David Stonehouse News

Aspiring Mounties asked: Are you gay?

RCMP says policy prevents blackmail, protects secrets

By David Stonehouse

The RCMP admits to investigating whether potential recruits to its ranks are gay, a practice legal experts say likely runs the force afoul of federal human rights law.

"This is a question that is black and white in the security interview. It's there. It is common knowledge to everybody that has gone through the interview," RCMP Staff-Sgt. Normand Nadeau tells the Citizen. "This is a departmental policy."

Although the senior Mountie denies the force automatically rejects gays, he defends the policy of determining the sexual orientation of potential recruits as necessary to protect against the possibility that a homosexual officer could be blackmailed into revealing secrets.

"This is a federal department and our members have to deal with top-secret files on a regular basis, and are made aware of privileged information," says Staff-Sgt. Nadeau, who holds a top administrative post at the force's New Brunswick headquarters in Fredericton. "We want to make sure there is no compromise."

The RCMP is facing a challenge to the practice by a small-town New Brunswick police officer who lost his job when the Mounties took over policing of the area.

Daniel Maillet is filing a discrimination complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging an investigator acting on behalf of the Mounties asked a colleague whether he was gay.

"The RCMP did wrong here," says Mr. Maillet, a 37-year-old who worked as a police officer in the northern crab fishing town of Caraquet for four years before being dropped last month when the Mounties moved in.

Although the force vigorously denies it, he fears he was rejected primarily because the RCMP became convinced he is gay. He says the force is incorrect -- he is heterosexual -- but that it should not be inquiring in the first place.

Legal experts tend to agree.

They say the practice is likely a violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which not only bars employers from denying someone a job over his or her sexual orientation but also prohibits inquiries about it.

"Is it a discriminatory practice to ask the question? According to the act, yes," Winnipeg lawyer Ian Blomeley says.

Section 8 of the act says it is discriminatory for an employer "to make any written or oral inquiry" about such things as race, religion, marital or family status. Sexual orientation was added after the federal government vowed in the mid-1980s to end discrimination against
homosexuals.

"If somebody is denied something because their sexual orientation, clearly it would be discrimination," says Ritu Khullar, a constitutional and human rights lawyer in Edmonton. "But sometimes the asking of the question itself can offend principles because one doesn't know what the implications of the answer are. They can say, 'It doesn't really matter
to us.' But you don't know that."

The practice could also be violating recruits' rights to privacy and freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Ms. Khullar says. Included in freedom of expression protections is the right to remain silent.

"If the RCMP could demonstrate that this is necessary and reasonable in a free and democratic society -- and show a pressing objective or rationale from needing to ask the question -- they may be able to have a defence," she says.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission will not discuss specific complaints but verifies it would be wrong for an employer to consider a job seeker's sexual preferences.

"Certainly, an individual's sexual orientation should not be of any import to an employer one way or another," commission spokesman Catherine Barratt says. "Badgering questions concerning a person's sexual orientation is not appropriate."

The RCMP will not say why it refused to hire Mr. Maillet but says it is " absolutely false" that he was denied for reasons of sexual orientation.

"This is a not a reason for refusal," Staff-Sgt. Nadeau says.

In an interview from his home, Mr. Maillet says he has been told he was denied because he admitted to trying marijuana in his 20s and because his brother was once charged with crime, a charge he says was dropped before trial.

In writing, the force has told him only that he was inadmissible, evasive during the interview with the investigator and that his answers were inconsistent with its investigation.

He says he offered twice to take a polygraph test but the RCMP declined.

Mr. Maillet is turning to the human rights commission in a bid to get his job back.

In a written statement already filed with the commission, a fellow officer from the former Caraquet force states an investigator asked him questions about Mr. Maillet's relationships with male friends.

"Is it true that he is a homosexual?" the investigator asked, according to the statement. The fellow officer expressed surprise, denied first-hand knowledge and mentioned Mr. Maillet's interest in a woman in a nearby town. But the investigator persisted, declaring: "It doesn't matter if he is a homosexual, he'll just have to admit it."

"That," Mr. Maillet says, "is what hits me the most. If I have to admit it then they have got to think that I am a homosexual. When you go to somebody else and start saying that a guy is something that he is not, then they basically damaged my credibility, my image."

His lawyer, Charles LeBlanc, doesn't see any sense in such a line of questioning.

"What the hell does that have to do with his job? What does that have to do with anything?" Mr. LeBlanc says.

Observers scoff at the RCMP defence that determining sexual orientation is necessary to determine whether a recruit would be vulnerable to blackmail, arguing it's an outdated notion.

"Back to the McCarthy era," says Mariana Valverde, a professor of criminology at the University of Toronto who specializes in issues of sexual orientation and the law. "I do find that surprising."

Mr. Blomeley says it reminds him of his days with the British navy in the 1970s when authorities argued homosexuals could easily be blackmailed into spying against their country under threat of being exposed.

"The world has changed and it is no longer unlawful to be homosexual. In fact, it's protected. And so I can see no reason why someone would succumb to blackmail," he says. "I understand the concern. I think the world has changed."