Why Do The Mounties Have To Get Their Man?

The ever-faithful Susan Delacourt takes the RCMP to task for doing the job it should be doing--investigating allegations of criminal wrongdoing, without fear or favour--because it's helping the opposition parties:

Multiplying RCMP probes during this election campaign have turned the Mounties into a fourth political opponent for Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals.

Though the RCMP maintains that it is strictly apolitical, there is no question of the political effect being felt at the news of not one, but two investigations into Liberal government affairs.

In a campaign that has already seen the Liberals set back on their heels repeatedly over ethics and integrity, the RCMP actions, inadvertently or not, play right into the hands of the opposition.

Note the underlying suggestion that the RCMP might be acting as an agent of the opposition. Doesn't that sound a little like paranoia? Moreover, how could the opposition command the RCMP to do anything ?

But in Ottawa, some conspiracy theorists wonder if this flurry of probes represents payback of some kind against the Liberals — the RCMP asserting its power over a government that has launched inquiries into the Mounties' affairs, on everything from the sponsorship scandal to Maher Arar's treatment, and his deportation and torture in Syria.

Still others speculate that the national police force is sniffing the political winds, mindful of what Harper and his MPs have been alleging about the RCMP failing to go after the Liberals hard enough. Last November, when Justice John Gomery's report came out, Harper said the RCMP would have laid more charges in the sponsorship affair if Liberals hadn't been in power.

Isn't that an oblique suggestion that the Liberals might be on their way out and the Mounties are trying to get in the good books of the incoming Conservative government by running a few politically-motivated investigations for them?

The Liberals' more reliable media backers, of whom Susan Delacourt is one, must be getting awfully desperate when they have to start slagging the RCMP as tools of the Tories.

(Irrelevant side note: Why are so many Liberal mouthpieces named Susan? Susan Smith, Susan Murray, Susan Riley, Susan Delacourt, etc., etc.)

Source: Toronto Star