William Leonard Higgitt

William Leonard Higgitt (10 November 1917 – 2 April 1989) was the 14th commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), holding office from 1969 to 1973, and President of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) from 1972 to 1976. Leonard Higgitt's background in intelligence and counterintelligence during and after World War II made him the preferred choice as RCMP Commissioner at what was the height of the Cold War. Higgitt's tenure as Canada's top spy, first, and then as RCMP Commissioner, also coincided with the civil rights movement in the United States, which was part of a period of broader political unrest and social change in Canada, including the Quebec nationalist movement and first-ever diplomatic negotiations in Stockholm between Canada and Communist China. Higgitt's time as Commissioner was marked by his efforts to balance a traditional view of the Mounties in the eye of the public, and a trust in the RCMP attending that view, with more modern, high-tech, and legally complex policing methods, including surveillance and data-gathering practices that found the RCMP facing increasing media and judicial scrutiny.

Higgitt directed national security operations during the October Crisis of 1970, when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) engaged in a series of urban bombings and also kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross. These events represented what was perhaps the most serious threat to national security in the history of Canada, and they also saw then Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, to the objection of Higgitt, invoke the War Measures Act, the first time in Canadian history that the Act was invoked during peacetime.

Higgitt has been the only RCMP commissioner to ever rise to this position after starting from the lowest possible rank—sub-constable, a rank lower than third-class constable and later discontinued by the Force. As Commissioner, Higgitt also presided over the RCMP centenary.