RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told reporters that she’s confident Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will extend her for another five year term beginning in March.
“I’m absolutely staying on as Commissioner of the RCMP,” she told the Globe.
Ultimately, Trudeau decides whether to re-appoint Lucki to a second term. A statement from the Public Safety department provided a non-answer to the issue.
Lucki seems to think a renewed appointment is a done deal, despite all the backlash she’s received.
“She does not evoke confidence in her ability to do this job,” said Conservative MP Raquel Dancho.
“We need first and foremost an RCMP commissioner that has the confidence to effectively do her job and I don’t feel she has done that.”
The Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) investigating Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act revealed Lucki didn’t communicate crucial information in a meeting she had with Trudeau just one day before he invoked the never-before-used Act.
She had written down that police had “ not yet exhausted all available tools” in dealing with protestors but did not share the findings with the government. While testifying at POEC, Lucki admitted that, in hindsight, she should have communicated such information to the prime minister.
Lucki’s answers were mainly vague during her testimony, and she often said she “couldn’t recall” several incidents she was involved in.
She also conceded that RCMP officers had the legal power to remove protestors once they violated the court-ordered injunction to leave Ottawa but didn’t do so because it wasn’t “their role.”
Last month, the Mass Casualty Commission published phone recordings of Lucki expressing frustration that the Nova Scotia RCMP would not publicly discuss weapons used to kill 22 in the immediate aftermath of a massacre.
The recordings, which were believed to be lost, came amid allegations that Lucki pressured the RCMP to release the types of guns used in an April 2020 mass shooting. It’s alleged Lucki wanted information about the weapons to be public to advance the Liberal gun control agenda.
