The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC).
This time, the Justices have bestowed their blessing on the RCMP giving it the right to organize – aka unionize.
They lean on Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s infamous Charter of Rights that gives Canadians, among other things, the right to associate.
But the Court had at its disposal another option but chose to ignore it and more on that in a minute.
Readers of my Blog will know that I do not favour unionizing those who are paid from the public purse and the recent Provincial Elections, here in Ontario, can attest to the fact that Public Service Unions spent multi millions of dollars to tip the scales away from principled Conservatism which would restore balanced budgets and reduce the size of our bloated civil service.
And if you agree with me that public servants should not have the right to unionize – this is especially true as it pertains to the Police and to the Armed Forces. Both must retain absolute impartiality.
A case in point is Ontario’s own Police Force – the OPP. It is unionized and in fact for the first time in the most recent Provincial Election ran ads condemning the Progressive Conservatives.
All the while, that same organization was involved in several investigations for fraud, misuse of power etc on the part of the Provincial Liberals.
Most recently, the Provincial cops found that the Liberals had done nothing wrong in regard to the replacement of their expected candidate in the current Sudbury Bye-Election. (More on that in an upcoming Blog).
But perhaps the most grievous dereliction of their duty to the public occurred with the native uprising in Caledonia. Here radical indians seized lands and beat up home owners with abandon while the OPP stood back – some with tears in their eyes and let it happen. Our distinguished Premier at the time was Dolton McGuinty who obviously sanctioned this serious breach of justice.
I no longer have faith in the impartiality of the OPP.
Do you?
I said at the beginning that the Court had a choice – they could employed section 1 of the Charter:
Section 1 reads as follows: The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
I happen to think that restricting the police from unionizing is most certainly a reasonable limit justified in a free and democratic society like ours.
Once again the SCC has gone rogue and Society is left to deal with the consequences.
As I see it…
‘K.D. Galagher’
