RCMP investigation of CHRC makes front page news in Washington, D.C.

Ian Fine might be blase about the RCMP's investigation of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (and the Privacy Commissioner's investigation, and Richard Warman's bigoted Internet posts, and just about every other scandal over at Fine's bunker), but the CHRC's troubles are big enough news to make the front page of the Washington Times newspaper today.

Now all we need is a Canadian newspaper to cover the story, too! (Kudos to CTV's Mike Duffy for scooping the whole country on the RCMP investigation last week.)

You can read Washington Times story here, written by Canada's own Pete Vere. I like his lede sentence:

One of Canada's oldest institutions and one of Canada's newest innovations are locking horns.

The Canadian Mounties have been asked to investigate a criminal complaint against the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), popular Canadian blogger Ezra Levant reports.

The complaint comes in response to accusations that investigators with the commission had hijacked the Internet account of an unsuspecting third party in order to post Internet messages to neo-Nazi Web sites.

and this detail was a deft touch:

Ironically, the investigation comes at a time when the Mounties are appealing a Tribunal decision against them.

The Tribunal recently ordered the Mounties to pay $500,000 to Ali Tahmourpour, a police cadet who accused the Mounties of discrimination after being expelled from their training program. The Tribunal also ordered the Mounties to give Mr. Tahmourpour another chance to join.

I have to give a lot of credit to Canada's mainstream media for their excellent coverage of the CHRC's troubles so far. Not just Op-Ed columnists, but the growing roster of shoe-leather reporters who have written news stories on the file, including Joseph Brean and Kevin Libin at the National Post, Colin Perkel from Canadian Press and Charlie Gillis from Maclean's. Perhaps they already have stories in the works about the RCMP investigation.

The RCMP's mere physical presence at the recent execution of an Elections Canada search warrant at Conservative Party headquarters generated a week's worth of front page stories -- even though, in fact, it wasn't an RCMP raid, or a criminal matter, at all. By contrast CHRC actually is under criminal investigation, according to this letter -- and so far, only Duffy has talked about it (and, I think, radio hosts Rob Breakenridge and Tom Young).

I can think of a lot of questions I'd ask, if I were a reporter. Who in the CHRC has been interviewed by the RCMP? How many times? Is the CHRC cooperating? Where were the interviews held? Has the CHRC retained criminal lawyers or other outside counsel? Have any CHRC staff? When did the interviews happen? Are they still ongoing? What documents, if any, did the RCMP take? Did they take any computers or other equipment? Have they interviewed former staff, such as Richard Warman? Have they interviewed CHRC lawyers, such as Giacomo Vigna? Have the RCMP obtained a search warrant? Has it been executed?

Each of those questions could be asked in the context of the Privacy Commission investigation, too.

I wonder which will happen first: a political solution to the problem of the CHRC, or a legal/criminal solution. And I wonder which one the Conservative government would prefer.