By Jennifer Copestake
The image of police officers storming the O-Train and fatally shooting an innocent man may seem far-fetched.
However, in the new climate of global terror, such a scenario is within the realm of possibility.
In Britain, police shot Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent electrician on his way to work, seven times in the head and once in the chest on an underground train as shocked passengers looked on.
They were acting on a shoot-to-kill policy enacted by the Metropolitan Police in the wake of the July London bombings.
Metropolitan police chief, Sir Ian Blair, initially lied about why the incident occurred and praised the men who many say “murdered” de Menezes.
The culture of fear that has been with us since the attacks on 9-11 has seen an unprecedented expansion of police powers.
In Britain, an Independent Police Complaints Commission, set up by the government in 2004, investigates deaths caused by police action.
Lack of accountability in policing going back for decades in Britain led to the establishment of the commission. It has unfettered access to all information needed to investigate alleged crimes committed by police. Its members are independent and not connected to police or intelligence bodies.
Perhaps it’s hard to picture RCMP officers shooting innocents to death on the public transit system.
It’s easier to imagine shipping citizens off to rogue nations for torture, as happened to Maher Arar.
Arar, a Canadian citizen who was tortured in a Syrian prison for over a year, is currently at the centre of a public commission of inquiry into his detention.
The issue is who allowed such a gross violation of human rights to happen.
Canada has seen a vast expansion of police powers without adequate provisions of oversight to match – no one is policing the police.
Canada’s Commission for Public Complaints, theoretically an independent body watching the Mounties, is horrifyingly inadequate.
With two small offices on either side of the country, a staff of 40 and a budget of about $4.5 million, the commission watches over 19,000 RCMP employees.
Oversight has become a gargantuan task since the anti-terror legislation, Bill C-36, created new offences under the jurisdiction of the Mounties after 9-11.
Wesley Wark, president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, an independent think tank, says the changes happened very quickly.
“The government thought it had to throw all of its available resources in to counter-terrorism; but with Bill C-36 they created not new powers but new offences under the Criminal Code, specifically to do with terrorism. Then it became the RCMP’s new mandate to ramp itself up to deal with these kinds of offences.”
Terrorism and intelligencegathering is relatively new territory.
James Leveque, spokesperson for the complaints commission, says in the past the Mounties primarily concerned themselves with law enforcement duties, such as provincial highway traffic acts.
“The crux of the problem is the mismatch between the new powers the RCMP has – they do intelligence collection now, they didn’t before 9-11, not as much.”
He says the chair of the commission doesn’t have the investigative powers to match.
This is seen in the problematic way complaints are investigated.
Unlike Britain’s independent commission, the Mounties have an internal system of review.
When the commission receives a complaint, they turn it back to the Mounties to investigate.
This has proved problematic in gaining access to information under police control.
In its annual report for 2004-2005, the commission reports the RCMP sometimes refuse to provide materials requested and sees this as an attempt to “frustrate the public complaint process.”
Disturbingly, this behaviour is getting worse, and could be indicative of a larger trend.
Reasons for withholding information now include national security and possible jeopardy to an ongoing investigation. The problem is that the RCMP could use the national security excuse to justify the withholding of information relating to other criminal acts, such as organized crime.
Leveque says the commission has taken the RCMP to court to argue for further access to anti-terror investigations and secret materials.
However, he says, the courts have been reluctant to force disclosure, saying there needs to be a change in federal legislation.
“That’s up to the prime minister. Directing legislation is Paul Martin’s prerogative,” says Leveque.
It’s because of these problems that the Arar inquiry is looking at ways to develop an effective mechanism of oversight for the Mounties.
The complaints commission has suggested that it be allowed to conduct random audits of RCMP activity.
In its annual report, it stresses the need to be respectful of national security, but emphasizes the importance of having a trusted source with access to all available information to restore confidence in Canada’s national police force.
The federal government seemed to be heading in the right direction in the summer, when it proposed a nine-member parliamentary committee have access to all aspects of anti-terror investigations. However, the proposal seems to have fallen off the radar. The committee hasn’t established its membership and it’s unclear when they will start their work.
The Liberal government needs to address current anti-terror laws that don’t allow for serious policing review functions.
Whether this results in the creation of a fully independent policing commission, as is the case in Britain, or the dedication of additional resources to make the job of oversight possible, it is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately.
Canadians shouldn’t have to wait for the results of the Arar inquiry in March – steps need to be taken to rectify this mess now, to head off seemingly impossible scenarios which could be in our future.