During a few minutes of contemplation, while staring at those fluffy clouds in the blue sky above, my mind wanders to the topic of how the RCMP can pull out of this current management death spiral. You must understand that I have come to truly believe that if there is not significant and fundamental change in this once proud organization, that it may be doomed to become a shadow of what they once were, a poor cousin to other policing agencies. Now, before we go further, for those that will criticize wasting ones time with pondering the future, Professor Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan believes that allowing your mind to wander is “valuable”– as it “helps us simulate and plan for the future and learn from out past, and it facilitates creative problem-solving”. So with the Professor’s blessing I recently had this thought.

What if Elon Musk was made the next Commissioner of the RCMP?

This thought admittedly was in turn prompted by having just finished the excellent biography by Walter Isaakson entitled, fittingly, “Elon Musk”. I also am just finishing Michael Lewis‘ book, “Going Infinite” which details the rise and fall of Sam Bankman-Fried. Both of these book subjects are clearly of genius level IQ’s, and come from the world of math and engineering. Bank-man Fried is a riddle and problem solver and relates everything to a math and the ability to solve anything by the use of numbers. He of course is likely going to jail, so I thought he may not the best candidate for the job of RCMP Commissioner. Elon is also a genius in the engineering and production fields, but he may end up living on Mars. However, he is probably the best candidate for the job of Commissioner, even if he is to be only semi-available and would need to “work-share”. One would also have to allow for a 30 minute delay in voice transmissions. But, let’s put that aside.

Many of you will recoil at the thought of Elon in red serge, and let’s be clear, Elon Musk is admittedly a human relations nightmare. So I understand that if you are someone who favours the current climate of employees allowed to dictate to management, working from home, or having designated psychological safe spots inside the office (as was in the Twitter offices) you should stop reading now. Elon is not your man. This will include most people of a liberal progressive nature, who spend inordinate amounts of time talking of diversity and inclusion. I get it, you will openly despise Elon Musk, so it would also be safe to assume that those currently at the higher echelons of the RCMP, would not be in his camp and will not be the first to nominate Elon for Commissioner. It would sort of be a Bill Elliott situation.

This lack of support for Elon by the extreme woke is interesting, because Musk has stated his major agenda items clearly, and all come from the progressive side of the fence. They are to reduce the carbon footprint– and he created Tesla which makes more electric cars than all the other companies combined; to make possible inter-planetary travel and the need for scientific advancements in space, and then he created Space X, which has now replaced NASA as the provider of space travel; and he is concerned about unrestricted development of artificial intelligence; and has developed OpenAI, and then Neuralink. There should be no argument that his momentous accomplishments from building rockets to robots, will not in my opinion be duplicated in my or your lifetime.

How did he do it, how is it possible for a person who grew up in South Africa, bullied, abused physically and mentally, how is it possible he has had these accomplishments, while albeit at the same time becoming such a polarizing figure? It wasn’t easy, it was mind bending hard work, but he did have some basic formulas to his success. So my wandering mind wants to know– can we apply his formulas to the current policing Mountie dilemma?

Part of the “magic” of Elon is his ability to drill down, to determine and decide on the goal of the agency or company. So imagine if you will, that as he sits in the Commissioner’s boardroom surrounded by the multiple levels of top brass– the first question he would ask is what is the role of the RCMP in Canada? Not the secondary goals, but the primary goal. No one by the way, should dare answer “to keep Canadians and their interests safe and secure” because you would be un-ceremoniously escorted from the room.

He would with little doubt marvel at the massive all inclusive mandate, whether it be members on the musical ride, members involved in peace keeping, or cybercrime, rural policing and Federal policing. He would also be astounded that the officers doing public relations could be placed in or be promoted to a staffing or to drug position, with little or no expertise in any of the areas. He is big on getting the very best experts.

Getting back to the central question though, my best guess would be that he would determine that the central role of the RCMP is to “investigate”. Once that was agreed, he would then drill down further. He would say that if you are not tied to an investigation, or have participated in an investigation, or are running an investigation, then you are not in fact needed. And he would make each and everyone prove and point to an investigation that they were involved in, explain their role, and what that role entailed in terms of expertise and experience. If you could not, you would also be released.

He would explore each and every layer of an investigation and the procedures to determine who made a single decision in the course of the investigation, and then determine what was the result of those decisions. One would need to justify your method, your process, and your results. You could equally be assured if the results weren’t positive, you too would likely be expendable.

Needless to say the administrative and operational pyramid would be completely flattened. If you were supervising another supervisor, or just one of the many layers of authority up and down the organization– you also would be gone. Musk practised what he preached in all of these businesses and would often make massive cuts to personnel. Those that were not central to the mandate would be terminated, which in this puffed up 21st century meant that you would have to fire a lot of people. Later on, he reasoned if you didn’t need to hire back 25% of those that you fired, than the original cuts clearly had not been deep enough. It was ruthless and unfeeling. He cut down 1500 software engineers at Twitter to 150– if you hadn’t recently written any code you were gone. (Just as an aside, Twitter or X is still running despite all the dire predictions.)

Elon has no emotional sensors and no ability to show empathy or read body language. He is an uncaring, results oriented, and highly driven individual– but always leading by example, sleeping on assembly line floors at Tesla, and outworking everyone in his path. He had an intimate engineering knowledge of each process, and of each layer of that process. By speaking to the ones on the ground floor, the ones who actually built the car or the rocket ship, he was able to cut costs, and drastically cut timelines, and would in almost every instance reach a mission accomplished moment. He would take on complete personal and financial risk, while at the same time be oblivious to criticism– some of which was warranted, and some which was not.

So how many in the RCMP would survive this onslaught of accountability? Not many at 73 Leikin Drive would be a first guess. Commissioner Duheme who recently toured some Mountie detachments and received plaudits for reaching out to the working folk, is clearly still of the Ottawa/Lucki/Liberal mindset. He illustrated this when he recently put out the “Big Five” goals for modernizing the RCMP: 1 )Ensure a safe and equitable workplace 2) Address systemic racism 3) Advance reconciliation with the Indigenous Peoples 4) Support Modern Policing and 5) Improve accountability, transparency and conduct.

I think I can say with some certainty that Mr. Musk would deep six all but number four. All members involved in or working on the other four unmeasurable “goals”, would be removed or sent to an investigative field. There would be no more musical ride for instance, there would be no more strategic media relations groups, there would be no more school liaison, or community policing groups. There would be no more VIP security, replaced by half price security guards or by technology. All administrative officers would be re-assigned, such as those in Staffing and Training sections and if they were in fact needed for the day to day running of the operation, they too would be replaced by cheaper civilian staff.

Command Centres would be no more. If you were leading or supervising, you would be in the cars, on the ground, leading by example, not by gold, silver or bronze command oversight. Of course there would still be supervisors, but if the supervisor’s team failed, the supervisor failed, and would be replaced, not the other way around. One could also believe that there would be no more RCMP shortages of manpower to worry about– as the Mounties living in Nepean were sent to Buffalo Narrows or Flin Flon Manitoba, asked to now find those uniform pants and be prepared for night shifts. Same pay, but a different job.

There would also be financial accountability. Elon famously reduced a $1.5 million air conditioning system on a space module to $150,000 with nothing lost in effectiveness simply by drilling down on the costs to produce. He would question such things as the recent VIP security bill for the PM which rose to $30.9 million in 2021 from $23.3 million in 2019/2020, a 32% increase. The overall budget for the RCMP is currently about $7 billion, Elon would want an accounting of all those dollars being spent, including where the $4 billion for contract policing is being spent on a dollar for dollar basis.

But alas, one’s mind can only wander for short periods of time as something inevitably jolts you back to reality. You and I know there will be no campaign for Elon as Commissioner. Nobody gets fired in the Mounties, nobody is held to account, nobody is required to justify their decision making, and all are protected by a shroud of rules around privacy and the everybody as a victim cloak; that is the society we now inhabit. There would be many that would thrive in an Elon environment, happy to be finally be recognized for the job that they are doing, and to see those that were taking advantage of the “system” removed. But an un-comprehending general malaise would also befall many. The lawsuits and grievances would in and of themselves probably sink the ship.

That being said, it is fun to think of the possibilities, don’t you think, to let your mind wander to another world, where responsibility and accountability replace diversity, inclusion, and proper pronouns. It’s very cathartic, to just for a short time exorcise those woke demons.

Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey via Flickr Commons – Some Rights Reserved