Four honourable officers stepped up to the plate this week-it's time to get back to the basics of protecting Canadians

Bumped- newer posts below - Corporal Read's testimony at the Parliamentary Committee on whistleblowers has been added at the bottom of this post.For those that still haven't read it- it's an eye-opener

"Chuck Wilmink, former security boss at the old Canadian Airlines: "I could take anyone in this room and in two minutes train that person on how to put a bomb on an airplane bound for any city in the world."

Here's how Paul Kavanagh, Ontario security director for Transport Canada, replied when asked if airport workers could be carrying firearms into restricted areas: "We would not know. Employees are permitted tools of the trade. It is all part of the trust relationship one has to have with the employees."

Inspector Sam Landry, RCMP chief at Toronto Airport: "Criminal organizations have penetrated many legitimate businesses. This trend is no different at Toronto's Pearson Airport." Forty-five thousand people work there, he said. If organized crime recruited 1 percent, that would represent 450 people. "Terrorists may or may not be associated with organized crime, but they can make use of the same security gaps."

The crooks , the terrorists and the former Liberal government know all this.Only the Canadian public seems to have been kept in the dark.Where were the media when the RCMP were understaffed and underfunded so they couldn't do their jobs properly? Didn't they suspect anything when honorable officers like Cpl. Read and Staff sgt Stenhouse were deep sixed ( for actually trying to do their job) The media didn't exactly cover themselves in glory but then maybe they had a certain allegiance to the government of the day- insider tips, etc. It's a bit rich for them to jump on the "bash the Mountie" bandwagon now, when they were silent years ago.In the meantime there are thousands of honest, dedicated Officers protecting Canadians.The necessary changes in upper management will come soon enough.

http://fairwhistleblower.ca/wbers/canadian_wbs.html


Update: testimony of whistleblowers

Corporal Read's testimony before the Parliamentary Committee dealing with whistleblowers- Keep in mind he was deep sixed for actually doing his job of trying to protect Canadians.When he was stonewalled he went public....

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates


EVIDENCE
CONTENTS

Thursday, February 3, 2005

Corporal Robert Read (As Individual): Good day, sir. Thank you for inviting me here.

My name is Robert Read. I'm now retired, but I was a corporal in the RCMP. In 1996 I was assigned to Mr. McAdam's case and appointed to meet with him, listen to his complaint, and try to find what was actually happening with his complaint, what were the facts of the matter. Many parts of Mr. McAdam's complaint are detailed, and many were found to be true. I worked on Mr. McAdam's case until 1996, when I was ordered to desist, in September, I guess it was, 1997.

What I discovered was that when Mr. McAdam made his complaint in 1991 and it was investigated by the RCMP in 1992, the RCMP discovered that the computer in Hong Kong was entirely vulnerable, that the safeguards were not put into effect. Anyone and everyone who had access to the system could issue visas in Hong Kong, that is, anyone in the high commission in Hong Kong who had access to the computer, with a little bit of knowledge, could issue visas. It appeared that this had been happening for years, probably from 1986 until 1991. I compare Mr. McAdam to the sheriff in town, because various people in the high commission brought their suspicious pieces of evidence to him, and he gathered them and presented them to the RCMP when the RCMP arrived in 1992.

So after listening to various pieces of the story, I went to the RCMP central file room, got the 1992 files, and sat down and started to read them. After I had been reading them for several weeks, I came across a report called the Balser report, which, in obtuse language, said the computer is vulnerable and showed how it was possible to misuse it.

The thing to understand is that Mr. McAdam in 1992 was on station in Hong Kong. Mr. McAdam is a very frank person. He was kept out of the informed circle. The RCMP and his superiors told him everything was under control and in good hands. It was in their hands, but what they were in fact doing was covering up the facts from Mr. McAdam, because he had been in the service for 29 years and was not one to mince words. So through bureaucratic manoeuvring, they got Mr. McAdam back to Ottawa and isolated him. Finally, he took his retirement, because he was so entirely frustrated by his superiors' apparent lack of interest in the details of his findings.

The thing was that they knew before he did; they knew that the RCMP had found this. Their own technician, Mr. Balser, had found this and had told them they had a disaster here. It was a disaster beyond bureaucratic scope. It was actually a political silver bullet, which it would have been a disaster to report honestly. So they kept this from Mr. McAdam, because he was not someone who could be told to keep it under his hat.

º (1605)

It was just the fact that he came back to Ottawa and periodically came to the RCMP and demanded answers and demanded inquiry. My boss, of course, did not know of this cover-up that had been perpetrated in 1992—we were now in 1996—so he assigned me to delve into the case and I looked into it. It was only by an examination of these files from 1992 that I discovered the cover-up.

I also was not one to mince my words. I said to my boss, “This is what's happened”. My boss is a very nice gentleman, but he just wasn't responding to what I was telling him. As the months went on, it occurred to me that the RCMP were going to continue this cover-up, which I believed at that time was perpetrated by Immigration and Foreign Affairs.

Finally, I made a complaint against my boss for obstruction of justice. That was in 1997. I then went on sick leave when I perceived that, yes, this was really going ahead and the cover-up would continue no matter what I did. So I was off on stress leave, sick leave, for six months, during which time I reformulated my complaint, now against four superior officers who had direct knowledge, who I had evidence were part of the cover-up.

A few months later I went back to work. The RCMP gave me a job essentially shuffling paper—making photocopies, you might say—for a while. Finally, six months later they sent me to the personnel office to work as a personnel clerk.

What happened after that was that they cornered me in a bureaucratic way. It appeared that I was going to be stabbed in the back, so what I did was go public. This was now in September 1999, and I went public in a newspaper. I didn't really understand this at the time, but I believe now that this was in fact done expressly, that my bosses in fact had made a decision and put this pinch on me and made me go public.

I did go public and made allegations in 1999 that there was a cover-up, that there was loss of control of the computer. I was subsequently suspended with pay, was charged with divulging confidential information, was put on trial, and was convicted of doing that, in fact, in 1992. It was at my trial in 1992, through listening to the testimony of various people who were called to my trial, that I realized the RCMP had to have been in the know from 1992, from the original investigation. I had suspected the original investigator from the RCMP was in fact on the take or corrupt or something else. From my trial, however, I can see that he was following orders when he covered up the whole affair in his files.

º (1610)

The reason the RCMP would do this, I think, was for fear of national security. This problem was big enough that it could be a real arrow through the heart of the government. To admit that our way of life is now so complex that we cannot control our own computers in the federal government is a very serious matter. It's a political problem as well as a bureaucratic problem. So this is my opinion of why it happened. It was a question of national security taking precedence over a criminal investigation. I believe this is why Mr. McAdam was frustrated for so long and that, in fact, the national security question was being addressed....


Mr. Guy Lauzon (Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, CPC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to follow the example of my colleague, Mr. Poilievre, and congratulate these gentlemen for the courage they showed over many years.

[English]

When I look at you four gentleman.... I should preface my comments by letting you know that I spent 22 years as a public servant myself. I witnessed some treatment similar to that which you people had and have been exposed to it, but certainly not anywhere near the degree that you people have, so I applaud you for your courage.

Actually, on behalf of Canadians, I really must apologize as a member of Parliament, and I apologize on behalf of the Canadian public, for the way you have been treated in our public service. I feel it's a scandal that four dedicated public servants end up being treated like you people have; it is just unconscionable.

When this bill first came before committee, and because of my experience as a public servant, I said this bill had to serve the clients that it was meant for. When we pass a law, you are the customer, you are the client; the public servant was supposed to be the client. That's why I am so glad to hear you people agree that we have to have an independent commissioner, because I knew from my experience in the public service that there is no way the person is going to go to anyone if the latter is not independent. I am really glad that all four of you agree on that point.

Mr. McAdam and Mr. Read, your situation particularly intrigues me. I will just go through my understanding of what happened.

I understand, Mr. McAdam, that you spent something like 29 years in the public service. You made some findings known to the RCMP, and my understanding is that some of the findings were very serious. From the information I have, one of your findings or reports to the RCMP included a list of names of Canadian government co-conspirators with China and the triads, including people at the government's highest levels. This is the report I have.

Obviously, if I were receiving a report like that, I would get the RCMP involved, so Corporal Read got involved. If the information I have in front of me is right, you went public with the information that authorities had tampered with files to conceal criminal backgrounds; there was a case where 800 computer files of prospective aliens were tampered with, and 2,000 blank visas went missing during the same period. It goes on and on.

Finally, I understand, you went public, Mr. Read. After all of that, a year after you went public you were prosecuted for talking to the media. Then in September 1999, it says that Mr. Read was suspended, and in April 2002, after a service court trial by a tribunal of senior officers—RCMP officers, I assume—you were found guilty of discreditable conduct and ordered to resign within two weeks or be subject to summary dismissal.

If my facts are right, before Bill C-11 you weren't protected. They're suggesting that the RCMP not be included in Bill C-11. Can I have some opinions on how you feel about that?

º (1650)


Cpl Robert Read: For me, whatever law you passed would not have helped me in my situation, because the RCMP decided that they were going to railroad me.

As I've said before, there are two positions within the RCMP, a concern for national security and a concern for prosecuting a criminal case. I was on the path of the criminal case. Having found this large problem with a government computer being abused by many people, my divulging such information would grow a political problem.

The thing about government is that we trust government to be in control. In this case, government would have to admit they couldn't control something. It's kind of like the atomic bomb. The government controls bullets, and perhaps hand grenades, but they can't control nuclear weapons. To compare that with information technology, the government controls typewriters and fountain pens, but they can't control the Internet or computers. This is a new reality that has to be faced politically.


Mr. Guy Lauzon: I want to share some time with my colleague, so perhaps I can ask each of you to give me a one-word answer here, just yes or no. If you had to go through again what you went through, would you do the same thing?


Cpl Robert Read: Yes, I would. "

You might want to bookmark this link for future reference .

Experts in money laundering.data.....John Walker Crime trends

Some of the material is a few years old but new to some.Just keep scrolling.Also check the slides at the Bangkok meeting. Gives you an idea of the extent of the problem.

RCMP -Click on the video of the Question Period interview with retired RCMP Staff Sgt Ron Lewis

Melanie Phillips- the war within the west- Mail on Sunday

"Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has found"


Maybe some of the teachers should be dropped.If you can't learn from history..........

Jack and his commenters have some thoughts on the RCMP......Jacksnewswatch

Judy made public the info about the Income trust investigation- the RCMP didn't

CPAC .ca is now rebroadcasting the Mounties appearance at the Public Accounts this week

Amir Taheri

"WHILE elements of the Left in the United States and Europe are calling on Western democracies to abandon Afghanistan and Iraq to the Taliban and al Qaeda and surrender to the Khomeinists in Iran, new alliances are emerging against the jihadists in the region.
In much of the Middle East, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left is part of these new alliances.:...

RCMP- Maintiens Le Droit

Bumped- newer posts below


"But parachuting in an outsider would be a perilous venture at best. The Mounties are a little like an old-fashioned army regiment - a tightly knit organization that tends to treat all outside appointees as hostile intruders.

The only solution might be to find some bright star a little farther down the hierarchy and catapult him or her into the commissioner's chair.

Not a perfect solution but possibly workable

Whatever the government does it will have to make its pick with both prudence and dispatch - not an easy combination at the best of times. It will also have to act in a scrupulously non-partisan fashion, always difficult for politicians. But what's at stake here is the reputation of one of the finest national police forces in the world and an institution that's dear to the hearts of Canadians everywhere. That's certainly worth the effort."

If they have to go down a few ranks to get the best possible person for the job, then so be it.

Did senior management play fast and loose with the pension fund as a short term bridge financing arrangement to cover RCMP cash flow shortages? The RCMP have been underfunded for years.

In the next few years there are going to be thousands of retirements and thousands of
recruits are going to be hired.With the massive brain drain ,what arrangements are going to be made to stem that knowledge crisis? Will they make incentives available to 25+ year investigators to retain them? Will they rehire top investigators? When you have a significant portion of your organization that are novices, there are going to be problems with inexperience.

The rank and file should be calling and emailing those courageous officers who appeared before the Public Accounts Committee to thank them and support them.One only has to look into the recent past at whistle blowers like Cpl. Robert Read and Staff Sgt Bob Stenhouse who basically got deep sixed for doing their job.It should have been a no brainer as to what was the right thing to do.Apparently it wasn't to some at the highest echelons.

The RCMP have had a proud tradition but some at the top seemed to be more interested in the pomp and circumstance, photo ops and using the stetsons and scarlet tunics as marketing tools.Their basic function is protecting Canadians from crooks and terrorists.They need to get back to that instead of the bureaucratic paper shuffle that seems to have inundated them.Lots of papers, studies and reports flying around, meanwhile the crooks have been having a field day( more like years)

A boil was lanced this week by those officers at the Public Accounts Committee. Let's hope that the necessary changes are finally made and their reputation is restored.Before a problem can be solved , it has to be acknowledged.This week it was.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds............the Prof

"But such dreams don't last forever. Recent decades have seen one insular and unaccountable institution after another broken open - from the Big Three auto companies to securities brokerages to IBM. Now this trend toward openness and accountability - fostered in part by technology, and in part by stakeholders' unwillingness to be taken advantage of - is coming to higher education. The bumpy ride for university administrators may be just beginning."

Mark Steyn

"On Sept. 11, a New York skyscraper was brought down by the Egyptian leader of a German cell of an Afghan terror group led by a Saudi. Islamism is only the first of many globalized ideological viruses that will seep undetected across national frontiers in the years ahead. Meanwhile, we put our faith in meetings of foreign ministers.

"It is better to be making the news than taking it," wrote Winston Churchill in 1898. But his successors have gotten used to taking it, and the men who make the news well understand that."

It's usually the two step shuffle- accountability? They'd be lucky if they could spell it

"So, Premier Dalton McGuinty — how many people have been disciplined, exactly, in the wake of the three recent scathing reports by Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin addressing severe, systemic problems within the Municipal Property Assessment Corp., the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation?

Don’t bother mentioning anyone who has received a generous golden handshake. That’s not discipline.

While Marin had different criticisms of each of the organizations cited above, they all shared common characteristics.

Each, he said, had a corporate culture beset by incompetence, arrogance and indifference to the public they were supposed to serve, manifested in a philosophy of burying mistakes, bureaucratic overkill and an appalling insensitivity to both taxpayers and the public."

Sue Ann Levy - the Big Smoke

Miller is city-building alright. He’s building a debt so insurmountable, so unsustainable, that soon, I fear, it will impact on Toronto’s credit rating.

That, in fact, was the message delivered by the new president and CEO of the Toronto Board of Trade, Carol Wilding, during a deputation to the budget committee last week.

She predicted that without a fundamental change in the way this city spends money, businesses will continue to flee and Toronto will never become a “global city.

“We are frightened for our future,” she said. “We’re kind of at the edge of a whirlpool and we’re spiralling ... we cannot maintain this current spending pattern.”

It probably didn't occur to them that if they were short of funds they could have deferred plowing $16 million into Nathan Phillips Square or $2.9 million into office renovations

Weston- RCMP

Rest assured this didn't sit well with the rank and file and as they say, the dam finally burst last week.

Licia Corbella has her laundry list on the RCMP

Most RCMP officers shouldn't be tainted by the few bad apples- they are honorable, dedicated and prepared to lay down their lives to protect Canadians.What role did underfunding for 13 years have to play on a lot of investigations?

It's a question of a lack of leadership at the senior levels.How many investigations were stymied by a lack of funds? There have been a lot of whistleblowers that had the courage to stand up like Cpl. Read and Staff Sgt Stenhouse and then there were those courageous officers that stood up for their character and integrity and professionalism at their hearings.No organization with about 24,000 people is going to be firing on all 8 cylinders with each and every one.However when dedicated officers are deep sixed for actually doing their job of trying to protect Canadians, there is something wrong.Remember they weren't jettisoned for corruption, or incompetence but for going to the media after they had exhausted efforts to get things fixed- in Read's case -keeping criminals from slipping into the country.Imagine getting turfed when you thought you were actually doing your job.

There were those who preferred using the stetsons and scarlet tunics as bookends at trade shows.The Musical ride was promoted for all it was worth. As long as there was a colorful performance, the perception was that all was well in law and order.Acting as marketing tools is not their prime function- protecting Canadians is their first priority.There was a lot of smoke and mirrors going on and reorganization after reorganization after reorganization. Meanwhile few crooks were caught but lots of reorganizations.There was also plenty of paperwork and reports and studies and PR appearances and statistics , but few crooks put away during the 13 year Liberal reign compared to the criminal activity going on across the country.

A lot of their reports could have been written by Ph'D's in bureaucratese but few criminals were caught.As for planning and priorities, the Liberals knew well in advance that there would be a lot of RCMP retirements in a short time frame. They had 13 years to prepare for it but apparently it wasn't that much of a priority since that time is now and there are thousands of experienced officers retiring in the next few years. You can't make an equal trade between a novice and a senior investigator with 25-30 years of investigative experience.How long is it going to take the rookies to be effective? So on top of everything else there is a major brain drain which also has to be addressed.If 7000 retire in the next few years, you will have about 40% of the officers with less than 5 years experience.The crooks are laughing themselves silly.

There were many , many solid officers in the ranks who were let down over the years.They joined to put the crooks away yet had many internal roadblocks thrown in their path- a lot to do with lack of funding.The media seem to be in a feeding frenzy bashing the RCMP yet they seemed to miss the main target over the years, the Liberals who allowed a once proud organization to deteriorate by not properly funding them but there seemed to be plenty of money available for such things as Adscam.

Yes we are all aware of the high profile cases like Beaudoin, who had a great injustice done to him, however the media seem to overlook the minor fact that the major crooks in the country ,during the Liberal tenure, were doing $40 billion + in yearly operations, but that doesn't seem to tweak their curiosity?? Very few arrests were made compared to the activity taking place.Why? As for the RCMP officers killed at Mayerthorpe, why should it have taken 2 years to investigate the most highly prioritized case? Not enough experienced investigators or ....?

Bottom line, some senior management were probably more interested in pomp and circumstance, keeping a lid on things instead of fixing things,and probably were more concerned with their own careers than in the well being of their organization.There was lots of paper shuffling, few arrests.The situation will be rectified .It didn't have to be this way if the media were awake during the Liberal tenure.The issue now is restoring confidence by placing the most competent people at the top ,providing the proper funding and providing incentives to slow down the brain drain.There are still many dedicated officers doing their jobs faithfully daily. There's no point trying to tarnish the whole organization for the lack of leadership.There are many, many competent officers, especially at the Sgt to Chief Superintendent level.The whole organization isn't broke- the leadership could do with a complete overhaul- the sooner the better.