Green Party leader calls the RCMP a ‘racist institution’

Speaking to reporters in Ottawa, May stated that she does "think the RCMP is a racist Institution."

May's comments came after the RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki said that there was no institutional racism within the organization. Lucki later clarified that she was "struggling" with the definition of the term.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau contradicted Lucki's comments, arguing that Canadian police agencies do indeed have a problem with systemic racism.

"Systemic racism is an issue right across the country, in all our institutions, including in all our police forces, including in the RCMP. That's what systemic racism is," muttered Trudeau.

The prime minister did not provide an example of this "systemic racism."

Elizabeth May, on the other hand, went a step further than Trudeau: "I think the RCMP is a racist Institution, and I say this carefully," said May uncarefully.

"When you think of it, it comes from the top down. So contrast the careful, respectful, beautiful way in which the RCMP arrested me in March of 2018 in the Kinder-Morgan protests with the organized, top-down decisions to militarize the police force."

"I think the reason I got arrested nicely was that I'm white," continued May. "So I'm afraid that my experience is that we need to really consider that it's not the random bad apple."

"This is decision making within the institution itself that decides that indigenous protesters can be treated one way, and white protesters can be treated another way," she concluded.