All too often, public apologies are a verbal shell game featuring language that’s been scrubbed and sanitized by a PR firm. Politicians with moist eyes clear their throat, say they’re sorry - and with the next breath gracefully sidestep responsibility.
And that’s why watching RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson apologize – sincerely, bluntly and meaningfully – for the intimidating and discriminatory treatment so many female officers have endured was as refreshing as it was momentous.
For many authority figures, acknowledging a mistake undermines credibility. And so the police seldom explain or apologize. Some would call that resolute, but as accusations of humiliation, professional sabotage and sexual harassment mounted over the years, that resoluteness started to look like the worst kind of stubbornness.
Some female officers found a measure of validation in court, but it always seemed to come at too great a cost as reports of anxiety, depression and PTSD were commonplace.
The officers have suffered, but in another sense we’ve all lost. Across Canada, prejudice prevented more than 1,000 women were kept from doing what they set out to do: protect and serve.
Critics of corruption like to say the fish rots from the head down, pointing out that the holder of the highest office bears the greatest responsibility. If that’s true, we hope Paulson’s apology will set a new tone for police detachments across the country.
We hope his words will be a harbinger of a new era of RCMP accountability. In short, we hope the cops do what they do best: find the guilty and bring them to justice.
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