INSITE REVELATION PROVES RCMP NEEDS WATCHING

Those heading up our national police force must be so glad people
have other things on their minds these days.

Otherwise, Canadians might be howling about the Mounties' latest
antics and demanding our political leaders hold them accountable.

Because, as we know, our elected officials refuse to utter the least
critical word about the RCMP unless there is public pressure or they
fear electoral ramifications.

Even then, I'm sure they get sick at the thought.

This week, we learned that the RCMP used taxpayers' dollars to hire
researchers to author papers that undermine Insite, the supervised
injection site in Vancouver opposed by the Mounties and the
Conservative government.

Pivot Legal Society, the admirable advocacy group working on behalf
of the poor and dispossessed, made the discovery through an access to
information request

Internal RCMP correspondence turned over to the organization reveals
a covert police plan to finance politically motivated research and
use morally questionable tactics to advance its drug-war agenda.

Some of the internal e-mails handed over to Pivot are quite disturbing.

In one, an RCMP officer refers to B.C.'s Centre for Excellence in
HIV/AIDS - a nationally renowned repository of some of the top AIDS
research in the world - as the "Centre for Excrements."

Another e-mail sent to several recipients, including a prominent
Vancouver public-relations specialist, suggests stacking a local
radio call-in show with callers who are against Insite.

An RCMP spokesperson said this week that the force sponsors research
like this all the time.

If that is the case, we have a big problem.

It is clear what the RCMP's intentions were. The force asked two
separate academics to write reports about Insite that it obviously
hoped and expected would cast the drug treatment centre in a poor light.

When neither report did, the RCMP commissioned two more, one by the
director of a national drug-prevention organization that opposes Insite.

This time the RCMP got the results for which it was looking.

Appalling.

The RCMP has no business inserting itself into the debate around our
drug treatment programs, especially in this manner.

The RCMP's job is to fight and prevent crime.

I don't see how getting involved in the discussion around Insite,
particularly in such a vile, partisan way, fits within the parameters
of the RCMP's mandate in this country.

What the RCMP did here was secretly finance studies that were little
more than inflammatory and scurrilous attacks on the credibility of
the science behind Insite, while the internal RCMP e-mails reveal the
disdain with which some members of the force hold organizations that
don't share their view of the world.

The Centre of Excrements. Imagine.

The man who heads the Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS is one of the
most respected AIDS scientists in the world.

Julio Montaner is also an enthusiastic supporter of Insite and
believes fervently in the good it does.

But the RCMP doesn't, so it pays for questionable research that it
feeds to the Conservative government, which is then trotted out by
the federal Health Minister as evidence that Insite should be closed.

And apparently this is fine.

Dianne Doyle, the president and CEO of Providence Health Care, the
faith-based health-care organization that runs Dr. Montaner's centre,
doesn't think it is, and yesterday called on the media not to let
this matter die.

She's right, but she should have also demanded that our political
leaders take a position.

The RCMP polices more than two-thirds of the province of B.C., and
yet you seldom hear a provincial politician say a negative word about
the force, no matter how egregious its conduct.

A spokesman for provincial Solicitor-General John van Dongen said
yesterday that the minister would have no comment on the matter,
referring questions to RCMP headquarters in Ottawa.

What an all too predictable and craven position to take.

I don't know about you, but I don't want the RCMP waging secret,
one-sided and wholly contemptible campaigns designed to sway public
debate around important social issues of the day.

I don't. It scares me, in fact. It hints at things I don't even want
to consider.

I would like to know who directed this little operation. Did the head
of the RCMP know about it?

Did he approve it? Did federal Health Minister Tony Clement know the
background of the anti-Insite research that the RCMP forwarded to him?

Does the Prime Minister support these types of politically motivated
endeavours by our national police? Does Stephane Dion? Jack Layton?
Do they believe Canadians' tax dollars should be spent this way?

I suspect it'll be difficult to get an answer from any one of them.

In Canada, no one tells the RCMP what to do.