marcomendicino

Guest: Tonda MacCharles, Ottawa Bureau Chief

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a $4.2-billion dollar national force looking over eight provinces, three territories, 150 municipalities and 600 Indigenous communities. But now, sources say the PMO wants Mounties to be transformed into the “FBI of the North.” The idea would pull the RCMP out of the business of front-line, day-to-day contract policing and shift focus to challenges like national security and terrorism, financial crimes, cybercrime and organized crime. Such radical change will take time but, in the interim, the idea has found high-profile support in key senior RCMP and political offices.

This episode was produced by Sean Pattendon and Brian Bradley.

Guests: Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans, the former chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board.

This week on It’s Political, we unpack the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act, the never-before-used legislation that was invoked to bring an end to the so-called Freedom Convoy’s occupation of Ottawa.

First, we’ll look at the occupation through the eyes of longtime Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans. Deans was chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board while the force struggled to get resources and restore order, a crisis that eventually led to the departures of chief of police, Peter Sloly, and Deans herself.

Then, we sit down with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to discuss the act's use, whether or not it was necessary, and if it was a political answer to a policing problem.