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Jane McDonald's avatar

That was a fantastic interview with Paul Palango. Thank you for giving him and the Portapique story the platform they deserve. Nice to see not all media have lost their instincts (your crime-reporting background shows, Jen). I read 22 Murders, visited Portapique recently, and am now halfway through Anatomy of a Cover-up. I agree with others here: Palango should get the Order of Canada.

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Brayden Fox's avatar

Followed Paul's reporting on this going back to the early days right after the massacre. That and the inquiries that came after firmly cemented the idea, for me anyways, that reform of the RCMP was needed. Although I don't know enough to say one way or the other whether Paul's reporting is accurate, in broad strokes it seems plausible, while it can have a sheer of conspiracy around it.

But in a sense, that is likely enough to get people to realize that the RCMP is in need of some type of reform, probably in line with what Trudeau released in one of his last days in office, "A New Policing Vision for Canada: Modernizing the RCMP," which I think most informed observers would recognize as not only being the right path forward for RCMP reform, but has also just the latest in a series of white papers and other documents that call for it.

For those that might bristle at credit for something Trudeau has done, you can see the same or similar criticisms laid out by Liberal and Conservative governments when it comes to this issue.

It's an interesting problem, where it is one of the few policy challenges in Canada that has a somewhat bipartisan agreement on what the solution is, but for whatever reason has failed to materialize into anything. I hope that reporting like Paul's can help keep the discussion in the public debate.

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