Dudley Strikes/Struck Again

Canada's best loved icons, barring Bucky the Beaver or some of those 'commando' fiddlers from down-east, have dropped themselves in the doo-doo of hubris once again.

This time Canada's singular police force, cum intelligence service, cum embassy guards battalion, cum only cavalry unit, are being pasted in the press for their interference with, and kiboshing of,  the investigation of wee Willie Picton, the pork farmer of Port Coquitlam. It seems that the 'people in red', either ignored the information presented by other police, or dragged their feet on their own investigation enough to allow Willie to ply his trade in up to 30 additional cases of  'rendering'.

willie gets porked

As one policeman testified at the investigation "You can't tell the RCMP anything, they know it all." Well he's sort of half right, being as since they know it all already, it's far better to drop them a few hints and allow them to use the skills acquired from King of the Mounties and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon, to come up with the facts for themselves. For anything anybody else might 'know' isn't worth a bridle full of horse saliva to 'those with real horse sense'. It's a good idea to steer clear while they pursue their 'investigations', too.

Bummer is that the Picton investigation went the same way as some other Mounted investigations - i.e. south. This leads one to believe that 'investigating' isn't their strong suit and might be fodder for an different government enterprise - like a Federal Bureau of Investigation, say? On the upside, these 'fodder' spin-offs, like CSIS, are fields for applied Mountyism - places where retiring red coats  can go to be with others who share the esprit, if not the big hat. It doesn't dawn on anybody that making incompetent ex-Mounties the head honchos in some equally important services isn't just letting them breed more of those like unto themselves? That Mountie 'culture' is going with them and this inquiry  points out, again,  that the 'culture' is at the root of the force's problems. It's stopping them from doing their jobs.

So what is to be done? Well changing the 'hetman' didn't work. The 'cossacks rouges' took three years to discover he was a 'pouf' and to work up the gumption to say something about it. They probably weren't in favour of any substantive changes either, especially if it involved not considering themselves commanding the bestest and smartest - if not the most best-looking police in the world. Even then,  they went puling to the Minister, himself a wanker of the first water, before ultimately leaking their tale of woe, anonymously, to the press. Nobody wanted to fall on their cavalry lance and risk a pension for the good of  the force. That there are ponces running the government who are trying to run 'the mounted', is only coincidental.

I think the only way out of the mess, aside from letting them carry on in the 'fine tradition', etc,  is to turn them into a latter day Corps of Commissionaires. Keep the uniforms, they're sharp. But put them where they won't be doing any harm, like at holding doors at public events and citizenship courts, decorating foreign affairs soirees and ambassadorial banquets, checking the bona fides of visitors at Parliament Hill and in the opposition parties' caucus rooms. As far as training foreign police services, well, unless they would like a mounted performance unit - and a lot of places would like one of those,  like the red indians, cossacks or the bashi-bazouks, the Khyber Rifles and the Spahis - lots of opportunities. The Mounties, however, shouldn't be teaching anybody about investigating.