The RCMP are a canadian "tradition".
Unfortunately,it may be a tradition that has run it's course.
Somebody in there has screwed it all up.
The fact that none of our elected representatives,provincial or federal, have been unwilling to speak out and insist on an accounting of what is happening within the upper reaches of the RCMP and with the force itself,has only led to even more scepticism and doubt.
Are they still worthy of our trust?
The rank and file membership may be,but not those at the top.
They are the ones who have done the damage and it is the members on street who are paying the price for it.
If this 20 year contract is awarded with no acccounting for what has happened to the RCMP,nothing will change for the better.
They will continue to act as if they have a god given right to police Canada and it's citizens,and they will do it the way THEY want,with no outside accountability.
Given their track record over the last few years,we may regret that.
We already know we have very little protection from anything the RCMP chooses to do.
Go up against them for their actions and we will lose,and we see it continually.
We have no protection from bad policing and we should insist on an accounting of what they plan to do about that before any contract is awarded.
Or do they plan to do anything?

Do your duty Mr. Premier; nothing more, nothing less!
You know; raise taxes, give yourself big pay raises, saddle the taxpayer with the biggest cost overruns in history. Oh; and did I mention flipflop[lie] like a fish out of water.

The problem with the RCMP isn't its existence; it is the bureaucracy that subverts accountability, and makes the force responsible only to its leadership.
Their latest recruitment ad notes "150" different specialty units. Each has its own salary scale and the higher that these reach, the more over-and-above can top brass rake off. The private interest of empire building means: increasing numbers of cops are doing useless activity, with little or nothing to do with public safety. A base salary of $100,000 per year will soon be reached. Yet, response teams are being butchered by drains to dubious paper pushing entities. If everybody is plannning - and doing so on cozy day shift schedules - there will be fewere and fewer patrol officers.

In face of a public crime report, the near extinct response team cop considers not his protective duty to the public but whether or not he is making "rate" or "rate busting." The indulgence of bare performance, allows the cop to think of putting in his 25 years, in the easiest manner. Currently to become a cop one needs to know 25 other cops, who will provide a reference for same. Employment at 20 means: retirement at 90% of the highest wage of the last ten years, and at the age of 45. Canadians cannot afford that money-for-nothing arrangement. And once they find that it is the result of extortion, they will deal with it.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't the main reason for disbanding the original BC Provincial Police and having many of their lower rank members absorbed into the RCMP way back in the early 1950's mostly to do with that force's upper ranks being very much in the pocket of the then BC Liberal Party? Which had governed the Province continuously since the early 1930's, alone, or as the dominant partner in the later Liberal-Conservative Coalition that preceded Social Credit. And was just about as corrupt as the current BC Liberals are today.

While I would like to see a return of a BC Provincial Police force, I do have some very grave misgivings about just how "independent" such a force would be with the likes of Gordon Campbell as Premier.

I could not agree more socredible!

That was then--this is now. By the sound of this headline, I would say that BC is paying for the larger part of the RCMP pensions,etc which are way above normal. We could save a lot of money by dumping them. There's no use having them train our new force because it would instantly be just as corrupt.

Some things, with some political parties, NEVER change. And this is true with the BC Liberals probably more so than any other political entity. Clean up the corruption at the top of the BC government first. Before restricting even more the ability to prosecute it. Otherwise it'll just permeate everything over which that government has complete control. Including any new police force.

We could start doing that simply by standing together against the HST. Even if it involves nothing more on your part than simply adding your name to any of the Petitions circulating against it.

Whatever beneficial effect it may have on "business" relative to the current BC Sales Tax, it is still a further financial imposition on ALL of us as citizen/consumers. Even those of us who own businesses.

The people we elect as MLAs are supposed to be OUR representatives FIRST ~ not the representatives of their Leader, or their Party, to us first.

They are there to secure for us the results WE want ~ to implement the "policy" of the majority of the electorate.

Not as high paid "yes men" who have some "policy" dictated to them from on high, and are then told to get out and sell it to the public.

This is "corruption" incarnate, and until these people are reminded that their first duty lies with serving their constituents, and not their Party or its Leader, placing complete command of any new police force into the hands of such a regime could prove to be a far more costly mistake than retaining the RCMP, with all its present imperfections.

Another good one socredible!
Those we elect are spineless puppets who no longer think for themselves or those that elected them.
They adopt the "leaders" policies and do as they are told!
They know that you do not express an opinion that has not been cleared with the "boss" first!
I wonder if it bothers any of them when the old paycheque comes in,knowing full well they had to give up their self-respect to get it?