Paul Palango has invested considerable energy in tracing the outlines of Canada's iconic police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His earlier investigative labours include Above the Law (1994) and The Last Guardians (1998), which excavate the RCMP.
This entry is the final point in Palango's triangulation of an organization that has sustained massive controversy. And while it offers a startling reading of the myths of Ottawa and the RCMP, we ultimately lose our way in a thicket of implausible hypotheses.
Palango has had an active career in journalism, plying his craft with several Canadian newspapers and magazines, including The Globe and Mail.
He is certainly notorious in the corridors of the RCMP. His probing of our national police service deserves considerable credit for tenacity. He seeks to draw back the curtain on the inner workings of the RCMP and to develop a critique of the Harper government's long-range strategy for reforming this organization. He examines the purported flaws and failings of CSIS, the Canadian media, the business elite, politicians and several other targets who have disappointed him.
With well-intentioned zeal, Palango takes on a host of individuals and organizations with a view to their betterment. However, his project carries within it several fundamental flaws that reach a critical mass with this publication.
Palango's title suggests that he will clear the haze that envelops his chosen subject matter, but he is ultimately unsuccessful. His subtitle claims to take us inside the "secret" world of Ottawa and the RCMP. We are rewarded with the efforts of a clearly competent reporter striving to penetrate the mysteries of our nation's capital, including RCMP characters like Giuliano Zaccardelli.
Yet Palango is the quintessential outsider. By his own assertion, he has the "unique advantage" of not being tied to any entity that might claim his allegiance (except for his publisher).
However, this independence is precisely what accounts for the serious flaws that mar his work. A true insider could render a tale of substance based on first-hand experience. This is why the reading public delights in "tell-all" titles that emanate from politicians, personalities and policy practitioners. His literary agent showcases Palango as an expert on the RCMP, and he has spent a great deal of time interviewing rank-and-file officers and absorbing published documents.
But there are several distorting lenses that Palango is forced to wear when sketching his argument, resulting in both myopia (when dealing with individual police sources whose accounts he accepts at face value) and hyperopia (when he sings the praises of policing as delivered in Australia or by the FBI).
In essence, Palango offers the raw materials for at least four separate publications. One would present his startling assertion that Maher Arar was probably not tortured during his rendition to Syria, and may even have been an agent of the FBI. Without interviewing Arar directly, however, he has only this tantalizing theory.
Another book could parse the machinations of government officials with respect to the country's national security efforts, including CSIS. Palango revisits the fifth estate's frustrations with the subterranean activities of former prime ministers Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien, without adding to the discourse already on record. He is unable to gain entry to, or compelling evidence on, CSIS, the Communications Security Establishment or other parts of the national security complex.
A third book might explore and explicate the enigma of the Bilderberg Group and its powerful international network of influence. However, this is a closed universe that Palango cannot explain with clarity.
Finally, a fourth publication could provide a more nuanced focus on the RCMP and its relationship with the machines of government. This effort could be honed to offer deeper insight on reclaiming and reforming the problematic police organization. By attempting to collapse all four stories into a single work, Palango has been very poorly served by his publisher and editors. More important, he has failed his readers by not delivering a coherent critique of the RCMP to serve as a catalyst for constructive organizational change.
Policing in Canada is dealing with profound and transformative issues. This includes the dramatic diminishment of trust in all forms of authority and control, a rapid and inexorable expansion of private policing as a major element of our security network, and the inability of police organizations to provide adequate levels of safety and security to our cities and communities.
While Palango demonstrates a genuine interest in rehabilitating the RCMP, he exhibits an outmoded understanding of what modern policing is all about. He should absorb the work of academics like Richard Ericson (with Kevin Haggerty), particularly his Policing the Risk Society, which articulates interconnections of the police and governments, private interests and business concerns.
Palango has not fully engaged issues of police accountability, oversight and governance in ways that would permit him to judge the information provided by his sources, named or otherwise. He has given great credit to former and current police officers, and relies in a deeply trusting manner on the quality of their testimony, without cross-examination. Palango could sharpen his focus on the convergence of policing and political issues through a host of other police leaders and academics. He misplaces his sarcasm when questioning the capacity of people like David Brown, Norm Inkster, Bev Busson and David McAusland, and others enlisted in the RCMP change process.
Palango mocks the qualifications of many of those who have been through the rigours of guiding police agencies, as well as others who have no direct involvement in operational policing issues. For example, Kevin McAlpine, one of the members of the RCMP Reform Implementation Committee, appointed to assess the efficacy of the RCMP's internal change-management effort, is labelled "obscure."
But McAlpine was the chief of police in Durham Region from 1997 until 2004, carrying responsibility for more than 1,000 sworn and civilian members with an operating budget of more than $110-million. Furthermore, McAlpine was president of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police and chair of the OACP's Organized Crime Committee. This is not obscurity to anyone knowledgeable about the world of policing in Canada.
Paul McKenna is president of Public Safety Innovation, Inc., and an interdisciplinary PhD student at Dalhousie University. He is completing the book Policing: The Human Element.