News from BC, where calling 911, if you’re Aboriginal, might require you to…call 911.

“All of the incidents involve families of Aboriginal descent, all called the RCMP for help with a family member, each case resulted in serious injury, and each took place in a specific geographic area over a short period of time. These factors suggest to us that there is a serious systemic problem.”

No—you think?

The RCMP says that the BC Civil Liberties Association is the problem. No doubt their Conservative bosses do as well—certainly the Paraguayan wing of the Harper government, which tried to thwart the Mounties’ apology to the countless female victims of Robert Pickton.

Email records show that shortly before the RCMP statement was issued, Julie Carmichael, press secretary to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, wrote to Daniel Lavoie, the RCMP’s executive director of public affairs in Ottawa, requesting changes to the text.

“Daniel — please find attached the revised product,” she wrote.

The next line was underlined for emphasis: “Please ensure the statement issued is reflective of these changes.”

The revised statement did not include any acknowledgement that the RCMP “could have done more” in the Pickton investigation and the apology was limited to saying “how very sorry we are for the loss of your loved ones.”

“Here is the text,” Lavoie wrote later that day in an email to RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson. “I have removed what they did not want issued. Truncated this way, it looses (sic) its purpose and its impact.”

But in the same email, Lavoie wrote that the revisions had come “too late” and that Callens had already delivered the apology to reporters in B.C.

Female? Aboriginal? In Harperia, that’s two strikes against you right there.