OTTAWA - The RCMP didn’t break any rules when they announced a criminal investigation into the federal Finance Department in the middle of the 2005-06 election campaign, because there were no clear rules to break, concludes a report by the RCMP’s watchdog.

Paul Kennedy, chair of the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, released his findings this morning on the Mounties’ controversial launch of a criminal investigation and found that there were no RCMP policies or guidelines to specifically address the public release of information in “highly sensitive” situations. His report also cleared former commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli and RCMP senior management of any wrongdoing.

“Given the absence of any such specific policy, procedure or guideline, I cannot find that any RCMP officer failed to comply with applicable standards,” Kennedy said in his report.

“I concur with the RCMP that its policies, procedures and guidelines are inadequate to address the situation wherein public disclosure of a police investigation may have an impact upon the democratic process and may call into question public confidence in the independence of the police.”

At a news conference in Ottawa, Kennedy noted that Zaccardelli and some other senior RCMP members did not co-operate with his review, which he called “inappropriate.”

“It does the RCMP,_I think, a disservice to have a situation where we have half the members co-operating and the other half not, and no seeming rationale for it,” Kennedy told reporters. He said for there to be “truly effective civilian oversight of police in this country,” officers should be accountable for explaining why they “did or did not do something.”

Kennedy’s report comes more than two years after the original incident that some Liberals say changed the course of the 2006 election.

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Update:  Zaccardelli named Goodale in income-trust release

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