But it pointedly said nothing Thursday about the feuding group of bodyguards that surround them.
The crack team of Mounties who protect Harper and his family around the world and around the clock is supposed to be one of the country’s top police units, and yet today the Prime Minister’s personal detail — known as PMPD — is a fractured squad.
The Star revealed Thursday the unit is shaken by formal allegations of harassment and favouritism against its boss, Supt. Bruno Saccomani, and new counterclaims by his allies that members of his own unit or others in the RCMP brass are pursuing a “witch hunt” and a “vendetta” against him.
Saccomani, Harper’s bodyguard since 2006 who is about to become Canada’s ambassador to Jordan, faces several complaints.
They include an investigation under the Canada Labour Code into harassment in the workplace lodged by RCMP staff relations representatives on behalf of unnamed Mounties who work under him. The RCMP has appointed an outside company, Quintet Consulting Corp., to investigate this complaint — a probe Saccomani is now challenging as unfair and biased in correspondence from his lawyer, obtained by the Star.
Sources say Saccomani also faces two complaints under the RCMP’s internal Code of Conduct, which allege physical pushing or shoving of fellow RCMP employees under his watch, as well as two other internal complaints of harassment that haven’t reached the stage of a formal disciplinary inquiry under the code.
Saccomani denies he has acted improperly. On May 13, his lawyer, Peter Mantas, cited contract “irregularities” between the RCMP and Quintet, and said its investigation is prompted by a “witch hunt” or a “vendetta by certain members of the RCMP leadership (or brass)” against Saccomani “for difficult decisions he was required to make in the course of his duties.”
In the RCMP, Saccomani’s supporters are pushing back hard against his detractors, pointing to a damaging leak last year of an internal management review of Saccomani’s leadership style.
In a formal request dated April 15, 2013, to the top Mountie calling for another independent investigation, Insp. Alain Petit says the leaked document contained vital information about the “inner workings” of PMPD that could be used by someone who might wish to “cause harm to the Prime Minister and his family,” thereby putting them “at greater risk of violence,” as well as those whose job it is to protect the Harpers.
Petit says Saccomani’s moves to intensify training and discipline in order to whip the team into a “tough and highly effective protection unit that is respected around the world” met resistance and obstruction.
Petit suggests on-the-job friction is unavoidable in high-level VIP protection work. “There is little tolerance for conduct that falls short of excellence,” Petit writes. Yet, he alleges, “There are those would prefer a kinder, gentler and relaxed approach” and would like to roll back Saccomani’s changes.
Petit says the team has a major operational problem.
“The members of PMPD must trust and rely on each other to work as a team. We must also rely on the rest of the RCMP for support. That trust has been broken. Someone from within the ranks of the RCMP has knowingly endangered all the PMPD members and the people we are dedicated to serve,” Petit’s formal request for an investigation states.
The RCMP refused to comment on any personnel matters regarding Saccomani, citing privacy laws.
Nor would it comment on Petit’s call for a second federal labour code investigation.
Yet a statement provided to the Star by RCMP media relations officer Lucy Shorey denied any risk to the Harpers.
“Security provided to the Prime Minister was at no time compromised,” it said. “The RCMP continuously reviews its security measures and practices in place in order to ensure a safe and secure environment for the Prime Minister and his family.”
Indeed, RCMP Comm. Bob Paulson downplayed any issues last June. He called the leak of the internal Saccomani report “unlawful,” but was quick to distinguish it from the wave of gender harassment cases then in the headlines. “It’s not a discipline case,” he told reporters. “The underlying need here is to correct behaviour, not to punish people.”
However, sources say the problems continued, with formal complaints unresolved as Saccomani prepares to take up the as yet unannounced diplomatic appointment as Canada’s ambassador in Jordan.
A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told the Star the appointment is simply media “speculation.” However, on Wednesday morning, the Star caught up with Saccomani as he entered diplomat school — the Canadian Foreign Service Institute run by the Department of Foreign Affairs — in Gatineau across the Ottawa River.
Saccomani, who has not yet left the RCMP, was in plain clothes and replied “No” when asked if he would speak to the allegations.
Sources say it is a certainty that Saccomani’s diplomatic posting will go ahead, given the Prime Minister’s confidence in him.
When Saccomani does leave the RCMP, the internal investigations are expected to cease.
However, Joe La Sorsa, a former U.S. Secret Service agent with 20 years experience in providing close personal security for six presidents, from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, said in an interview the PMPD work environment is no different than any other, and it is “hogwash” to suggest otherwise.
“Personalities are always in play, as are political influences and favouritism,” he said.
La Sorsa, 59, now runs a security consulting company, and said he has no special knowledge of or involvement in the RCMP story. But he said he has seen many like it in other protective policing environments, including the Secret Service’s and that of security details at the governor and mayoral levels.
Frictions arise, he said, because politicians exert their influence, suggesting they want certain individuals for jobs, and if anything, in an organization full of “Type A” personalities, there will be even more chances that personality-driven conflicts will grow. But he sees them as “human resources” issues, and nothing more.
Liberal Sen. Grant Mitchell, who has been a force behind current senate hearings into the issue of harassment in the RCMP, says the force would be wise to deal with the larger cultural issues at play in such disputes.
“They know they have a problem, but it’s almost as if they want to get rid of it, as much or more than they want to solve it.”
He added Bill C-42 “isn’t the answer” because it only provides “after-the-fact remedies” that will speed up discipline proceedings but not end a workplace culture that breeds conflict.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Tonda MacCharles
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