Police serve and protect as politicians
They scrutinize crowded rooms, sit backs to the wall, and instinctively hit the deck at the sound of guns blazing in the Hall of Honour.
A dozen ex-police officers occupy seats in the Commons and Senate, which is possibly a record.
It’s most certainly a thin blue line. All but one are Tory MPs and senators, from Canadian Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, on leave from active duty as a Winnipeg police officer, to Alberta MP and former Mountie Jim Eglinski, who took his Commons seat this month.
David Wilks, a hulking MP from British Columbia, spent two decades at RCMP outposts from New Aiyansh to Sparwood. He and his partner once waded into a crowd of 1,000 rioting youths trashing Penticton to make an arrest.
Today, the verbal invective fired during question period is a comparative cake walk.
Conservative Sen. Vern White spent 31 years in police work, 11 as chief of police (including five in Ottawa) and as a senior RCMP officer. His ability to walk the middle of the political road was important to succeed.
“So, yeah, the transition is tough,” he said of politics.
What’s more, “there’s not a whole lot of people I’ve disliked in my life. I’ve investigated a fair number of homicides and I didn’t dislike or hate those people. I might hate their act, but hating them was tough to do.”
But “in politics, people dislike each other because of their politics. I find that challenging. That was a transition.”
Neither the Liberals nor NDP count retired police officers in their ranks, though former Liberal senator Larry Campbell, now sitting as an independent, served in the RCMP.
The 11-member Conservative police fraternity serves as a family of sorts. A piece of them will always remain police officers. With three former chiefs of police, senior ex-Mounties
and decades of front-line experience, it would also be a seemingly strong law enforcement caucus for advice on government policy and legislation.
Yet while some members are consulted individually for a police perspective on matters, the government doesn’t often seek advice from the law enforcement caucus as a whole.
Likewise, the Conservatives’ tough-on-crime agenda developed quite independently of the former officers in caucus. The law-and-order lineup is an obvious pull, but it’s not the chief reason these lawmen became lawmakers.
Politics and policing have always been a complex symbiosis. Similarities abound between the two and the personalities they attract.
Each organization is topdown and highly structured. Yet individual members, whether in Parliament or on the street, must be able to stand alone and defend themselves.
Everything is calculated. Nothing moves forward, be it a government bill or a homicide charge, unless success seems assured.
And t he power each
institution wields over society depends on public approval. Corruption cannot be tolerated. That results in the policing of politics and the politics of policing.
Both jobs can be thankless, with frequent public criticism. Even the vocabulary of one often echoes the other: leadership, respect, responsibility, order, justice, community, protect, serve, punish.
It’s not surprising then there’s a “real natural flow and fit for law enforcement people in Parliament,” said Yukon Conservative MP Ryan Leef, 40. He’s a one-time RCMP officer, former conservation officer, correctional centre deputy superintendent and cage fighter with a
black belt in martial arts.
As former peace officers, “we’ve already had years under our belts where you’ve faced some of that abuse that comes in the public context and you’ve already made peace with yourself and your ambition,” he said. “Your ambition is not measured by a paycheque, by self-reward. Your ambition is measured by what you can do every day for the people in your community. And there’s probably no group that recognizes that as much in this environment as law enforcement.”
Wilks, 55, came to Parliament in 2011 after 11 years in local B.C. politics and 20 years before that as a Mountie in the province’s rugged reaches. He’s always had Conservative blood. When incumbent Tory MP Jim Abbott decided not to run in the 2011 election, Wilks stepped up.
A big reason Wilks came to Ottawa was to make a difference in justice issues. He now sits on the justice committee.
“The Criminal Code should not be getting bigger,” he said. “We should actually be trying to condense it and make it as simple as we can for police officers to use. It’s got so muddled.”
Your ambition ismeasured by what you can do everyday for the people in your community. RYAN LEEF MP AND FORMER MOUNTIE