Police officer likely to win next month’s Yellowhead byelection, to join growing number of former cops in Conservative caucus

PARLIAMENT HILL—A retired Mountie who is virtually guaranteed to win the federal byelection next month in Alberta will become the ninth former or serving police officer elected to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s caucus—nearly half of all the police officers elected to Parliament since Confederation in 1867.

Ekos pollster Frank Graves says Mr. Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) caucus police contingent, including as well two former police officers the Prime Minister named to the Senate, is a sign Mr. Harper is continuing to attempt to display his “bona fides” when it comes to the Conservative law and order crime agenda.

But Mr. Graves also told The Hill Times on Wednesday that Mr. Harper may be kicking a dead horse, as recent public opinion polls suggest the wider electorate is becoming more moderate and liberal in views about how best to tackle crime.

“Harper wants to establish his bona fides as a law and order government,” Mr. Graves said in an interview.

Mr. Graves used the large percentage of Canadians who now support either legalization or decriminalization of marijuana as an example, arguing that is likely the reason Conservative attacks against Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s (Papineau, Que.) position favouring legalization of cannabis fell flat.

“The attack against Justin Trudeau as the sorcerer’s apprentice didn’t work,” Mr. Graves said. “But public views about punishment versus prevention have completely flipped around. At some point, don’t they realize that playbook is not only stale, it doesn’t even work anymore?”

Retired RCMP officer Jim Eglinsky last week defeated the former mayor of Yellowhead County, Alta., Gerald Soroka, to win the Conservative nomination for the Nov. 17 byelection in the Yellowhead electoral district. Mr. Eglinsky, president of the local Conservative association, said the former Conservative MP who represented the riding, Rob Merrifield, urged him to run. Mr. Merrifield resigned his seat in September to work for Alberta Premier Jim Prentice as the province’s representative in Washington, D.C.

The district has been Conservative territory since former prime minister Joe Clark first won it in 1979, and Mr. Merrifield garnered 77 per cent of the vote in the 2011 federal election.

Mr. Eglinsky, a 35-year veteran of the RCMP who resigned from the national police force in 2002 and went on to become mayor of Fort St. John, B.C., after serving there in the local Mountie detachment, will have plenty of company in the growing caucus of police officers in Mr. Harper’s caucus.

Two of the former officers are members of Mr. Harper’s Cabinet—Heritage Minister Shelley Glover (Saint Boniface, Man) and Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino (Vaughan, Ont.).

Ms. Glover, a Winnipeg Police Service sergeant when first elected to the Commons in 2008, has become one of Mr. Harper’s key Cabinet ministers. Mr. Fantino, a longtime former chief of the Toronto Police Service and also once head of the Ontario Provincial Police, won a key electoral breakthrough for Mr. Harper when he was elected in a longtime Liberal-held riding in the vote-rich suburban area surrounding Toronto in a 2010 byelection.

Most of the other police officers in the Conservative caucus hold lower-profile roles, but they are all part of an unprecedented wave that has taken place under Mr. Harper since he led the Conservative Party of Canada into its first election campaign in 2004.

Members of the Conservative police contingent in the Commons, who formed their own informal caucus, also include: MP Dave Mackenzie (Oxford, Ont.), a former police chief; MP Rick Norlock (Northumberland-Quinte West, Ont.), a former OPP officer; Daryl Kramp (Prince Edward-Hastings, Ont.), also once a member of the OPP; MP Rob Clarke (Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River, Sask.), an RCMP sergeant; Ryan Leef (Yukon), also a former RCMP officer; and MP David Wilks (Kootenay-Columbia, B.C.) a former RCMP drug squad officer in B.C.

Mr. Kramp is now chair of the Commons Public Safety Committee, where Mr. Norlock is one of the committee members. The House Public Safety Committee has consistently had at least two former police officers as members over the past two Parliaments under Mr. Harper.

Conservative Senator Vern White, a former RCMP assistant commissioner who also once headed the Ottawa Police Service, and Conservative Senator Jean-Guy Dagenais, a former Sûreté du Québec officer, round out the police caucus in the Conservative Party.

When Mr. Harper named both former officers to the Senate he instantly doubled the number of police officers who had been appointed to the Senate since 1867.

The number of police officers in Mr. Harper’s caucus might not be surprising to some in light of the attention he and his government have placed on crime legislation since 2006, but few likely were aware of its scale compared to the number of police MPs and senators under previous prime ministers.

Of the total of 21 police officers and former police officers elected to the Commons since Confederation, only two were Liberal Senators. The rest were Conservatives or Progressive Conservatives going back to Canada’s first prime minister John A. Macdonald, who appointed the first police officer to the Senate, George Crawford McKinsey, in 1884.

“If you style yourself as a law-and-order government it helps to have people who have badges and hand-cuffs on your side,” Conservative commentator Tim Powers told The Hill Times.
“I think Conservatives have long believed that the large police constituency in Canada are more likely to be supporters than not, this is also reinforced by having cops as MPs.”

Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author:  Tim Naumetz