back with the RCMP.
The RCMP complaint commission’s report exposed the oversight process as lacking accountability, trust and independence.
Lucki resigned Feb. 15 — before her intended departure — after the verdict of the inquiry into the Trudeau government’s decision last year to declare a nation emergency.
Regardless, the buck in B.C. is supposed to stop with Farnworth, the province’s top law-enforcement officer.
The RCMP has an abysmal record of failure in B.C. — Robert Pickton’s serial killing rampage went on for years, a flood of cash washed through casinos uninterrupted for years, there has been an endless gang war with scores of “targeted” murders, the Air India investigation was botched, there was officer misconduct in the Surrey Six massacre investigation, the RCMP was responsible for the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski. Add to that the Keystone Kops effort to turn two vulnerable, Surrey sad sacks into terrorist bombers in a sting the B.C. Supreme Court called entrapment.
What is there to say?
Like Lucki, Farnworth sat on the complaint commission report for nearly two years and wants to kick it down the road in case an election is called.
He should explain his response to the scathing report and whether he consulted with First Nations about their participation in the new investigation. He also should apologize to them for not giving it with them.
It’s hard to believe he has any credibility with Indigenous people.
Farnworth should probably resign.
Similarly, the RCMP has had its day. It’s time to replace it with a new national civilian force, similar to the FBI.
Far past time.
-
Ian Mulgrew: B.C. orders probe into allegations of RCMP abuse of Indigenous women in Prince George -
Ian Mulgrew: Allegations that B.C. RCMP officers abused Indigenous women ‘swept under the carpet,’ says ex-Mountie -
Ian Mulgrew: RCMP management more than dysfunctional -
Ian Mulgrew: B.C. RCMP must answer sex abuse accusations, not keep them under the rug, says victim
Support our journalism: Our in-depth journalism is possible thanks to the support of our subscribers. For just $3.50 per week, you can get unlimited, ad-lite access to The Vancouver Sun, The Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Vancouver Sun | The Province.
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.