Licia Corbella has her laundry list on the RCMP

Most RCMP officers shouldn't be tainted by the few bad apples- they are honorable, dedicated and prepared to lay down their lives to protect Canadians.What role did underfunding for 13 years have to play on a lot of investigations?

It's a question of a lack of leadership at the senior levels.How many investigations were stymied by a lack of funds? There have been a lot of whistleblowers that had the courage to stand up like Cpl. Read and Staff Sgt Stenhouse and then there were those courageous officers that stood up for their character and integrity and professionalism at their hearings.No organization with about 24,000 people is going to be firing on all 8 cylinders with each and every one.However when dedicated officers are deep sixed for actually doing their job of trying to protect Canadians, there is something wrong.Remember they weren't jettisoned for corruption, or incompetence but for going to the media after they had exhausted efforts to get things fixed- in Read's case -keeping criminals from slipping into the country.Imagine getting turfed when you thought you were actually doing your job.

There were those who preferred using the stetsons and scarlet tunics as bookends at trade shows.The Musical ride was promoted for all it was worth. As long as there was a colorful performance, the perception was that all was well in law and order.Acting as marketing tools is not their prime function- protecting Canadians is their first priority.There was a lot of smoke and mirrors going on and reorganization after reorganization after reorganization. Meanwhile few crooks were caught but lots of reorganizations.There was also plenty of paperwork and reports and studies and PR appearances and statistics , but few crooks put away during the 13 year Liberal reign compared to the criminal activity going on across the country.

A lot of their reports could have been written by Ph'D's in bureaucratese but few criminals were caught.As for planning and priorities, the Liberals knew well in advance that there would be a lot of RCMP retirements in a short time frame. They had 13 years to prepare for it but apparently it wasn't that much of a priority since that time is now and there are thousands of experienced officers retiring in the next few years. You can't make an equal trade between a novice and a senior investigator with 25-30 years of investigative experience.How long is it going to take the rookies to be effective? So on top of everything else there is a major brain drain which also has to be addressed.If 7000 retire in the next few years, you will have about 40% of the officers with less than 5 years experience.The crooks are laughing themselves silly.

There were many , many solid officers in the ranks who were let down over the years.They joined to put the crooks away yet had many internal roadblocks thrown in their path- a lot to do with lack of funding.The media seem to be in a feeding frenzy bashing the RCMP yet they seemed to miss the main target over the years, the Liberals who allowed a once proud organization to deteriorate by not properly funding them but there seemed to be plenty of money available for such things as Adscam.

Yes we are all aware of the high profile cases like Beaudoin, who had a great injustice done to him, however the media seem to overlook the minor fact that the major crooks in the country ,during the Liberal tenure, were doing $40 billion + in yearly operations, but that doesn't seem to tweak their curiosity?? Very few arrests were made compared to the activity taking place.Why? As for the RCMP officers killed at Mayerthorpe, why should it have taken 2 years to investigate the most highly prioritized case? Not enough experienced investigators or ....?

Bottom line, some senior management were probably more interested in pomp and circumstance, keeping a lid on things instead of fixing things,and probably were more concerned with their own careers than in the well being of their organization.There was lots of paper shuffling, few arrests.The situation will be rectified .It didn't have to be this way if the media were awake during the Liberal tenure.The issue now is restoring confidence by placing the most competent people at the top ,providing the proper funding and providing incentives to slow down the brain drain.There are still many dedicated officers doing their jobs faithfully daily. There's no point trying to tarnish the whole organization for the lack of leadership.There are many, many competent officers, especially at the Sgt to Chief Superintendent level.The whole organization isn't broke- the leadership could do with a complete overhaul- the sooner the better.