The blurring of thin blue lines
What happens when politicians call the police they're meant to oversee
A mayor, embarrassed by police leaks to the media, calls the police chief. An investigation ensues, during which a journalist has his phone tracked.
A union leader, embarrassed by police leaks to the media, calls the cabinet minister responsible for the provincial police. An investigation ensues, during which six journalists have their phones tracked.
Two different cases, involving two different police forces and two different levels of government.
But they raise the same question: How much influence do those in political power have over law enforcement activities?
Citizen Coderre
In the latest episode of the ongoing media spying saga, Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre admitted that he called police chief Marc Parent in 2014, after hearing that La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé was asking questions about a traffic ticket he had been given some years earlier.
At some point after Coderre's call, Montreal police launched an investigation into the leak. As part of that investigation, police obtained warrants to comb through Lagacé's call logs.
Coderre insisted Monday that he hadn't called Parent as the mayor demanding an investigation into how Lagacé knew about the ticket.
"It was Coderre the citizen who called," he said, adding that he was concerned he was under surveillance.
But whatever Coderre's intentions, it is difficult to ignore the power dynamics at play.
There are few citizens in this city who have the police chief on speed dial; fewer still who sit on the municipal bodies that oversee the force.
More of the same?
This episode of the saga bears a striking similarity to an earlier chapter.
Last week, the Sûreté du Québec acknowledged they had spied on six journalists in 2013 in an effort to root out the source of wiretap evidence then being leaked to the media.
The taps were of conversations involving Michel Arsenault, head of the powerful FTQ construction union, which had endorsed the Parti Québécois in the 2012 election.
When the leaks went public, Arsenault called the PQ's public security minister, Stéphane Bergeron, to complain.
Bergeron, in turn, called Mario Laprise, the head of the SQ at the time. The former minister has said that while he asked the SQ to look into the leaks, he didn't tell them to spy on journalists.
But the optics were bad enough that Bergeron felt the need to step down as the PQ's public security critic.
Blurred lines
Blurring the lines between politician and police is worrying for any number of reasons, not the least of which is the sweeping powers possessed by each.
When one becomes overly compliant to the whims of the other, democracies begin to resemble their more authoritarian cousins.
So it is not surprising that the spying scandal has prompted proposals about how to limit the politicization of the province's police forces.
One idea, proposed the provincial opposition parties, is to require the government's nomination to lead the SQ to receive approval of two-thirds of the National Assembly.
Speaking on CBC Radio Noon, former Montreal executive committee member Jean Fortier suggested the city create an independent review board to oversee police actions.
The Montreal force is currently responsible to city council and the public safety committee, bodies controlled by the mayor's party.
Without more defined institutional checks in place, politicians will have to be sensitive of how even their innocent calls will be received by those on the other end of the line.
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