New RCMP boss helped censor Arar report

New RCMP boss helped censor Arar report

COLIN FREEZE AND CAMPBELL CLARK

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

August 11, 2007 at 12:52 AM EDT

TORONTO, OTTAWA — The civilian appointed to lead Canada's national police into a new era of accountability revealed Friday he was among the secret group of bureaucrats who had met to censor findings of the Maher Arar report.

“I was certainly involved in the process leading to that decision, but that decision was a decision taken by government,” RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, wearing a business suit, told reporters after the RCMP's change-of-command ceremony. He was referring to work he had done while serving as an associate deputy minister to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

The government broke with Mountie tradition to choose the career bureaucrat for the top job, in an apparent attempt to distance the RCMP from recent controversies like the Arar affair, which forced the resignation of Giuliano Zaccardelli.

Mr. Elliott insisted Friday that “a number of improvements have already been put in place, but there's more work to be done.”