RCMP disciplinary decisions vetted before release, document shows
The RCMP’s top brass are requiring disciplinary decisions related to misbehaving Mounties be vetted first for certain sensitive materials before they can be released to the media, even though these reports were typically released unredacted for years, newly released documents show.
The new protocol, approved by the force’s senior executive committee in the summer of 2012, went against the advice of Canada’s information commissioner, according to an RCMP briefing note obtained by Postmedia News under access- toinformation legislation.
A senior RCMP official said Friday that the protocol is still evolving and that information withheld from reports is limited and “not consequential to the decision or the readability of the decision.”
“I don’t think that the changes are particularly far- reaching,” said Chief Supt. Stephen Thatcher of the RCMP’s adjudicative services branch.
Since about 2000, RCMP adjudication boards — the three- member panels that hold disciplinary hearings — typically released “unvetted” copies of their decisions and related hearing materials, such as exhibits, the briefing note states.
The quasi- judicial hearings themselves are generally open to the public.
But in July 2012, two months after the CBC requested dozens of disciplinary decisions, a “new protocol” came into effect that requires all decisions to be “edited” to remove references to such things as undercover operations or projects, national security interests and in- camera hearings, as well as to children and victims.
While the office of the federal privacy commissioner was OK with these changes, the office of the access- to- information commissioner, Suzanne Legault, took a “contrary position,” the document said.