RCMP DOT ORG WEBLOG

ICBC, the British Columbia government auto insurance corporation is having its problems these days. It seems that some employees learned how to rig the bidding process in order to buy vehicles that had previously been “written off”.

According to reports there are more than a few managers involved (22+??) and at least some of the autos that were written off and then bought by these managers were not deserving of that label. The inference is that somebody’s Jaguar or Mercedes was damaged and that an ICBC manager would deem the vehicle a “write off” and then buy it in a rigged auction. At the same time ICBC employees were availing themselves of free or cheap paint jobs and other services at the ICBC repair center. ICBC is handled by the Solicitor General’s office, the same people who have responsibility for the RCMP services in British Columbia.

Anybody who has worked as part of a large crew of workers knows full well that if something of that scale is going on then other people know about it too. At this point I’m not sure how long the above misdeeds were going on for but I can’t help but notice that some of the main players in the Solitor General’s office came up through ICBC ranks which makes sense but it raises alarm bells for me.

Especially dangerous is that these same people are now getting into Civil Forfeiture and I’d imagine that the same dangers (or as they might see it, enticements) exist in that there must be disposals of the seized property (auctions rigged) and selective application of the Civil Forfeiture Act (pick which car you like and write it off). At this point they are seizing the vehicles of impaired drivers and the houses of marijuana “grow show” operations. Their “flagship” seizure was that of the Hells Angels clubhouse in Nanaimo.

Additionally, the proceeds from the sale of the seized goods can be used to pay for the costs of seizing the goods so the police have additional reason to use the Civil Forfeiture Act in zealous, and probably overzealous fashion.

Ron Paul is a Republican who is competing with John McCain for the Republican nomination for president of the USA. A great many Canadians don’t know who he is, largely because of a media “brownout” of his campaign. Ron Paul as president would be a welcome change for Canadians if only because of his determination to end the War On Drugs, which would allow our politicians to make some sensible drug laws of our own (none?) thereby freeing the RCMP from the burden of enforcing our currently stupid drug laws.

There would be many other benefits from a Ron Paul presidency but the above is meant to illustrate in these first weblog posts that there is an understanding that the problems of the RCMP (that in the opinion of this writer contributed indirectly to the death of Robert Dziekanski) are not necessarily problems of their own making nor are they necessarily problems that the RCMP itself can solve. It may take action from all of us and all levels of government to eliminate a problem - even to the point of attempting to influence the USA election.

Of course the chance of Ron Paul winning the Republican nomination is slim (but not none) and the chance that he will be President is slimmer but Canadians should let the USA know - on all levels, personal and administrative - that we would be a lot more likely to be a good neighbour if we didn’t have to deal with their insane drug laws. On a simply personal level, we could all help the RCMP by encouraging any USA friends/relatives/contacts/etc to check out Ron Paul.

Additionally, we should be paying attention to what Ron Paul is actually accomplishing and we should be setting up our own “revolution” ahead of time and using the Paul campaign to avoid making any of the mistakes that they made by which I suppose I mostly mean organize, infiltrate and communicate - starting now.

Later there’ll be more posts about Ron Paul - I just wanted to not have the first posts to be directly critical of the RCMP. This is the weblog though, and not the forum so it is more of a hint as to the scope of this weblog - from drug laws to USA politics. When I see a Canadian citizen (Marc Emery) being extradited by the USA for selling marijuana seeds I realize that we cannot just try and “fix” the RCMP without improving the environment in which they operate - which means USA and world politics are very much an interest of this weblog.