Review Ottawa Police and OPSB: Failure of Trust

As Canadians, we are disturbed by some OPS “outreach” initiatives, including initiatives that have reportedly seen OPS officials recruiting candidate police officers from and through several Ottawa area mosques. Other aspects of the outreach program call for the attention of Canadians concerned about the integrity of the Ottawa Police Service, and its management.

Regarding the outreach program: we feel that Canadian police forces should not be recruiting from religious institutions, given the risk of radicalism presented by certain strains of religion. Moderate Canadian Muslims have objected to outreach initiatives that have implicated the Ottawa Police Services Board, under Chairman Eli El-Chantiry, the Ottawa Police Service, under Police Chief Charles Bordeleau, and the Community and Police Action Committee, in involvement with questionable Islamic organizations and persons.

These police organizations have not proved able, in a consistent way, to distinguish radical Islamist from moderate Islamic actors within the community, and have therefore enabled hardline elements wrongly to profit from public association with police. It is a matter of record, for example, that the Ottawa Police Service has associated itself with the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), formerly the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN), the Canadian chapter of a Saudi-funded United States organization that was designated an unindicted co-conspirator in the US Holy Land Foundation terrorism funding prosecution. Ottawa Police officials have also attended a celebratory event at a mosque known to welcome an Islamic extremist speaker.

If police outreach should be necessary, Ottawans must be approached as a broad polity, not as members of religious or other exclusive "communities", to participate in police-sponsored public briefings and recruitment sessions. The emphasis should be on public fora and institutions, where all citizens would be equally welcome. It goes without saying that the police force of any free, unbiased country would be expected to avoid recruiting staff based on religious affiliation, especially in countries in which sectarianism has not been recognized officially as an acceptable basis for “equal-opportunity” recruitment. To do otherwise would be unacceptable and inappropriate for a principled country such as Canada, and invite sectarian and other division.

We are surprised that, in economic times in which the Ottawa Police Service finds itself challenged to fund its basic policing obligations, the Ottawa Police Services Board and Ottawa Police executive have involved themselves in a wide ranging program of “flag-and-banner” ceremonies celebrating foreign countries and their traditions. The OPS must return to putting its taxpayer resources into the basic police mandate: policing. Why, for example, was a banner lauding Islam displayed in the Ottawa Police building, particularly when there could be far more important and pressing priorities for the attention of Ottawa’s police, and the use of police funds? Was it appropriate for the Ottawa Police Service to have Ottawa’s taxpayers cover an Egyptian flag-raising ceremony at OPS headquarters, to celebrate the appearance of representatives of the Interior Ministry of the Mursi Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt? Is this an attempt by some officials to curry favour with select, and perhaps troublingly radical, residents of Ottawa?

As concerned Canadian citizens, we object to the divisive direction in which certain OPS outreach initiatives have taken the OPS and Ottawa community. We ask that the police stop this sort of outreach program and especially refrain from inappropriate involvement in religious, foreign and other celebrations and institutions. At a time when citizens worry about radicalism and gang crime, elements of this program send confusing messages to our young and to a substantial immigrant population seeking to integrate.

It is the duty of each and every Canadian to speak out when our values and freedom are compromised. With Remembrance Day coming on November 11th, we must never forget that the freedoms we enjoy in Canada today, and may even take for granted, have been secured at a very high price.

As the national anthem states: “We stand on guard for thee.” We hope that the Mayor and City Council of Ottawa, the Ottawa Police Services Board and Ottawa Police Service, will do the same.