For anyone in the law enforcement world, Canada is a bit of a conundrum. It looks like a pleasant, safe country, but when its justice system seems slow, erratic and entirely peculiar. When it comes to the investigation and prosecution of high-profile criminals like Conrad Black, organized crime figures and national security threats, Canada doesn't seem all that interested in doing the job.

Why has Canada become a haven for third-world terrorist groups? Why does Canada allow fraud artists to pray across the border on American citizens? Are Canadians uninterested in solving crime or is there something else going on?

In his third book on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Dispersing the Fog: Inside the Secret World of Ottawa and the RCMP, author Paul Palango takes a definitive look at what has gone wrong in his country and why the rest of the world, especially the United States, should be worried about it.

Palango shows conclusively how Canada is a country without checks and balances, a third-world-like country where political control is deftly wielded by the government to protect itself and its friends. It has become a country where trans-national crime is not considered to be a serious problem, a country where foreign intelligence agents can roam about with impunity.

The 550-page book is like three books in one in which the RCMP is a thread linking a wide-range of issues.

In the first third, Palango begins to build his case by examining the history of the RCMP and its relationship to government. This foundation provides a way for the reader to understand the complex case of Maher Arar.

As you may know, Arar was a Canadian caught in the "extraordinary rendition" process and shipped to Syria where he was allegedly tortured for a year. Back in Canada, he was exonerated by a judicial commission and awarded $10.5-million dollars in damages, without ever having to submit to a physical examination or answer a question under oath.

After finding a supposed typo in the official report on the matter, Palango digs deeper and makes the case that Arar had a history with links to a convicted arms dealer to Iran. Why was this never addressed? Palango relies on facts, a mountain of circumstances and the obvious inferences from them to make the case that Arar may well have been a secret operative, likely for FBI co-intel, which raises questions about the actual intent of the rendition program.

Was it designed to capture al-Qaeda sympathizers and agents or a clever way to insert operatives in prisons around the world – or a bit of both?

In part two of the book, Palango shows how political control of the RCMP works in Canada to the detriment of the rule of law. He takes the reader inside the RCMP and lays out its dysfunctional state for all to see. It is an unwieldy organization with jurisdictions and policies that make little sense in a modern democratic country.

In the final leg of Dispersing the Fog, Palango explores a number of cases to illustrate the continuing crisis in Canada, which has implications outside the country for anyone contemplating doing business there.

For example, in his two-chapter discussion of the ill-fated Project Sidewinder, Palango describes how the Canadian political and business establishment gained control over the RCMP and CSIS, the country's counter-intelligence agency, to thwart a ground-breaking investigation into espionage and criminal activity conducted by the Chinese government and its surrogates. He explains conclusively why Canada is the only democratic country in the world that has not uncovered and prosecuted Chinese spies. Why? The business interests of a very few powerful people would be affected by any such actions.

In Dispersing the Fog, Palango takes no prisoners. He comes right down the middle, as one police expert put it, and shoots every culpable person or body from the far right to the far left of the political spectrum.

Dispersing the Fog is perhaps the most controversial book ever written in Canada, an eye-opening experience that states boldly what American law enforcement officials have until now only surmised about the state of law enforcement in Canada.

It is a must read for anyone, but none more so than those concerned about organized crime and threats to national security.