Cabinet Must Prove Strength
Sunday, June 28, 2009 03:45 AM
by Justice Wallace Craig, (retired)
ON June 10, Premier Gordon Campbell donned his magician’s cape and, as reported in The Province, introduced his “new” cabinet of “proven leaders” and said “Together we will keep B.C. strong.”
That sounds like our premier has embraced real democracy.
Wrong.
Campbell is the only leader; his straitjacketed ministers either obey his imperious directives or wither away in the gloom of the backbenches.
It is dictatorial leadership that has been in vogue since the days of Pierre Trudeau, who transformed democratic government into puppet government by centralizing power in the Prime Ministers Office. Provincial premiers quickly followed suit. We are now a nation governed by control-freaks.
In his June 16 commentary There Is Only One Boss, and His Name Is Gordon, the Vancouver Sun’s Vaughan Palmer offered new ministers some observations about their leader, among them the fact that, “With (his) controlling tendencies comes a marked lack of patience that sometimes manifests itself in exceptional displays of anger …”
Even though premiers and prime ministers have adopted this imperial style of obsessive control we must not forget that, theoretically, cabinet ministers still have constitutional power, acting together, to challenge the boss on significant matters to either accept their collective wisdom or replace them in cabinet.
However, the fact is today’s elected representatives obediently hew to the prime minister’s or premiers’ version of the party line and shrug off the public’s constitutional right to good government.
This paradox is evident in the case of rookie Solicitor General Kash Heed who will soon be required to approve another 20-year renewal of the provincial policing contract with E Division of the RCMP.
As a career police officer, most recently as Chief Constable of the West Vancouver Police Department, Heed knows that: The provincial Police Act does not apply to the RCMP; E Division, a force of almost 6,000 paramilitary Mounties, is beyond provincial control; and that they remain subject to an internal complaint process under the federal RCMP Act under which any determination by the force’s complaint commissioner is subject to the whim of the Commissioner of the RCMP in Ottawa.
Let’s look at this conundrum through the lens of the Tasering death of Robert Dziekanski by four members of E Division’s Richmond RCMP detachment.
In the interval between Dziekanski’s death and the commencement of the inquiry, led by retired appellate Justice Thomas Braidwood, the RCMP released misleading information and maintained its message until it had completed a self-serving investigation which resulted in the crown deciding there was no basis for criminal charges.
On June 19, E Division's defence of the indefensible imploded when inquiry counsel Art Vertlieb informed Braidwood that he had just received disclosure of a Nov. 5, 2007 e-mail sent by Chief Supt. Dick Bent to Assistant Commissioner Al McIntyre. In the e-mail Bent referred to a conversation with Superintendent Wayne Rideout, who supposedly told him that the four officers “had discussed the response enroute and decided that if he (the distressed man) did not comply that they would go to CEW (conducted energy weapon).”
This thunderclap disclosure derailed the inquiry until September to allow counsel to investigate the e-mail and prepare for further hearings.
“I find this delay in disclosing it to the commission appalling,” Braidwood said. “The content of this e-mail goes to the heart of this inquiry’s work.”
Premier Campbell has a duty to recognize that his solicitor general and attorney general share the responsibility of achieving and maintaining effective criminal justice, including policing. They need the English tradition of “independent aloofness” – a constitutional stance that would preclude engagement in partisan politics and enable them to keep the premier and fellow minsters at arm’s length, freeing them to make principled decisions rather than simply being the premier’s messengers.
It is ironic that in 1992 and 1994, then judge Wallace Oppal undertook a major examination of policing in British Columbia, and in 1994 issued his report Closing the Gap. It prickles with Oppal’s concern over E Division being beyond the reach of the solicitor general, the Police Act, and oversight by police boards.
If Premier Campbell has already made an autocratic choice to continue with E Division, Heed will have to stand his ground as a principled 21st century Horatio at the bridge.
We’ll soon see whether Heed is a man or a mouse.
wallace-gilby-craig@shaw.ca
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Posted by: herbster on June 28 2009 8:58 AM
I have to agree this time though... excellent points were made all around. BC should have sovereignty over our domestic police forces. I guess for the insider elites its not an issue, and thus part of the problem?