Photo Credit: Canwest News Service

On January 18, the Harper government announced the appointment of a new chair to the Commission for Public Complaints about the RCMP (CPC) – the organization tasked with conducting investigations into complaints about our national police force. Ian McPhail, a lawyer specializing in wills & real estate and a long-time contributor to the Conservative Party was appointed to the position despite having no previous experience in criminal law. In an interview with Colin Freeze of the Globe & Mail, Mr. McPhail told Freeze “you probably know more about the background [of the CPC] than I do”.

Paul Kennedy, the outgoing chair of the CPC expressed concern over McPhail’s qualifications, as well as the seemingly partisan nature of the appointment. Both he and Shirley Heafey, the previous CPC chair, had extensive experience working with federal security and regulatory bodies before taking on the role as chair of the CPC. McPhail’s only experience working with a federal security agency was his week long appointment as vice-chair of the CPC just prior to the January 18th announcement.
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Photo Credit: Hamilton Spectator

The PM, proving to be quite uncreative when it comes to governance, has again suspended parliament. As The Economist put it (7 Jan 2010), “Stephen Harper is counting on Canadians’ complacency as he rewrites the rules of his country’s politics to weaken legislative scrutiny.” But the “gathering storm of media criticism” they forecasted is fading from the horizon, as Harper surely assumed. The PM is undoubtedly counting on (or planning) something else to fill up screens over the next months (Olympics, more shimmering stimulus projects, etc.). It is no coincidence that the he will drop the budget the day after parliament reconvenes on 3 March, sure to be filled with so many exciting goodies that we’ll go into a fiscal sugar coma, and the prorogation will hardly be a memory.
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