Thank you, Mr. Chair.
By excluding these areas.... I hope you can wrap yourself around what I say.
Commissioner Paulson is in charge of the RCMP, and as the command structure drops down, you have detachments spread across Canada. I was fortunate in my 35 years to have commanded five different detachments, from a corporal's to an inspector-sized detachment. I worked on every one of these that are listed, usually on a weekly basis, dealing with discipline among the members.
If I had had to go back and negotiate with the union every time I had to discipline a member or look do an appraisal, that would have been very disruptive. To be a good commander, I needed to have some tools so that I could make it safe for the community and safe for the members policing in that community. These are the fundamental basics of making an operation operate well and operate better. If you take those away and put up roadblocks so that we out in the field....
I'm a long way from Ottawa when I'm commanding a detachment—the last detachment was Fort St. John—and the commissioner is relying on me to make decisions on these. I am accountable to him. The detachment commander has to report all the way up the line; his work is being supervised. There's a strong accountability in place.
If you take these basic eight out, it will be very difficult for any commander, whether he's in charge of the RCMP at Tuktoyaktuk, in charge of Fort St. John, or in Gold River, which was my first command. I was a corporal with one other member, and we worked very closely. I had to use these fundamental principles as a commander and was expected to use them as a commander. If you take those away, such that I have to negotiate every time I have to discipline and deal with one of my members, it's going to destroy the element of command in the field.
Thank you.