With the spotlight on China’s interference in Canadian elections, the case of Cameron Ortis, the former RCMP spy master who was charged in 2019 with violating the Security of Information Act, is still hidden in the shadows. He was released on bail in December and is set to be tried in October, but the details of the case, likely involving China, have been hidden from the public. They should be disclosed immediately.
The federal police force says it’s facing recruitment challenges while at the same time dealing with the departure of regular members at high rates over the last decade.
“While there has recently been an increase in departures relative to historical averages, it is likely that this is a ‘catch-up,” as 2020 saw far fewer retirements than would normally be expected,” RCMP spokesperson Kim Chamberland told The Epoch Times.
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki has announced her retirement and will step down from the top job next month.
In a statement, Lucki said she had made a “personal decision” to leave the post.
“This was not an easy decision as I love the RCMP and have loved being the 24th commissioner. I am so incredibly proud to have had the opportunity to lead this historic organization and witness first hand the tremendous work being done each and every day by all employees from coast to coast to coast and internationally,” she said.
Five members of Canada’s federal police force are facing charges in connection with the fatal arrest of an indigenous man nearly six years ago.
Dale Culver died in police custody on 18 July 2017 at the age of 35.
The five officers are members of the Prince George Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The charges were filed by prosecutors in British Columbia.
Two of the Mounties are charged with manslaughter, while the other three are charged with obstructing justice.
A senior RCMP official says the force is in the midst of examining equipment it obtained from a company linked to China’s government to search for any points of vulnerability.
The national police force suspended its contract with Sinclair Technologies for radio frequency (RF) equipment last year following reporting by Radio-Canada that revealed Sinclair’s parent company, Norsat International, has been owned by Chinese telecommunications firm Hytera since 2017.
The Chinese government owns around 10 per cent of Hytera through an investment fund, Radio-Canada reported.
RCMP misses deadline for employees to complete mandatory anti-racism training
The Mounties have acknowledged their ongoing problems with systemic racism and discrimination. They have touted their action plan for dealing with those problems.
But the RCMP has, so far, failed in its quest to have all of its employees take mandatory anti-racism training.
… “To date, over 50 per cent of the workforce has completed the Uniting Against Racism training and we continue to communicate the importance of this learning and monitor uptake to ensure employee completion,” said RCMP spokesperson Camille Boily-Lavoie in an email.
It could be called the nuclear option.
There’s a belief among some that Canada should dismantle the RCMP in the face of the scandal and criticism that plague the force.
It would certainly be a dramatic change to the landscape of policing in this country. The force’s red serge, horses and the saying that they “always get their man” have long been associated with Canada. Hollywood has made productions drawing on the Mountie image for more than 100 years, going back to films such as 1921’s silent movie “O’Malley of the Mounted.”
EDMONTON—When Ron Zazulak joined the RCMP, it was seen as the “big leagues” of policing, he says.
He doesn’t think that’s the case anymore. And there are indications he’s not alone in his opinion.
Zazulak spent a career with the Mounties after joining the force in the 1960s. When he retired in 2000, he bought a farm with his wife and spent years living in rural Alberta near St. Lina, where they bordered three different RCMP detachment areas — the closest one being in St. Paul, 40 minutes away.
For three years, the RCMP officer had come to see Margorie Hudson at the Berens River First Nation, on the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg, and tried to persuade her to become the first
Indigenous woman in Manitoba to join the force.
In the third year, Hudson relented, wrote the exam and was accepted.
She recalls clearly the first words she heard as an RCMP trainee from the man who had been recruiting her.
“‘They’re accepting you,’ he said, ‘But don’t ever quit. Please don’t ever quit,’” she recounts. “I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Because they think you’re going to quit because you’re an Indian.’
Harry Bond is blunt in his assessment of the RCMP’s role on the night his mother and father died in the Nova Scotia mass shooting — and of the force’s potential to reform in the future.
“My trust for the RCMP is gone,” he said during a recent telephone interview from his home near Mahone Bay, N.S., where he’s been going over the hundreds of hours of testimony heard at a public inquiry into the April 18-19, 2020 rampage.
The federal government awarded a contract to provide and maintain RCMP communications equipment to a company with ties to the Chinese government, Radio-Canada has learned.
The contract has security experts raising concerns about potential Chinese access to RCMP communications and data.
On October 6, 2021, the federal government awarded Sinclair Technologies a contract worth $549,637 for a radio frequency (RF) filtering system. One of the system’s purposes is to protect the RCMP’s land-based radio communications from eavesdropping.
Canada’s China Class at work. Pretty hard to stop given the LPC is likely infiltrated from top to bottom.
I’m sure Justin will blame it on White Supremacists.
OTTAWA – The RCMP pushed the government to keep the Emergencies Act in place for up to three weeks after it had been invoked arguing it was needed to prevent new blockades from starting.
The RCMP’s timeline came in a “key messages” document prepared for RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki when she spoke with cabinet members on Feb. 20, six days after the act was first invoked.
Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro is calling on the federal government to fire RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, saying her continued tenure is damaging to the national police force.
In a statement Wednesday, Shandro calls on Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to immediately rescind Lucki’s appointment.
“Alberta has lost confidence” in Lucki, Shandro said in the statement.
OTTAWA — The RCMP worried that after arriving in Ottawa, participants in the “Freedom Convoy” would try to pinpoint Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s location, documents suggest — just as demonstrators had tried to do during last year’s election campaign.
The concerns are outlined in assessments by the national police force’s intelligence personnel that were tabled as part of evidence presented at a public inquiry probing the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act in response to last winter’s protests.
The weeks-long demonstrations, which blockaded downtown Ottawa and several border crossings, were driven by opposition to COVID-19 restrictions such as mask and vaccine requirements. Many participants voiced their opposition to the federal government in general and Trudeau himself.
Embattled RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki says she wants to remain at the helm of the federal police force even as she faces growing dissatisfaction at the highest levels of the government over her leadership.
Commissioner Lucki, who has dealt with a series of controversies that has put the government on the defensive, said she does not want to step aside. Her five-year term comes up for renewal in March.
“I’m absolutely staying on as Commissioner of the RCMP,” she told reporters late Tuesday evening after testifying at the inquiry into the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
Brenda Lucki is untroubled, even in hindsight
… Again and again the same pattern played out: A lawyer would probe in a few different ways to get at a piece of information, and Commissioner Lucki would repeatedly answer a question just off-centre of what was actually being asked. It was impossible to tell whether it was obfuscation or genuine confusion, and she was affably apologetic after each clarification.
Unfit.
