RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki says she wants to remain at the helm of the federal police force, even as she faces growing dissatisfaction at the highest levels of government with her leadership. Commissioner Lucki, who has faced a series of controversies that have put the government on the defensive, said she did not want to stand aside. Her five-year term is up for renewal in March. “I absolutely remain as RCMP Commissioner,” he told reporters late Tuesday night after testifying at the inquiry into the invocation of the emergency law. Although Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has not made a decision on whether to reappoint Commissioner Lukey, three senior government officials told The Globe and Mail that the federal cabinet is not satisfied with the way the RCMP is being managed. They point to what they call her poor communication skills and mishandling of important files such as the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, the Emergency Act and systemic racism within the RCMP, the sources said. The Globe did not identify the officials who were not authorized to publicly discuss the government’s view of Commissioner Lucki’s performance. Emergency Act Research: What you need to know about the commission and what’s happened so far The office of Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino declined to say whether Commissioner Lucki would be reappointed by the Prime Minister. “We continue to work with Commissioner Lucki to keep our communities safe and make significant progress on a number of important issues – including RCMP reform, advancing Indigenous policing, protecting Canadians from gun violence and more others,” communications director Alexander Cohen said in a statement. . The Official Opposition says they have also lost confidence in Commissioner Lucki, given her handling of the truck protests last winter and the mass killing of 22 people in Nova Scotia in 2020. “It doesn’t inspire confidence in her ability to do this job,” said conservative public safety critic Raquel Dancho. “We need first and foremost an RCMP commissioner who has the confidence to do her job effectively and I don’t think she has done that.” Commissioner Lucki has been called as a witness in both the mass shooting inquiry and the ongoing federal inquiry in Ottawa, where Judge Paul Rouleau is considering Ottawa’s unprecedented decision to invoke the Emergency Act to end a series of protests and blockades against pandemic measures. What Commissioner Lucki did and did not do during the convoy protests was a key point of contention during the investigation. During testimony Tuesday, Commissioner Lucki could not recall key meetings during the protests. he said he did not understand the role the emergency law could play. and was unable to explain comments from meetings and text exchanges in which he participated. Asked Tuesday why she couldn’t recall many of the critical moments leading up to the act’s invocation, Commissioner Lucki told reporters there were many meetings and “it’s easy to confuse one meeting with another.” One of the meetings he misremembered was chaired by the Prime Minister on February 13. Her prepared notes for that meeting included her assessment that the police had “not yet exhausted all available tools” in existing law, but she never brought that up to the meeting. Asked at the inquiry if it occurred to her that it might have been important to make the assessment clear, Commissioner Lucki testified that “in hindsight” it might have been “something important”. She e-mailed her analysis to Mr. Mendicino’s chief of staff, Mike Jones, but her reservations about the act were omitted from a separate e-mail sent to the Secretary of Public Safety. Commissioner Lucki could not explain on Tuesday why this advice to the minister was removed. She was also unable to explain the discrepancy between her public comments about the need for the Emergency Act and her private advice to the government – which opposition MPs criticized. Criticism of Commissioner Lucki’s conduct has now been leveled in two separate inquiries this year. Asked about it by The Globe on Tuesday, she dismissed the question. “I don’t think there is any doubt about my conduct in this investigation. You question my behavior, but I don’t think anyone else does,” Commissioner Lucki said. The commissioner has also been embroiled in controversy over her handling of the mass shooting in Nova Scotia. After the massacre, he was accused by RCMP subordinates in the province of pressuring them to release information about the type of weapons used to help the Liberal government’s gun agenda. When the officers refused, they said she reprimanded them and that Commissioner Lucki said she had promised the Prime Minister’s Office that the information would be made public. These allegations led to parliamentary hearings in which Commissioner Lucki and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair were called to testify about possible political interference. The commissioner later denied she was under political direction to release information about firearms. But, he admitted, he felt an imperative to get more information out to the public as quickly as possible. University of Ottawa criminology professor Michael Kempa said Commissioner Luckey, who previously ran the RCMP training school in Regina and never worked at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa until her appointment in 2018, is struggling with the concept of operational independence. “One of the difficulties with an RCMP commissioner is that they tend to work their way up. Even if ministers don’t directly pressure them, and because the commissioner serves at the pleasure” of the prime minister, “they tend to anticipate and read what ministers want,” he said. “This has hurt her tenure as commissioner.” Like other commissioners, Professor Kempa said Commissioner Lucki has taken the position that “the political leadership … can ask her anything about business, but she cannot be involved in advising on any business matter”. In fact, he said the public security minister can provide strategic direction on operational matters – as long as it is in writing – but cannot direct the police in how they exercise their powers of arrest, investigation and prosecution. When the Prime Minister appointed Commissioner Lucki as the country’s first permanent female Commissioner in 2018, she pledged to “challenge assumptions” and ensure “no stone is left unturned” in tackling issues of discrimination, sexual harassment and misconduct within the force. But the Commissioner was shaken when she was forced to confront systemic racism. As Black Lives Matters protests forced reckoning around the world in 2020, a series of videos emerged showing Mounties using excessive force against Indigenous people, and six Indigenous people were killed by police in Winnipeg, New Brunswick and Nunavut in just three months . At first, she disputed the idea that there was systemic racism in her organization and said she wasn’t sure what the expression meant. Days later, he reversed course, acknowledging that “systemic racism is part of every institution, including the RCMP” and vowing to “lead positive change on this critical issue.” In 2020, an independent report by former High Court judge Michel Bastarache found a “toxic” culture within the force that tolerated misogynistic and homophobic behaviour.
