$250K to transform 3 ? The RCMP needs us!

Y'know, this front page item totally arrested me (heh...) as I pawed thru this morning's Petfinder: the RCMP is set to pay $220,000 to send three deputy minister-level guys to counselling in Arizona, in hopes of transforming their organization, particularly its sliding public image. Factoring in travel, taxes, meals and booze, they'll likely sock out $80K to $85K to ship each warm body out for, ummm, transformational counselling. Which will then, of course, drip through the RCMP org chart like wholesome milk through a bowl of Grape Nuts...

I have no quibble with transformational counselling. What with tasers sizzling amok; questionable training; organizational arrogance and rot; PR stonewalling and BS*; and all-round not-getting-it-ness, the Mounties lately have been driving their spiffy squad cars in the PR ditch more often than not. They need to change.

What gripes me is the fact that we're outsourcing this lucrative gravy train ummm, serious and delicate matter, to US counsellors...

I mean, just yesterday, Aggie was saying that our long-term plans to (somehow) make tunza bux off this blog and never work again, were in serious peril. This story is karma!

I'd like to note that we ESIs are long-time experts in both personal and systemic transformation. For $85K a pop, I'm pretty sure we can offer the RCMP a competitive service. And it shouldn't stop at three guys. Oh, no. In fact, we recommend our comprehensive counselling package for all 25,000-odd sworn and unsworn members of the force.

According to my calculator, this rings up at a touch over $2 billion. Give or take a few bucks. Almost enough, I think, to keep us in the style to which we would love to become accustomed...

We have one condition: our fees are non-refundable. Because, while we, as professional counsellers, would do our utmost to create conditions for transformative change, it's up to the Mounties themselves to (heh, again....) cop to the responsibility. They've got to really want to change...

* Blue Serge...

Tracking the mint's missing gold

I happened by Mister Sloppy's place yesterday - okay, he happens to have air conditioning - and by way of breaking his grumpy Evil-Genius silence, mentioned the Mint's vanishing gold problem, and how the local Petfinder was just yesterday obsessing again about the strange silence of government, mint and red coated gendarme types.

Mister Sloppy snickered. My usually cast-iron coyote tummy clenched. That laugh is never good.

"Slop," I said, fearing the worst. "In your obsessive quest for world domination, you haven't sucked 15 million bucks' worth of gold into an improbability vortex? Or something?"

"I didn't need to," he cackled.

"Huh?" I can be a dimwitted doggy. Especially when it helps me enjoy nice cold air conditioning a bit longer.

"You know how the Tories - having such terrific heads for business - are all hot on selling off prime government assets at fire sale prices? To allegedly balance the government's books, even though it always loses major money?

"I was rummaging around a government network one night a coupla years back and sniffed out the fact that their brain trust had decided to flog the mint's extra gold inventory in secret. To - get this - one of those "We buy all of your used gold - no amount too large or too small" joints that advertise on late night cable channels. I hacked myself into a few emails as a discussion option, and incorporated myself as a cheap gold buyer the next day. Bought a few ads in throw-away tabloids and on cable to look legit. Hung out. Waited. The government showed up in no time!"

"Aaand?" I breathed.

"I drew up a contract they couldn't make head or tails of. Not that they ever make head or tails of anything," he snorted. "When the dust cleared, I had signatures on an airtight document assigning me fifteen million bucks in gold ingots and assorted refining scrap, purchased for the princely sum of thirty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents. Which, by the way, is actually about what most old gold places would have paid 'em. A buncha the backroom guys from the PMO are now so redfaced, all they wanna do is drop the whole story down a mine in Sudbury."

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I gotta pack." Mister Sloppy looked dreamy. "Maybe Switzerland. The ice cream in Zurich is fabulous this time of year."

"So you're taking a well-deserved break from planning world domination?" I said, hopefully. I've had enough Pepto-Bismol moments lately already, with Mayor Larry back.

Mister Sloppy cast an austere blue eye at me. "Of course not! The Large Hadron Collider is there, too..."

Stunned?

Many of you know that we of the Elgin Street Irregulars are big on lists of, ummm, five. If you don't, read our archives. You'll figure it out.

Some may also recall that I take a dimwitted quadruped's dim view of high voltage electrical discharges applied to living creatures. Especially since the Vancouver death of Robert Dziekanski after he was tasered - five times, it turns out - in October 2007.

With a full-on enquiry into the man's death, Taser International, cops in general and the RCMP in particular all seem to be heavily vested in denying that Tasers, police, Dziekanski and deadness are in any way linked. These may be honestly held opinions.

But I admit that my first uncharitable thought, when I heard about the Alzheimer's-like testimonial trend at the inquiry was, "Yeah, right. Stonewall away, guys...." Because, I reasoned, these talking points may also exist because if any of 'em did hint at regrettable liability, there could be legal and financial hell to pay, in Vancouver and elsewhere.

But faced with RCMP Commissioner Bill Elliot's plea for the public to walk a mile in his police force's spit-polished boots before rushing to judgement, I am now wondering about the real victims here. Could it be that the guys behind those electric stun guns really are victims, and worse off than Dziekanski?

Because after standing nearby while one of them pulled the trigger - did I mention, five times? - all of the Mounties present seem to have suffered catastrophic memory loss about the event. I don't wish to be uncharitable and suggest that they made their original statements under the mistaken assumption that no bystander had video-recorded the entire incident. Which would now place them in a position of having to explain why their statements and that video seem to part ways on several, ummm, crucial points...

No, we coyotes will take the high (voltage) road, and a charitable view of such memory loss. Obviously, the poor sunsabitches' neurons were fried by the weapon's electrical fallout. One weeps! To think of all the incidents in which police will be medically unable to remember why they zapped anybody! We could lose respect for the Mounties. And the legal system would surely descend into chaos...

Behold, the most Canadian photo ever

Canadian Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, Que., July 2007