It seems only appropriate that on the very day Mike Duffy returned to the Senate, the RCMP Commissioner should appear before a Senate committee and show once again why he still doesn't get it. And that a time when the RCMP is being rocked by allegations of incompetence and sexual harassment. He should defend the force.
When Justice Charles Vaillancourt acquitted Mike Duffy, he brought down his gavel on the head of quite a few others. He savaged Stephen Harper's PMO for the way it had tried to cover-up a scandal. He heaped scorn on the Senators who had treated Duffy so badly, and on the crown for the way it prosecuted the case. And as Neil Macdonald points out, without singling them out for special treatment, he also raised some disturbing questions about the conduct of the RCMP.
When the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson was working for the Con regime, I couldn't help feeling that he was turning the force into the Harper Police. Or help wondering whether he was willingly collaborating with that sinister mob, or whether like so many others he was being held hostage by them, and their depraved leader Boss Harper. And was suffering from the so-called Stockholm syndrome. I still can't decide what the real reason was, but one thing is for sure, Paulson just doesn't get it.
A few days ago I wrote a post where I wondered why the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has so far failed to explain the reason his investigators decided not to charge Nigel Wright for his role in the Duffy scandal. Even though he promised to do that more than a year ago. Now Michael Harris goes a step further and wonders whether the Mounties have become Harper's private police force.
Now that we know that Stephen Harper's lawyer believed that Nigel Wright had Harper sign off on a five-point plan to payoff Mike Duffy. That good to go really meant good to go. And now that we know this: Donald Bayne, Duffy’s defence lawyer, read from the transcript of a police interview Perrin did a year ago: “He [Wright] was explicit the prime minister approved of the responses to Ms. Payne [Duffy’s lawyer], so as I said at the time, the prime minister had approved all of the five points articulated by Mr. Wright.” “That was an accurate statement,” Bayne asked. “You said that to the police?”
“Yes,” replied Perrin. I think it's about time that the RCMP be asked to explain why it didn't charge Wright, or Stephen Harper's intimate advisor Ray Novak.
More than four months after Michael Zehaf-Bibeau stormed Parliament Hill, the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson has finally released the video the gunman made shortly before he was killed. Or at least most of the video...
Minus the eighteen seconds the RCMP removed, but will not explain why. And what is only too clear is that while Zehaf-Bibeau was obviously a terrorist, or a murderer with a cause, this was no terrorist conspiracy.
Almost as soon as the shooting stopped, and not long after he emerged from his closet, Stephen Harper declared that Canada was under attack by the dark forces of ISIS. And starting calling the dead gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, an ISIS terrorist. Even though he was a mentally ill crack addict. And a few days later the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson claimed the RCMP had a video that showed that Zehaf-Bibeau had acted for ideological motives.
But now it turns out we may never see that video, and as Tim Harper points out, that's a real threat to our democracy.
I suppose it was too good to be true. Most things in Harperland are like that eh? Any good idea that sticks its head above the ground is mown down by the ghastly Cons. So one moment I'm pleasantly surprised by the RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, telling a reporter that marijuana use is not a big deal. “I don’t think marijuana usage is as big a deal as it used to be. It’s still vulnerable to exploitation to organized crime, but you know, less and less as it becomes more and more commercially available,” he says. And the next moment I'm forced to endure the sight of the hapless Con Peter MacKay claiming that the Commissioner is wrong, and marijuana is a deadly threat.
