Backlash, Mr. Prime Minister : With All Due Respects

"Mister Prime Minister and all members of Parliament who try to gain political points on the back of the RCMP members should show some discomfort and embarrassment. In fact, they should have requested for explanations, valid and dependable statistics before identifying our members as racist and by doing so, humiliating us by kneeling down as if demanding pardon for our renowned organization which has served our country with honour, integrity and devotion for the last 147 years."
"You, that we have protected since your infancy, would have to lead us to believe that you are more acquainted with the RCMP than your recent statement depicts, especially based on your personal experience on how many RCMP members that you have met are considered racist."
"Your manner to conclude that the RCMP is systematic racist is based on myth rather than true facts."
"Of course on some occasions members under pressure over-react. However these misdemeanors are never ordered, supported or tolerated by any level of management."
Gilles Favreau, retired deputy commissioner of operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Protestors chant near the Parliament Building during a Black Lives Matter protest in Ottawa on Friday. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

"I don't think defunding the RCMP does anybody any favours, because what you're saying is reducing police services."
"I think what should be done is identifying what areas people think are causing unhappiness along the lines of racism and let's see what could be done."
James Forrest, director of communications, RCMP Veterans' Association

"I am calling on each Canadian to remember the courage and dedication of our police officers."
"Not two months ago we were celebrating these first responders, who were coming to work to protect us, risking their own health and that of their families in order to do their duty."
"Are we so convinced the actions of a few, who have yet to be afforded the right of due process, colours or describes the whole profession?"
"The police in Canada are focused on the principle of community policing and risk their lives every day to protect people they don't even know. They deserve our gratitude and support, not because they are perfect, but because they are human."
B.C.Senator Bev Busson, RCMP commissioner

"His [Trudeau's] gesture was without substance and was merely symbolic."
"We have not seen the Trudeau government take any substantive actions to combat systemic racism."
Kike Roach, UNIFOR national chair in social justice and democracy, Ryerson University

Protesters gather at a rally in Vancouver's Jack Poole Plaza. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis under the crushing knee of a police officer companioned by three other police officers, one an African-American, another of Asian descent responding to a call from a nearby fast-food outlet about counterfeit money which led the police to try to arrest a very large and resistant black man -- George Floyd -- was captured in a short video that graphically depicted the agony suffered by the man as his neck was unrelentingly crushed and he asphyxiated while begging for surcease.

It was a vision of a human being physically and horribly tormented to death and the public reaction was swift and condemnatory, leading to loud public protests that grew in strength and number and began erupting around the globe, orchestrated by the Black rights group Black Lives Matter and co-opted by Antifa and finally by the Muslim Brotherhood, all delighted that law and order in America was being placed under the glare of a public spotlight relentlessly critical and damning.

And a movement was born -- to 'defund' the police. Crowds of protesters, mostly peaceful, but sometimes given to violence, began demanding that statuary honouring figures of the past all of whom had historical celebrity but were tainted by the tenor of the times in which they lived where discriminatory racist policies were institutionalized, be removed, destroyed, the memory of the past disowned. Demands that became virulently insistent, violent and international.

"Taking a knee", as a sign of respect for the Black Lives Matter campaign and a commitment to full equality for all with the exception of the majority identified as white colonialists, with their entitled sense of power and pride to be banished to the dungeon of disgrace and disentitlement became the new mantra of the self-assigned oppressed and disentitled. The reality of endemic violence within black communities, the enormous death toll of black-on-black violence through guns and gangs and drug trafficking ignored in the call to hold the white establishment accountable for the fraught lives of blacks.



Black Lives Matter, on a roll, extravagantly and bitterly blamed 'white privilege' and 'Jews and Zionists' for all their problems, not absent fathers and casual attitudes toward the laws of society meant to apply to all. These are all issues dear to the heart of Justin Trudeau who makes a great show of supporting all social justice events, and here was yet another dear to his heart. Like his assent that yes, as Black Lives Matter and their supporters claim, black and indigenous Canadians are treated unfairly, unduly represented in prisons in numbers far in excess of their population numbers.

And most critically, that police forces at all levels, but particularly the Royal Canadian Mounted Police units are rife with racist attitudes, an institutionalized racism for which he pledges a turnabout, yet another issue for which he apologizes to the Canadian public that sees itself victimized for no reason other than that it is not white, in an inherently multicultural society with fully one-third of its population born elsewhere representing people of ethnic, cultural and religious origins arriving in Canada to enjoy its freedoms and dedication to equality rights.

None of which stopped this Liberal prime minister from showing up at a Black Lives Matter event on Parliament Hill, handy for all such protests in lieu of Parliamentary sittings in the House of Commons, so he could visibly and empathetically rest on one knee to solemnly indicate his grave and sincere support for all that Black Lives Matter represents. An attitude and an incident seen as grossly unfair and distasteful by the federal police force that has protected Justin Trudeau all his life.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes a knee during in a Black Lives Matter protest on Parliament Hill June 5, 2020 in Ottawa. This didn't sit well with the RCMP Veterans' Association.  Dave Chan / AFP via Getty Images