OTTAWA—Green MP Elizabeth May is charging that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “is a racist institution.”The former, long-time leader of the federal Greens made the statement Thursday at a press conference on Parliament Hill. On Wednesday, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told several media outlets that she does not believe racism is entrenched in the policies and procedures of Canada’s national police force. Asked about the comments Thursday, May stated bluntly that: “the RCMP is a racist institution.”She added: “And I say this carefully. I love many individual RCMP officers, know many RCMP officers who do a fine job.”May then contrasted her experience of being arrested by RCMP officers at an anti-pipeline protest in British Columbia last year with the “organized, top-down decisions to militarize the police force” when arresting Indigenous demonstrators such as the Wet’suwet’en blocking construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northern B.C. “I’m afraid that my experience is that we need to really consider that it’s not the random bad apple.

Source: thestar June 11, 2020 15:11 UTC