Tuesday, May 09, 2006

No surprise in lack of success in OC war

The revelation by RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli that we are not being effective in the fight against organized crime should not come as a surprise to anyone.

When Zaccardelli rose to the position as the top cop in the country, his first message was that organized crime was the biggest threat to Canada. At the time, in September 2000, Zaccardelli astonished the assembled media at his first press conference when he said: " For the first time in this country, we are seeing signs of criminal organizations that are so sophisticated that they are focusing on destabilizing certain aspects of our society."

"There are criminal organizations that target the destabilization of our parliamentary system," Zaccardelli said to the astonished press corps.

Not that they should have been astonished given things like Project Sidewinder and the obvious cover-up by the Liberals to ensure the country stayed ignorant of the threat and their failure to act upon it. For the record, the Libs denied any cover-up and then underlined that with a whitewash by the civilian oversight body SIRC. But, that's a little like believing neither the Prime Minister nor the Finance Minister knew anything about the Sponsership scandal. And to quote LBJ, that dog won't hunt.

But however zealous "Zack" may have been coming out of the gate, he was quickly educated in just how political his office has become. With the ink barely dry on the newspapers reporting his comments, Zaccardelli was summoned onto the Prime Minister's lush carpet and put in his place. My sources tell me he was kept waiting outside the office for a lengthy period of time like a naughty schoolboy waiting outside the principal's office.

Whatever direction he wanted to take the fight against organized crime he was stymied by a corrupt political party that would never allow the Force to take the gloves off. Sure, the RCMP achieved some successes. But organized crime in this country is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Any real success can only be achieved with a very, very large financial committment and the balls to say "Go get 'em."

And the Liberals were to busy stealing our money to let the Mounties have any of it to go after the bikers, gangsters and triads in any meaningful way.

Leo Knight

leo@primetimecrime.com