The public can handle the truth
Disclosure of public safety matters should be the norm, not the exception. The RCMP netted a comms win this week by doing just that.
In the more than 20 years spent talking to media, the one line of questioning I struggled with most was disclosure of public safety matters, specifically employee discipline outcomes.
The standard “cannot discuss personnel matters” is an easy out, especially in unionized environments where too much public discourse, the lawyers would allege, can skuttle back-of-house attempts at outright firings, which are the only reasonable outcomes in some situations. (Yes, Virginia, unionized public servants do get fired.)
Let’s say a bus driver crashes their bus and someone is seriously injured or worse, and it turns out the driver was impaired by drugs or alcohol, for the love of all that is sober, once the investigation is complete you must assure the public – and your own workforce, frankly – that the employee will never be behind the wheel of a bus again. If nothing else, that public disclosure is a deposit into the bank of goodwill, with reputation-bearing interest.
I’d argue for the public’s right to know, public interest, and honesty, openness and transparency as comms principles. Valid, but not always winning. Hot-headed union leaders determined to protect their members, regardless of the deed, can do more harm than good in the reputation management department – a pox on all their houses, etc. Pushing back became a crawling-over-glass exercise that I grew weary of. Instead, when asked if an employee was still on the job after a serious incident of any kind, I’d simply say, “The matter is being treated with the seriousness with which it deserves,” raise my eyebrows ever so slightly, and leave it there.
We saw a comms win, though, this week on a serious matter involving Canada and India. A year ago, Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau stood in the House of Commons and dropped a bombshell that Canada had evidence that agents of the Indian government were in this country partaking in extrajudicial killings.
For years, India has accused Canada of harbouring Sikh separatists who wish to create their own homeland called Khalistan. In Canada, one is free to wish for such things provided no laws are broken through that wishing process.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar was a Canadian and a local leader of the Khalistan movement in B.C. who India declared a terrorist in 2020. He was murdered last year in Surrey and Canada alleges, based on intelligence and police work, that his murder was ordered by India.
Arrests have been made in Nijjar’s murder. with four men facing charges, all Indian nationals. The case remains before the courts.
Last Monday, a slow Thanksgiving news day in Canada, the RCMP took the unusual step of holding a news conference to discuss developments in their ongoing investigation into Indian agents carrying out “violent criminal activity” on Canadian soil.
“An extraordinary situation is compelling us to speak about what we have discovered in our multiple ongoing investigations into the involvement of agents of the Government of India in serious criminal activity in Canada,” reads the RCMP news release dated Oct. 14. “It is not our normal process to publicly disclose information about ongoing investigations, in an effort to preserve their integrity. However, we feel it is necessary to do so at this time due to the significant threat to public safety in our country.”
For the RCMP to openly discuss these threats to public safety amid backroom efforts at diplomacy should bolster public confidence in Canada’s institutions and their commitment to the rule of law. That was the message the Mounties wanted to leave us with – and they did.
Meanwhile in India, “the world’s largest democracy,” its leadership under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has grown increasingly authoritarian where the news media are far more fawning than feisty, where challenging officials is best done from abroad. (Or not, I suppose.) The government of India, despite international pressure from the U.K. and U.S. to co-operate with Canada, continues to deny running an assassin ring.
Matters of public safety, be it the assurance that an intoxicated bus driver never dons your uniform again or shocking Bondesque allegations that foreign-sanctioned hitmen walk among us, must be disclosed. That disclosure might get messy with unanswerable questions and critics may play politics to drive a news cycle, but when the dust settles, ask yourself:
did you do the right thing, for the right reasons?
are people now safer?
was public trust and confidence in your institution strengthened?
If you answered yes to all three and want others to reach the same conclusion, click share or subscribe below.