Time to fix the RCMP

The prime minister was right on cue. Out in front of the microphone and cameras, promising more gun control in the wake of the Nova Scotia massacres.

He said the government had been on the verge of banning assault-style weapons but was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.

It was interesting that he appeared to link the Nova Scotia killings and assault weapons. The RCMP had not said what type of weapon was used in the murderous rampage. In fact, it hadn’t said much at all about the most horrific Canadian mass murder in modern times.

It took the force’s senior management almost a week to give the public any details of the massacres, including a vague reference to the killer having a pistol and long guns.

The RCMP’s failure to properly inform the public throughout this incident is indicative of the dysfunction within the federal police force.

That dysfunction has been obvious for years, yet the force’s senior management and their federal government political bosses have failed to take action or even acknowledge it.

The Nova Scotia mass killings, which included the shooting of RCMP constable Heidi Stevenson, a 48-year-old mother of two, once again reflect the problems within the RCMP and the consequences on its members and the public.

Three years ago, the force was found guilty of failing to provide its officers with proper use-of-force equipment and training. That labour code charge was laid after five officers were gunned down by a madman in Moncton, N.B. in June 2014. Three of the officers died.

That tragedy followed the shooting deaths of four RCMP officers by another madman in Mayerthorpe, Alberta in 2005. There were calls for a judicial inquiry to find answers to safety questions raised by that incident, but they were ignored.

For years now the RCMP has been accused by its own members of bullying, sexual harassment, failure to provide proper training and equipment and of incompetence in the senior ranks. RCMP leadership and governing politicians have said either not much is wrong, or that they are studying the situation.

Urgent action is needed before more officers are driven half-crazy by harassment, or forced to quit because of bullying, or are shot because their bosses are either uncaring or too incompetent to protect them properly.

One ray of hope for change is the Federal Court of Canada certification earlier this year of a $1.1-billion class action lawsuit against the RCMP, alleging harassment and bullying.

The class action was filed by current and former members of the force. The Federal Court’s certification means that the lawsuit can proceed.

That lawsuit should throw considerable light on the turmoil within the RCMP and the reasons for it. Many officers and former officers blame the force’s leadership, which is hidebound to decades-old traditions and practices.

Canadians should not have to wait for a costly class action lawsuit to see some action in fixing the long-standing problems within the RCMP. Global News earlier this year estimated that various lawsuits, human rights complaints and other inquiries into RCMP problems have already cost taxpayers $220 million over the past two decades.

These complaints have been well documented and reported in the media over many years. They are not just whining from malcontents. They are real problems destroying morale and respect and confidence in the police force.

The real shame is that the people hurt most by the force’s dysfunction are the people who are not causing it – the frontline officers who diligently do their risky work as commanded by bosses following leadership patterns totally unsuitable for a modern police force.

The front-line officers are the ones who sometimes can’t do their jobs properly, or quit because they can’t take the toxic working atmosphere or even commit suicide because they have become so depressed.

If I were Justin Trudeau, I would call the entire RCMP leadership into a meeting and ask them to explain why they should not all be fired. I would also refocus my mind to understand that more gun control is a far lesser issue than the dysfunction consuming the RCMP.

The RCMP dysfunction has been evident to both Liberal and Conservative governments. It must be ended to restore Canadians’ pride in what once was a national treasure.

Still standing and grinning

Finding a laugh in these grim days of disease and isolation is as difficult as trying to light a candle in a snowstorm. I mean, even if a comedian thinks of something funny in the current situation, it’s probably inappropriate to say it out loud.

So here I am scrolling through the nightly TV doomsday reports when I stumble into a barrel of laughs. On the CBC, of all places.

The CBC isn’t exactly known as the fun channel, but there they are, guffawing faces on a thirty-minute show called Still Standing.

The laughter is generated by Jonny Harris, a Newfie comedian with a bedhead hairdo and a mischievously goofy look. (He also plays Constable George Crabtree on the television series Murdoch Mysteries).

“The population here is not even a fraction of what it was back in the 60s,” he chirps in an episode from Bell Island, in Newfoundland’s Conception Bay.

“A decline in population . . .  you don’t expect that in a place called Conception Bay, right?”

Then he gives the audience that devilish grin and adds: “Dwindling population, I mean, that might be the case over in Contraception Bay . . . .“

Still Standing is a hybrid comedy/reality show premiered on CBC in the summer of 2015. It has Harris visiting small Canadian towns that have seen better times. He gets to know the people, their struggles and how they are overcoming them, then gathers them together for a stand-up comedy performance that has them laughing at themselves.

In an episode from Schreiber, Ontario last fall he explored the town’s Italian heritage - making Italian sausages and talking about the Filanes Falcons Junior B hockey team, named for the Filane-Figliomeni business family that is involved in everything from restaurants to sports clothing to entertainment.

“I thought there was a bunch of kids on the team named Owen,” Harris says during the stand-up part of the Schreiber show. That was because the coach told him that “early in the season the team was 0 ‘n 4, then later on 0 ‘n 10 and at the end 0 ‘n 28.”

“I think it’s hard for Italian-Canadian kids to play hockey ‘cause your parents keep taking your hockey sticks to prop up tomato plants,” he jokes.

The towns Harris visits are all small, tight-knit communities that you might say have seen better days, although Still Standing highlights how the residents are fighting back and living good lives. They are towns where a main industry has left, businesses have closed and young people have moved to big cities to find work.

Schreiber for instance once was a bustling railway town, a Canadian Pacific Railway divisional point 190 kilometres east of Thunder Bay. Railway jobs declined and a mine that provided significant employment closed.

Joking about the towns and their people before a live audience of residents can be a bit tricky.

“It’s got to be a little bit saucy and cheeky,” Harris has said about the stand-up comedy part of the show in which he singles out individuals, the community’s difficulties and how it has responded to them. “But it also has to be respectful. I’m not there to make anyone feel uncomfortable.”

He has found that folks are “not overly sensitive, and are just up for the laugh.”

He knows the importance of humour to small, struggling towns. He comes from Pouch Cove (pronounced Pooch) a short drive north of St. John’s. It was founded as a fishing and mixed farming community but as fishing declined became more a bedroom community for the Newfoundland capital.

Viewing Still Standing can leave you nostalgic, even sad. It hurts to see so many small towns where prosperity left to live in another place.

But Harris’ light-hearted antics bring out what’s really important about these places: the good-hearted people and how they make the best of lives for themselves, their families and their neighbours.

A bonus of the show are the gorgeous landscapes and histories of seldom-heard about places scattered from one Canadian coast to another. It gives you a deeper sense of our country and its people.

When each show closes, often with Harris pretending to talk with his mom back home, you get a nice warm feeling about being a Canadian.

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Resurrection in the spring forest

After the long winter illness, color is returning to the cheeks of my bush lot.

A red-breasted robin hops through the newly-exposed layer of dead leaves, looking for a grub, or anything else edible.

Then there’s the slow, silent orange flicker of the wings of an early-returning Monarch butterfly. Or, perhaps it is a Viceroy; the untrained eye finds it difficult to distinguish between the two.

Green patches of wet moss cling to the ancient granite outcrops, and the bases of the naked trees, adding more splotches of colour to a dreary landscape.

And peeking out from the rock crevices are the brightest spots of all – red wintergreen berries glistening in rays of sunshine.

These berries, and their surrounding green waxen leaves, truly are a miracle of the woods. They blossomed into fruit last summer and survived beneath the snow and ice throughout the brutal winter cold.

All are signs of spring’s resurrection from the dank forest floor in which trees stand stiffly silent like skeletons. Small but hopeful signals that warmer, more productive times are coming.

Beyond this forest is the chaos of humanity’s coronavirus pandemic. Out there, spring has become a season of things lost – lost lives, lost important events, lost incomes.

Here, the forest is quiet and ordered, demonstrating the consistency of nature left alone to exist as it has for thousands of years.

This consistency is seen in the moose track along my forest trail. Every April, when the snow begins to disappear, a moose ambles this path, migrating from winter to summer quarters.

I have yet to see a track from the bear who occupies this forest. I know it must be up and about after hibernation, but I have not seen it, heard it or smelled it.

That’s probably because we both practice social distancing. We are both cranky on early mornings before breakfast, so neither wants to come anywhere near the other.

What is awesome about the spring forest is its easy transformation from the cold miseries of winter to the buoyancy of summer.

The little wintergreen plant and its red berries illustrate that beautifully. After so many snowbound months, the berries are ready to do what they were born to do.

Plump and bursting with life, the berries soon will shrivel and rot, dropping minuscule seeds to create new life and fulfill their sole purpose - to endure, to survive and to carry out their role in nature’s plan.

The pandemic and its forced isolation have created time to be out here observing the wonders of the awakening forest. All that time once spent doing other things – many of them materialistic things – now is spent thinking and viewing things differently.

It is amazing how our vision widens and becomes more focussed when we stop doing all those “other things.”

What comes into view more clearly is an important lesson of nature: think ahead and be prepared.

Everything that exists in this forest understands that lesson. The squirrel that procrastinates and does not gather and store enough nuts likely will not survive the winter.

It is a stark lesson: Prepare well or be ready to suffer, or even die.  

That was a lesson highlighted by the commission investigating the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak. It emphasized the precautionary principle, which basically is about thinking ahead, preparing and taking action before a situation becomes critical.

There is mounting evidence that if governments, corporations and people in general had paid attention to this principle, the current pandemic would have been less severe.

Another thought prompted by this pandemic, and by a walk in the spring woods, is whether our human activities are drawing us farther away from nature and its many lessons.

We live in a materialistic, money-oriented world. When I look into the forest, I wonder whether we really need to have all those things we think we do. Everything we really need is right here in nature.

Our human world is one we have molded outside of nature. Thinking about how to change it is too deep and too complicated a thought to work through today.

And, it’s likely that the pandemic will end up making some of those changes for us.

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Young people and the plague

So many things to think about during this time of plague. So many people to be concerned, even anxious, about.

The infirm. The older people with weakened immune systems. People now without work and stable incomes, the homeless on our streets, the homeless in Third World refugee camps, the homeless jammed into First World holding pens because they crossed a border into lands where they are not wanted.

Then there are the essential workers in warehouses and grocery and drug depots moving the supply line of essentials we need to stay alive. The police officers and other first responders at risk while keeping us all safe. And, of course, the medical professionals whose lives are at risk every day because of governments that lacked foresight, despite knowing a plague like this was overdue.

We also need to think about young people and how we might help them cope with this traumatic time in their lives. The pre-teens, the teens and the young adults in the process of forming the identities and values that will be with them the rest of their lives.

This is an especially traumatic time for them because the coronavirus pandemic has blocked them from important rites-of-passage events such as proms, graduation ceremonies, and deciding visits to university campuses where they hope to continue their education.

Adolescents often are challenging to understand and to deal with because they are undergoing hormonal, physical and mental developments. They live in a state of restlessness that generally is restrained by schooling, sports, music and other activities with their friends.

Now there is no school, no organized sports and no social gatherings with friends, which are so important to adolescent life. And, perhaps no summer jobs.

Isolation is something that no adolescent wants. It is understandable that they might feel deprived and act rebellious.

I feel for these young people, and for their parents trying to help them understand and cope. I can’t offer much to the young people in my life, except to share an experience from my childhood.

As a child I often wondered why my mother walked with a slight limp. I found out why during another time when the country was gripped by fear of another disease.

Between the late 1940s and early 1950s, an estimated 11,000 Canadians were left paralyzed during a polio outbreak that became the most serious national epidemic since the 1918 influenza pandemic.

People were urged to stay away from crowds to avoid spreading the disease. That meant staying away from the most important summer event in the life of any kid in Port Arthur-Fort William, now Thunder Bay.

That event was the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, the annual fair offering rides, games, shows – all sorts of exciting sights, sounds and smells.

I whined to my mother about her refusal to take me to the Ex. It was a mean decision. How stupid to deprive me of a once-a-year event just because of some silly thing you couldn’t even see. How could it hurt to go to the Ex?

My mother, no doubt tired my whining, had enough. She lifted her skirt to reveal a shrivelled left leg and said: “you can’t go to the Ex because I don’t want you to get sick like I did.”

I later learned that my mother was stricken as a child by polio in 1921, the same year Franklin D. Roosevelt caught what was believed to be polio and lost the use of his legs. She was paralyzed and spent years relearning how to walk, with crutches, then a leg brace.

I did not get to go to the Ex. Some other kids did, and some kids caught polio, although no one knows if they caught it in the Ex crowds or somewhere else. If I remember correctly, one kid in our neighbourhood died.

My mother probably did not know the term ‘social distancing’, but she did know that staying away from other people during outbreaks of disease was critical to protecting her children.

It was tough on her trying to get me to understand. It is tough on today’s parents trying to have their children understand that they must accept very difficult sacrifices.

Clear communication, understanding and sacrifice are what will get us through this.

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When the hammer falls

The lyrics keep riffing through my head . . . ,

Oh, every night and every day
A little piece of you is falling away
But lift your face the Western Way
Build your muscles as your body decays

That’s a stanza from Hammer to Fall, the energetic rock song written in 1984 by Brian May, guitarist for the British rock band Queen. You might have seen Oscar-winner Rami Malek, as lead Queen singer Freddie Mercury, singing it in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody.

It is a song about life and death, with May once explaining that "the Hammer coming down is only a symbol of the Grim Reaper doing his job."

It is a song easily identifiable today with the once unimaginable death and destruction wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. More than one million people around the world are infected with the virus. More than 70,000 have died, with thousands more deaths predicted.

The economic toll of the pandemic is being compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Businesses are shuttered, unemployment is soaring, stock markets have been hammered.

All this happening to keep people distant from each other to lessen the spread of the virus.

With so much human suffering and grief it seems almost unconscionable to dwell on the problems of business and industry. However, I can’t avoid thinking and writing about the pandemic’s effects on one industry in particular – the newspaper industry.

The newspaper industry as we have known it will not survive this pandemic. It has been in a weakened state – basically bedridden for several years – and advertising revenue lost during the near global lockdown will cause it to draw its final breaths.

Some daily newspapers have cut publication days. Some have closed their doors and others certainly will follow. Whatever has been cut or lost will not return.

There is nothing that can be done to save the overall newspaper industry as we have known it – news printed on paper and delivered by hand. Some printed newspapers will survive, others will carry on strictly as digital products or others might appear in formats yet to be invented.

 What must not be allowed to die is the professional, disciplined journalism cultivated by newspapers.

Journalism is the oxygen-rich breath in the lungs of democracy. When deprived of it, those lungs collapse and the democracy dies.

There are those who would applaud the death of journalism. That would suit their autocratic interests, allowing them to spread unchallenged their misinformation and hyper prejudiced claptrap.

We live in a dark age of information manipulation in which information critical to our lives is twisted like pretzels. Waves of words wash over us daily, increasing the need for more, not fewer, professional journalists who produce balanced news that is fact- checked, edited and put into context.

Good journalism is about reporting truth in the public interest. Good journalism’s only allegiances are to facts and the public interest.

Corporations and governments cannot keep journalism from dying. Only the citizenry, which journalism was born to serve, can save it.

A problem with that is that much of our citizenry is not well informed about journalism.  Most people do not understand its workings and complexities, let alone its value to society.

They must become better informed if journalism is to survive to continue shining light into unseen areas and to observe and report the actions of those making decisions that affect us all.

The key to having the general public better informed about the value of journalism is held by society’s influencers. The civic leaders, business leaders and religious leaders; the people whose words and actions are watched and followed by the public.

It is the influencers who need make the importance of journalism, and the need to sustain it, an important topic of conversation.

We just can’t stand by and let journalism die. If we do, we are accepting the final stanza of the Queen song:

What the hell we fighting for
Just surrender and it won't hurt at all
You've just got time to say your prayers
While you're waiting for the Hammer to Fall.

I refuse to accept that. I will not surrender. No one should.

Lungs need oxygen and democracy needs good journalism. That’s a message important to pass along.