Take care to keep police, state separate

Posted Jan 26, 2012 By EMC News

Canada is not in danger of becoming a police state, no matter how many police officers join the state.

Word came recently that Ottawa Police Chief Vernon White had been selected by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to be one of several Conservative appointees to the senate. (We'll leave debate over the irony of Harper, long-time proponent of an elected senate, continuing to flood the red chamber with his blue appointees for another day.)

Down the hall, former Toronto and York Region chief and OPP commissioner Julian Fantino is the associate minister of national defence.

On the surface, there is nothing wrong with these moves. Fantino was duly elected by the good people of the north Toronto riding of Vaughan, and we actually applaud White's ascension to the senate.

He is articulate, intelligent, teaching in his spare time and about to earn a doctorate, and respected by his officers.

He has a keen, first-hand interest and knowledge of First Nations issues, having worked as an officer in Canada's North for many years. His knowledge could certainly prove handy with the ongoing disgrace that is the housing situation at the Attawapiskat First Nation.

One need only look to our friends to the south and elsewhere to see how military leaders are often tapped to be national political leaders.

Both men are certainly entitled to their own political beliefs which, now that they have hung up their badges, they are free to espouse as politicians.

But while the Harper government is keen to be seen as being the party of Canada's military and police, we have to wonder if Fantino and White are, unintentionally, fuelling a feeling of a lack of neutrality some people feel towards the police.

With two prominent former police officers in the Conservative ranks, seeing the Tories as the Police Party is something that they would not shy away from, but it is a double-edged sword.

If you are a social housing activist, or a member of the Occupy movement, or an environmentalist, or some other group not exactly at the top of the pile of Harper's Christmas card list, and you have a run in with the police, then you may think twice about just how independent the cops keeping an eye on you are.

Police officers are certainly not hesitant when it comes to espousing certain issues.

This past November, Constable David Murphy of the Smiths Falls Police Service told a drug prevention meeting in Blacks Corners that he did not believe in marijuana legalization, and that weed was a gateway drug.

Certainly not earth-shattering stuff, and White, as police chief, has expressed his opposition to a proposed safe-injection site in Ottawa.

But while these brothers in blue on the Tory benches are not the first step towards a police state, Harper needs to be careful to do his police friends a favour and make sure that it is clear that the nation's police services are not an extension of the Tory party.