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3 Reasons Why Harper Should Keep The CBC Alive For Another Week

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Horatio

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Apr 8, 2006, 9:16:21 AM4/8/06

THE HOCKEY NOMAD GOES TO RUSSIA
Wednesday April 12, 2006 at 10pm ET/PT on CBC Newsworld

"I was eight years old in 1972, when the hopes and dreams of a nation hung on a
single goalmouth scramble at the south end of a dark rink in Moscow. But it wasn
't until I'd seen Paul Henderson's goal for the thousandth time that I wondered
what happened to those Soviet players and those fans ten time zones away, who
lived and died with their team as we had with ours."
- Dave Bidini

Like millions of Canadians, Dave Bidini's first impressions of Soviet hockey
were gleaned from the Canada-Soviet series of 1972. In The Hockey Nomad Goes to
Russia, Bidini treks through a vast country that's undergone enormous change
since that era. Travelling thousands of kilometres from Moscow's Luzniki Arena
to the frozen ponds of Siberia, Bidini meets up with many interesting characters
whose lives revolve around hockey; from the old Soviet stars, to the best of the
new talent, to the most intense super fans. The Hockey Nomad Goes to Russia is a
fascinating and entertaining journey into life in the new Russia.

In the Russian hockey world, there are two Russias-old Russia and new Russia.
The great Alexander Yakushev, who was the Soviets' leading scorer in 1972,
perhaps best represents the old Russia. He is an eminent figure; his wife is a
former ballet star. In the old days, they would have been one of Moscow's most
glamorous couples-the hockey player and the ballerina. But in today's new
Russia, Yakushev's Olympic gold medals and countless world championships haven't
brought them a secure and comfortable lifestyle. Seven years ago they suffered
through a family tragedy that forever changed their world.

Alex Ovechkin is a next generation elite Russian hockey player, who has had
infinitely more opportunities than yesterday's Soviet stars. One day he hopes to
be a millionaire NHL superstar. These days, however, Ovechkin lives with his
teammates in a modest dorm at the Dynamo sports complex, waiting for the NHL
lockout to end.

Bidini also rides the Trans-Siberian Express to the city of Omsk, in central
Siberia, where he meets up with Zenia, Russia's top 12-year-old minor hockey
player. The Omsk team recently recruited Zenia from one of their rivals, the
Chelyabinsk Tractor. Zenia and his parents were quick to accept Omsk's offer.
Like the Yakushevs, they too suffered through a family tragedy. Last year,
during May Day celebrations, Zenia's 20-year-old brother was killed in a street
fight, a crime that remains unsolved.

The Hockey Nomad Goes to Russia is written and presented by Dave Bidini;
directed and produced by Mike Downie. Executive producer is Gordon Henderson of
90th Parallel Film and Television Productions Ltd.; it is produced in
association with the CBC and SRC.

A September To Remember

Almost any Canadian who's old enough can tell you exactly what he or she was
doing on September 28, 1972, when Paul Henderson scored the series-winning goal
at 19:26 of the third period in the final game of the Summit Series between
Canada and the USSR. As Foster Hewitt's memorable words described "the goal
heard around the world" millions of Canadians danced and hugged in a scene that
was reminiscent of the celebrations at the end of World War II. Never has a
single sporting moment meant so much to so many Canadians. But the Series meant
much more than the creation of unparalleled nationalism. The off-ice drama,
politics and media frenzy were just as entertaining as the Series itself.

The mini-series will open at Game 4, a 5-3 loss in Vancouver that saw Team
Canada booed off the ice and Phil Esposito's televised criticism of the fans.
This is the story of the behind the scenes dealings and the on ice action that
led to the redemptive moment in the Fall of 1972.

The show will air April 9th and April 10th from 8pm to 10pm on both days.

http://www.1972summitseries.com/

CBC TELEVISION THURSDAY APRIL 13, 8 P.M. ET

Yours, Al starring Canadian icon Gordon Pinsent, is an evocative film that
captures, interprets and celebrates the life and work of one of Canada's most
significant poets and literary geniuses Al Purdy (1918-2000). Actor Gordon
Pinsent movingly captures the essence of the poet in this drama set in a
metaphorical, abandoned house, which comes to life as Al returns to read, write
and remember his favourite poems.
CBC Television, "Opening Night", Thursday April 13, 8pm (local across Canada).

In one of his finest performances Gordon Pinsent, gives lifeblood to Al's words
as he steps in to the world of the roving poet who used his natural curiosity to
explore people and places that affected him on a daily basis. Purdy wrote about
what he knew: work, relationships and this vast country. He rode the rails,
worked in factories, and sparred with his muse, all of which is reflected in his
timeless poetry and prose and crafted beautifully in this film by director, Bill
Spahic.

Bill commented, "Al was consumed about what is to be human; to love, to be
humiliated, to be triumphant, to fail and that's what I love about his poetry.
He wrote about his inner self and in that process he wrote about all of us".

Yours, Al captures the eloquence, humility and universality of Al Purdy, taking
us through his life, pausing at all its high and low moments, and presents Purdy
's greatest poems, including The Country North of Belleville, At the Quinte
Hotel, On Being Human and Necropsy of Love. Those who remember Al Purdy will
revel in his words once again, and those new to his work will wonder why it has
taken so long to discover him but all will agree that he was indeed 'the people'
s poet' and 'the voice of the land'.

Yours, Al by Real to Reel Productions Inc. is a non-chronological exploration of
some of Purdy's favourite themes: relationships and family, love and life, work
and country written by acclaimed playwright Dave Carley and director Bill Spahic
based on Purdy's collected works.

Time and place are two important elements in Purdy's work, and they are equally
reflected in the treatment of this film. We see and hear the words of Purdy
through a first-person narrative that examines different segments of his life
and how these parts are mirrored in his poetry. Throughout the film archival
footage and photo stills are layered with dramatic visual interpretations and
special effects to convey the depth and emotion of his work.

Above all, it is Pinsent's riveting performance that pulls it all together.

Yours, Al has been described as "a gift", "an extraordinary performance, as
though Al himself were on screen", "no better homage to a great poet".

Producer, Anne Pick struggled for six years to raise the modest budget, first
pitching it as a documentary then as this drama. She says, " The wait was worth
it. As much as I would have been happy with a documentary I'm glad it turned out
this way. We were able to bring so much more to the production creatively and
Gordon is simply brilliant."

Added Spahic, "And every single member of the production team entered in to the
spirit of the project I think with the sense that in working with Purdy and
Pinsent, we were dealing with two of Canada's national treasures. It was more
than just a job. We felt we were privileged."

CBC TELEVISION THURSDAY APRIL 13, 8 P.M. ET

Above all, it is Pinsent's riveting performance that pulls it all together.

Yours, Al has been described as "a gift", "an extraordinary performance, as
though Al himself were on screen", "no better homage to a great poet".

jimjames5417

unread,

Apr 8, 2006, 9:53:34 AM4/8/06

Why would anyone, even a CBC flack, post garbage like this on the Can
politics group??

professor

unread,

Apr 8, 2006, 2:26:04 PM4/8/06

watch the video

http://archives.cbc.ca/500f.asp?id=1-71-723-4332

learn more....

http://groups.msn.com/psycologicalwarfare
watch the video

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-71-723-4327/conflict_war/somalia/

KLayton Matchee has wounds that coincide with Ewen Cameron's
Experiments in psychic driving. This method was also used on a friend
of mine who lives in Edmonton. If you ever watched men in Black and
seen where they erased memories. Ewen Cameron has invented a way to
make a vegetable out of witnesses.
http://www.raven1.net/cameron.htm

http://www.zundelsite.org/english/sirc/report/chapter11.html

this site is questionable but the information is verified. These
people were infiltrated and used by grant bristow and want him exposed.

I suggest you do the same searches and see for yourself even the
parliament archives will show the truth.

and then cbc never put out a really good scandle ever again and joined
the rest of the sock puppets for the new world order....

XVI No. 1, Fall 1997

In Crisis and in Flux?: Politics, Parliament and Canada's Intelligence
Policy 1
by A. Stuart Farson

Printable version

A. Stuart Farson is Lecturer in Political Science at Simon Fraser
University.

INTRODUCTION

There have been dramatic changes over the last twenty-five years in how

Canada's intelligence community has been overseen by both the executive

branch of government and the legislature. Initially, these changes
resulted from a number of crises. 2 More recently, however, changes
have been, and are being, instigated by the activities of Parliament
itself. In the early 1970s the government's response to domestic
terrorism in Quebec focused attention on both the propriety and
efficacy of the country's Security Service, which was then under the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Subsequent actions by the
Security Service to deal with separatist movements in Quebec focused
attention on the relationship between the Service and the government,
and on the oversight of the intelligence community by Parliament.
Following a public inquiry dramatic changes in the way domestic
intelligence matters were handled were put in place. In 1984, the
Security Service was severed from the RCMP and a new civilian agency
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was formed in its
place. This was the first, and so far only, intelligence agency in
Canadian history to be established by statute and formally provided
with mechanisms independent of the executive for holding it
accountable. When a Special Committee of the House of Commons conducted

a five-year review of the legislation in 1989-90, it found that
Parliament's capacity to hold the intelligence community accountable
was extremely limited. 3 Furthermore, its recommendations for reform
were very largely ignored.

Recent public opinion poll data suggest that the Canadian Parliament is

facing what some perceptive MP's have recognized as "a crisis of
relevancy." 4 In their view, Parliament's legitimacy has been eroded in

the eyes of the country's citizens. It has failed to fulfil its
original purpose and has not done those things that the Canadian public

now expects it to do. For instance, many currently believe that
Canadian parliamentarians are more than partly to blame for the
country's deficit crisis and the current malaise. They have to all
intents and purposes failed to monitor the federal government's
expenditures. Similarly, they have been unable to provide any real
check on the ever growing federal bureaucracy. In addition,
institutionalized partisanship has placed constraints on the freedom of

MP's to pursue important issues and has led to sterile debates in the
House of Commons on key issues that have been ineffective at best.

Recent events suggest, however, that while the crisis of confidence may

not be over, some parliamentarians have taken important steps to
rectify matters. These have included: disallowing Cabinet Orders, 5
rebuking the Cabinet for providing illegal exemptions regarding the
application of laws, 6 citing the government for contempt of
Parliament, 7 and compelling Ministers to disclose documents.

This article is concerned with the lessons that Parliament learned from

the five-year review process and the precedent that actions to compel
disclosure have subsequently had on the oversight of security and
intelligence in the related "McInnis" and "Bristow" affairs. 8 It
argues that procedures followed by Parliament in investigating those
events have differed substantively from previous ones. Before dealing
with the affairs in some detail, the article briefly lays out the
problems of oversight that were identified in the 1970s, the essential
features of the proposals provided by the McDonald Commission for
reform, how the government failed to respond to certain key elements,
and the shortfalls in oversight that were revealed by the five-year
review process.

BACKGROUND: LESSONS FROM THE 1970s

During the 1970s Canadian intelligence was placed in crisis on two
specific occasions. The first was in 1970 when the Liberal government
of Pierre Trudeau used the War Measures Act to respond to what it
considered to be insurrection in the making by separatist terrorists in

Quebec. In hindsight, while it is still unclear whether there was an
intelligence failure, it now seems evident that the government
overreacted significantly. In any event, the net results of the
government's response were two-fold. On the one hand, the government
found itself embarrassed by it own activities and told the RCMP
Security Service that it wanted to be better informed about such
threats in the future. On the other hand, the revelation in the media
that some 465 persons had been arrested under the emergency provisions
and only a handful brought to trial suggested that the civil rights of
many Canadians had been severely abused. Such abuse at home, coupled
with media coverage of the American civil rights movement and Watergate

below the border, encouraged a growing interest in providing further
guarantees for civil liberties. Such protections against state power
were eventually provided when Canada patriated its constitution from
Britain and included the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the
Constitution Act, 1982.

The second event, or rather events, that placed Canada's security and
intelligence community into crisis was a series of revelations about
questionable activities committed by the RCMP Security Service in the
Province of Quebec. The practices in question largely concerned efforts

to counter the activities of separatist groups and included the
questionable use of informers. Though the national media largely failed

to pick up on a story that had initially been filed by John Sawatsky in

the Vancouver Sun, Parliament was forced to take notice when the
government of Quebec announced that it was setting up a provincial
inquiry into the activities of the police in that province.

It soon became evident that opposition parties would have considerable
difficulty in getting a responsible minister to respond to the
difficult questions that naturally ensued during question period. Part
of the problem was that the ministerial portfolio responsible for the
RCMP Security Service was not similar in status to the Secretary for
the Home Department in Britain and only seemed to be a "bad news"
responsibility. As a result, ambitious ministers had a propensity to
move on as quickly as they were able from the Solicitor General's
portfolio. In the early years, few stayed long enough to learn about
the intricacies of their department's programs. To some outsiders the
portfolio seemed like a revolving door that the Trudeau government used

to good effect whenever the political heat rose too high in Parliament.

With incumbents being regularly shuffled on to new responsibilities,
their replacements claimed that they could not be held responsible for
events that had not taken place on their particular watch. In 1977, the

then Speaker of the House of Commons made a ruling that has stood as an

important precedent ever since. The effect of the ruling was two-fold.
On the one hand, it made former Solicitors General no longer answerable

for the ministry's affairs once they had left the portfolio. And on the

other hand, it excused the current incumbent from being responsible for

the actions of previous office holders. The practical effect of this
ruling was, of course, to put past actions outside the net of
parliamentary accountability. 9 The impact of a further ruling by the
Speaker a year later gives an indication of the tenor of the House at
the time. At issue was a letter sent by a former Solicitor General
about mail opening, which at the time was not provided for by law. It
had assured an MP that the RCMP did not open mail. Subsequent evidence,

however, had shown this assurance to be false. In this instance, the
Speaker ruled that the MP had, in fact, been misled and that there was
a question of privilege. For its part, the government voted down a
motion to send the question to committee for study, arguing that the
McDonald Commission was already looking into the matter. Furthermore,
it argued that the Solicitor General could not be held responsible for
misleading the member because the information had originated with the
RCMP. 10

THE REFORM PERIOD

After several years of deliberation, much research, and significant
public and media interest, the McDonald Commission of Inquiry into the
events of the mid-1970s recommended that the Security Service be
severed from the RCMP and reconstituted as a civilian organization by
statute under the Solicitor General. To ensure that the executive
branch would provide an adequate level of control, it recommended that
the Minister be made specifically responsible for the control and
management of the new agency and that he or she be fully accountable to

Parliament for its activities.

To ensure that Parliament could properly fulfil its watchdog role, the
McDonald Commission adopted a two-tiered approach to the problem of
providing full and direct accountability to Parliament. The first tier
was to be a small Advisory Council on Security and Intelligence (ACSI)
with its own expert staff.11 This body was intended to have no
executive power but to have full access and independent investigatory
authority to the various agencies in the community. Its purpose would
be to provide a continuous after-the-fact review of all intelligence
agencies to ensure that their activities were lawful, morally
acceptable, and within the statutory mandates provided by Parliament.
In terms of its reporting function, it would have reported to the
Solicitor General on a continuous basis and to Parliament at least
twice a year. The second tier would have been a Joint Parliamentary
Committee on Security and Intelligence (JPCSI). 12 Its purpose would be

to examine policies and practices of the security and intelligence
community in more depth than the Standing Committee on Justice and
Legal Affairs. That committee's capacity had historically been flawed
for a variety of structural reasons. Not only was it too large but its
membership fluctuated. Also, restrictions on the time available to each

questioner prevented individual members from fully developing
particular lines of inquiry. By contrast, it was intended that the
JPCSI should be small, consist of members specially chosen by their
leaders and have a specialist support staff to assess the annual
financial estimates and reports of the various agencies. It would
differ from the ACSI in that it would be as interested in efficacy as
it was in propriety and legality, do much of its work in camera and
have its staff and members vetted in some way.

In addition to these structural concerns, the McDonald Commission
believed that the two-tiered approach would prevent intelligence
agencies being used for partisan or personal interests. Its independent

powers of investigation would permit ACSI to discern whether any agency

was being given improper executive instructions. Similarly, by having
direct access to the joint parliamentary committee, ACSI's check on the

partisan or personal use of intelligence would be a credible one.

The government accepted a two-tiered response, but not the one
advocated by the McDonald Commission. Their draft legislation (Bill C
-157) included an independent review agency similar to ACSI which the
government named the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) but
with a review capacity that was limited to the new service alone and
without the crucial right to speak directly to Parliament. In addition,

the draft legislation provided for a further oversight body the
Inspector General of CSIS (IG) who would report to the Deputy Solicitor

General and specifically certify, on an annual basis, whether or not
CSIS had operated within its mandate.

The McDonald Commission's scheme for ensuring full accountability to
the House of Commons was, however, not heeded. Its recommendation had
taken full account of the frailties of the parliamentary system.
Instead of having a parliamentary committee with direct access to the
new Canadian Security Intelligence Service, it had recommended having a

permanent independent body that would report to Parliament. A crucial
advantage of this scheme was that it would have permanent members and
expert staff, would be able to work while Parliament was not sitting,
would have complete access to all CSIS files and personnel, and yet
provide a parliamentary committee with detailed reports and answer
questions, albeit in camera, with impunity.

The government did not follow this recommendation. Instead it provided
only the Security Intelligence Review Committee, an independent body
with no codified basis for speaking directly to Parliament. Instead,
the flow of information was to be channelled through the minister to
Parliament. While SIRC's annual report had to be tabled in Parliament,
there was no obligation on the Solicitor General to publish any of the
other reports that the minister's office might order or those that SIRC

itself might decide to prepare.

Significantly, while the Special Senate Committee that reviewed Bill C
-157 improved many aspects of the bill, it did little to improve
accountability. The significant exception, however, was its
recommendation to have Parliament review the legislation after the act
had been in operation for a period of five years, a point which the
government accepted.

THE FIVE-YEAR REVIEW: DEFICIENCIES IDENTIFIED

What is often missed about the five-year review process is that it was
statutorily established. In fact, Parliament was required by the
legislation to establish a committee to conduct a "comprehensive review

of the provisions and operation" of both the CSIS Act and the Security
Offences Act. Furthermore, it was obliged to report on its review and
present any recommendations it considered necessary to Parliament. 13

In September 1990, the Special Committee that conducted this review
tabled its report. The title of the report In Flux but not in Crisis
reflected the Special Committee's opinion that CSIS had emerged from
the various crises that had enveloped the agency following four
significant revelations: that it had destroyed tapes related to the Air

India investigation; that it had made faulty wiretap applications in
the investigation of militant Sikhs (which respectively led to the
first Director's resignation); that one of its informers on the labour
movement had been arrested for conspiracy to bomb hotels involved in a
Quebec labor dispute; and that SIRC was concerned about CSIS's
corporate culture and believed the large number of active
counter-subversive files posed a potential threat to civil liberties
(which respectively led the Solicitor General to establish the
Independent Advisory Team (IAT) on CSIS). 14

Before it started its investigations the Special Committee took steps
to establish what its terms of reference implied. It determined that
its primary role should be to establish whether all of the office
holders and institutions identified in the two acts were fulfilling
their statutory duties. This specifically meant that the Special
Committee should look as carefully at the minister, his staff and the
oversight bodies as it did CSIS and the intelligence community.

In all, the Special Committee made some 117 recommendations. While many

of these were of a housekeeping nature, several were crucial to
improved accountability and were related directly to the Special
Committee being denied access to documents that it believed were
critical to conducting its review. In particular, the Special Committee

was denied access to ministerial directives to CSIS, the annual reports

of the CSIS Director, CSIS's regulations and policies, SIRC reports,
and the certificates of the Inspector General and that office's
reports. In the Special Committee's view, these constituted the minimum

necessary to provide a comprehensive review of the provisions and
operation of the legislation as Parliament's statutory mandate required

it to do. Without seeing them, it was virtually impossible to establish

whether the various actors in the system were fulfilling their
respective statutory mandates and whether the system of accountability
put in place by the legislation was working.

The Special Committee drew attention to the singular importance of
ministerial directions. In particular, it took careful note of what the

IAT report had said regarding this matter generally and about the
management of human sources specifically. It is important to observe
that the Special Committee was only provided with an oral presentation
about these directions, which was conceptual in nature, and without the

benefit of staff being present. Furthermore, it was led to believe that

significant progress had been made through written directions:

to limit the scope and intensity of the security intelligence net; to
define the principles and policies governing the conduct of
investigations, especially those using human sources, and to reconfirm
the roles and responsibilities of the major office holders in the
national security framework. 15 (emphasis added)
In hindsight, it appears that it may have been misled about the actual
progress being made, not only by the government but by SIRC's 1988-89
annual report as well. 16 Nevertheless, the Special Committee made
important recommendations about ministerial directions. It specifically

recommended that the minister be obliged to table a report once each
fiscal year on the written directions provided to the Service and that
a committee review these directives at an in camera session. In
addition, it strongly recommended that the CSIS Act be amended to
require SIRC to review ministerial directions with a view to compliance

and to establish whether the directions constituted adequate and
appropriate instructions for the Service. 17

With regard to SIRC, the Special Committee had a particular interest in

establishing its research capacity. Starting from a version of SIRC's
most recent special report to the minister that had been released under

the Access to Information Act, it tried to assess its level of
expertise. From staff interviews conducted with persons mentioned in
the report, the Special Committee concluded that SIRC's research
techniques were not as sound as it would have wished. And when
questioned on the issue by the Standing Committee on Justice, SIRC
concurred with this assessment but claimed it was an anomaly. 18 For
this and other reasons, the Special Committee recommended that the
Justice Committee establish a Sub-committee on National Security with a

small, expert, full-time, security-cleared research staff. It believed
that this body should meet in camera in a secure environment and that
party leaders attempt to ensure continuity, security and integrity of
membership. While it did not consider that the Sub-committee should
replace SIRC, it did believe that it should have access to both SIRC
and the IG's reports and all their personnel. In addition, it
recommended that it should appraise the director's annual report,
consider the budgets of security and intelligence organizations and
conduct reviews of a general nature that fell outside the specific
mandates of SIRC and the IG.

The Special Committee was also specific about changes it wanted to see
regarding the Communications Security Establishment (CSE). It wanted
Parliament to establish the agency by statute and to make SIRC
responsible for monitoring, reviewing and reporting to Parliament about

its activities and its compliance with the laws of Canada. Underpinning

this recommendation was the belief that there should be one piece of
national security law with one centralized oversight mechanism for the
whole of the intelligence community, not a series of agency-specific
arrangements. Had this recommendation been followed, Parliament would
no longer encounter the problems of the past. Hitherto, different
committees, with different priorities and levels of interest, had
attempted to oversee the various elements of the community. Such a
process had made it impossible, as the case with the CSE had amply
shown, to get the responsible minister to answer questions before the
Special Committee. 19

EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE BRANCH RESPONSES

Since the parliamentary reforms that followed the submission of the
McGrath Report in 1985, the government of the day is obliged to reply
to any parliamentary report that specifically requests one within a set

period of time (now 120 days). In its obligatory response to the
Special Committee's report, 20 the government declined to change the
formal accountability structure to Parliament or to address any of the
legislative changes that the Special Committee recommended. However, it

did say later that it had fulfilled many of them through policy
changes, though in most instances there is little evidence of this
having occurred. 21 On issues of accountability, the only change
supported by the government was the provision of a public annual report

by the CSIS Director. For many, this annual exercise is now perceived
as more of a public relations mechanism than a tool by which Parliament

can hold the Service to account.

For its part, Parliament decided to ignore the government's lack of
enthusiasm for a special sub-committee on national security and
established one anyway. It should be noted, however, that in the period

up to the general election in 1993 the Sub-committee on National
Security of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General

did not follow the various recommendations governing its establishment
that the Special Committee had made. It did not hire its own small,
expert, full-time research staff or employ its own administrative
support staff to conduct research and analyse material under the
direction of the subcommittee. Nor did it security clear the existing
staff of the Justice Committee and place it under oath. It never
obtained access to the budgets of security and intelligence
organizations. It never obtained full access to the reports of SIRC or
the Inspector General. It never took special steps to meet in a secure
environment, to keep its notes and documents in a place of safekeeping,

or to hold in camera sessions. Nor was any mechanism put in place to
ensure that members would not divulge information.

To all intents and purposes it was a smaller version of the Standing
Committee on Justice, only with all the added problems of conflicting
and competing schedules. Though a work plan for action was developed
from that left by the Special Committee, no effort was made to extend
its oversight. With the exception of some preparatory work on the CSE
(see below), staff were no more involved than they had been before.
While the Sub-committee met perhaps once or twice more than the
Standing Committee would have done on security or intelligence matters,

the subjects discussed indicate no difference in approach. No attempt
was made to analyse budgets. Similarly, the Sub-committee made no
effort to gain access to other intelligence organizations or to resolve

issues that ran across departmental, and hence, committee boundaries.

THE JUSTICE COMMITTEE TAKES A STAND

While the actions of the Conservative-dominated Sub-committee were
decidedly uninspiring to say the least, important progress toward
greater parliamentary accountability was made in other directions. In
December 1990, the all-party Justice committee reported unanimously in
a non-partisan manner to the House of Commons that the Solicitor
General had failed to deliver unexpurgated versions of reports provided

to the Correctional Services of Canada concerning the escape of Daniel
Gingras and Allan Legere as ordered by the committee earlier in the
month. Further, it asked the House to adopt an Order requiring the
Solicitor General to provide the documents within 30 days to the
committee. In support of its position, the committee cited section
8(2)(c) of the Privacy Act , section 18 of the Constitution Act, 1867,
section 4 of the Parliament of Canada Act, and section 108(1) of the
Standing Orders of the House of Commons, which provided Parliament with

the right to "send for people, papers and records." The committee's
chair asked for unanimous consent to move concurrence but this was not
given, the government having argued that the Solicitor General was
restrained by the Privacy Act from releasing the information requested.

To expedite the logjam, the issue was subsequently raised as a question

of privilege by Derek Lee, a former member of the Special Committee who

had been its architect in the Standing Committee. This question was
referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections. That
committee duly noted that the power to call for people, papers and
records was absolute, that the House of Commons could issue an order
that was enforceable and that anyone disregarding that order could be
called before the bar of Parliament and cited for contempt or otherwise

punished. 22 Following the submission of that report, the House of
Commons by unanimous consent ordered the Solicitor General to provide
the Justice Committee with the necessary reports at an in camera
meeting. The Solicitor General subsequently complied with Parliament's
order, the meeting being held with all the procedural protection
normally afforded in camera meetings, including a ban on publication of

the proceedings of the committee as well as any information in the
reports that might be protected from disclosure under either the
Privacy Act or the Access to Information Act. The committee concluded
that the government had acted properly and that staff had not tried to
cover up any improper actions. It therefore completed the
accountability function, fulfilled Parliament's watchdog role and went
a long way to restore public trust in key government institutions.

THE McINNIS-BRISTOW AFFAIR23

On 14 August 1994, the Toronto Sun announced that Grant Bristow, a
supposedly well-paid CSIS informer, had not only infiltrated Canada's
extreme right but had helped found with the taxpayer's money, a white
racist organization called the Heritage Front. Within a matter of days
the accusations against CSIS had broadened to include using Bristow to
spy on reporters investigating racism in the Canadian Forces in
Somalia, infiltrating the Reform Party with a view to undermining that
party by fostering links to racist groups, as well as spying on the
Postal Workers Union and the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Equally quickly, there were demands for inquiries and promises to
conduct them. According to the Executive Director of SIRC, the Review
Committee was eager to prove itself equal to the challenge. It
announced that it would be conducting an investigation and submitting a

report to the minister. Likewise, the Sub-committee on National
Security noted that it would also be conducting an investigation but
did not plan to call witnesses from CSIS. Significantly, it said that
it planned to discuss SIRC's investigation with them.

Less than two weeks later Brian McInnis, a former political advisor to
Douglas Lewis when he was Solicitor General, acknowledged that he had
"leaked" a confidential CSIS memorandum to a newspaper reporter on
which the story had been based. McInnis had blown the whistle because
he found it "reprehensible and wrong" that CSIS had an informant in the

white -supremacist group. 24 Apparently, McInnis had chosen to release
the information to the media because he wanted to ensure that his
message got out. While he could have gone to SIRC with his complaint,
McInnis denigrated the committee by describing it as "more of a lapdog
than a watchdog" that "doesn't seem to have teeth." 25 McInnis was
subsequently arrested, his house searched, and some twenty boxes of
papers seized by the police. According to a CBC (Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation) report some of these documents were very sensitive:

In one, CSIS worries that people will find out that the Security
Service spied on postal workers and passed that information on to
Canada Post managers all this during a labour dispute. But the most
revealing documents, all marked 'top secret' revealed the details of
CSIS's relationship with foreign security agencies. One document
describes a very close working arrangement with Israel's secret
service, the Mossad. There's a chart detailing exactly what kind of
co-operation each side gets under what circumstances. There's also
information about CSIS's arrangements with countries like Italy and
Jamaica. And then there's France, another document tries to answer the
question, how closely is the French secret service interested in or
involved in the Quebec separatist movement. It concludes that the
French secret service has an active interest. 26
This report suggests that McInnis was in possession of highly
sensitive, 'top secret' material. If true, he would have required a
level III security clearance, which he apparently did not have. 27

Clearly, the McInnis-Bristow affair had considerable resonance with
past events. On the surface, at least, it appeared that CSIS was back
in the counter-subversion business like its predecessor had been and up

to similar dirty tricks. Informers were being used not only to
infiltrate bona fide special interest groups but unions, the media, and

legitimate political parties as well.

All this resonance with the past had a particular allure for the media.

Perhaps because many in the media did not want to be caught asleep at
the switch as many of their colleagues had been in the seventies, many
journalists jumped to conclusions without double and triple-checking
their sources as prudence suggests in the intelligence field. The CBC
is particularly vulnerable to criticism for its coverage of the
McInnis-Bristow affair. While the fact that McInnis had highly
sensitive information in his possession long after he had stopped being

a member of a minister's exempt staff was almost entirely ignored by
the media, the CBC's claim that CSIS had spied on postal workers drove
the media almost to a frenzy. In fact, an immediate statement by CSIS
that the documents which the CBC had seen, referred not to the present
but to the activities of the RCMP Security Service in the 1960s and
1970s, only appeared to add fuel to the fire. When confronted with the
taunts of both the CBC and the head of the postal workers to prove it
had not spied on the union, CSIS took the unprecedented step of
releasing an uncensored version of the house book card it had given to
the minister. This indicated merely that the Solicitor General should
be aware that certain documents relating to RCMP Security Service
activities in the 1960s and 1970s against the postal workers union were

now available to the public through the National Archives. Despite this

release, several flat denials by the Service, 28 assurances from the
Executive Director of SIRC that all groups and individuals targeted by
the agency had been closely monitored by SIRC for ten years, and even a

telephone call from Brian McInnis to confirm that its reporter had
wrongly interpreted a document he had shown him, the CBC was not moved
from sticking "100 per cent to its story." It claimed that there was
other evidence to support its view. 29 The shoe was now on the other
foot. Members of the print media now called for the CBC to prove its
case. 30 In a subsequent broadcast, however, the CBC revealed that
Bristow had worked inside a postal plant while on the CSIS payroll.
This, coupled with the previous allegations and an acknowledgement that

their current affairs program, The 5th Estate, had been tricked by
white supremacists about the activities of alleged CSIS informer
Bristow, would all eventually show that the public broadcaster's
accusations had been false and misleading. 31

The CBC was not the only media outlet to get its facts wrong. The Globe

and Mail, for example, in an article on the McInnis-Bristow affair
unfairly claimed that Parliament only had itself to blame for not
having access to CSIS files because it created the agency with
independent supervision. 32 This argument missed the significance of
the battle that routinely goes on between the executive and the
legislative branches of government over access to information and
contributes to political mythology for two reasons. First, Canadian
parliamentarians seldom frame legislation; they largely adopt what the
executive branch decides. Though government MP's frequently modify
bills before enacting them, government whips prevent changes to crucial

issues like parliamentary oversight unless public opinion motivates
them to do otherwise. Second, while Parliament has lost most battles
with the executive branch over intelligence oversight, it has won the
odd skirmish. During their review of Bill C-157, the non -elected
senators of the Pitfield Committee were only partly helpful. They
declined the advice of almost every witness, except the Solicitor
General who opposed the concept, to support an enduring form of
parliamentary oversight proposed by the McDonald Commission.
Nevertheless, they did recommend the CSIS Act be subject to a five-year

review by Parliament. And when the government pressed the revised Bill
C-9 through the Commons in 1984, both opposition parties strongly
advocated a permanent parliamentary committee. But both they and
government members who supported such a body were silenced by closure.

Similarly, The Ottawa Citizen failed both to correct an "op-ed" piece
written by a former CSIS employee before publication that concerned
oversight mechanisms or to print a corrective after it had appeared. In

the article, the former chief of strategic planning wrongly asserted
that:

. . . pressure will mount for a royal commission. The old saw about
having CSIS report to a parliamentary committee as opposed to a
minister will be resurrected, a confused notion that is politically,
constitutionally and managerially unsound. Security academics and
consultants will hold up the U.S. Congress's intelligence oversight
system as a model, despite our constitutional differences and the
implications of Iran-Contra. 33
This wrong-headed assertion was presumably a throw back to a rather
muddled discussion that Canadians experienced after SIRC described its
role as "oversight" rather than review. At issue was whether SIRC had
any executive authority to direct changes in CSIS's policies and
operations. At the time, that debate reflected much talking at cross
purposes. No one, in fact, suggested that either SIRC or a
parliamentary committee should usurp the powers of the responsible
minister to give directions to CSIS. Rather, the issues concerned the
timing of when SIRC should be permitted to receive accounts (before-
and during-the-fact, not merely after it) so that the review process
could provide an effective watchdog capacity. With this sort of media
coverage it was only to be expected that many of the alleged targets
and interest groups would call for a public inquiry. It is noteworthy
that most groups calling for a public inquiry were not prepared to put
their trust either in SIRC or Parliament. They wanted a judicial
inquiry like the McDonald Commission. 34 By contrast, the Reform Party
alone publicly called for an inquiry by a parliamentary committee.
Because of the clear relationship between SIRC members and political
parties, the Reform Party deeply distrusted SIRC's capacity to do the
job. In its view, SIRC had lost all credibility because its current
membership (3 PC's, 1 Liberal, 1 NDP) neither reflected the current
composition of the House of Commons nor had been elected to ministerial

office. 35 During the Mulroney years, membership in SIRC had become a
patronage plum of significant importance because of the title 'privy
councillor' that went with the part-time sinecure. 36 Most
appointments, particularly those on the Conservative side, instead of
bringing intelligence expertise or other relevant experience to bear,
primarily reflected strong party loyalty or allegiance to the leader.
As a result, because the Progressive Conservative Party clearly had the

most to gain from damaging the Reform Party's reputation prior to a
federal election, the latter had good reason to be concerned about
SIRC's willingness to pose the important questions that needed
answering. 37

SIRC's Report on the Heritage Front

In many ways, SIRC's Report on the Heritage Front was the most critical

of its career. Clearly, if it did not produce a credible analysis, it
would be unlikely to recover from the subsequent lack of confidence.
However, the report does a great deal to redeem SIRC as an effective
oversight body. Its review, completed at a record-setting pace in less
than four months, not only answers most of the specific questions posed

to it, but is one of the most detailed and carefully documented yet
released. Quickly made public by the Solicitor General with only
deletions regarding the payment of human sources, the report generally
paints a picture of CSIS as an efficient and effective organization
that pays careful attention to its statutory mandate and the written
directions its receives from its minister. Specifically, the report
cleared CSIS of the major charges levied against it. CSIS did not spy
on the CBC. It did not try to infiltrate the Canadian Jewish Congress,
the Reform Party or the Canadian Union of Public Employees. And, most
important of all, CSIS was justified in trying to penetrate the extreme

right with a human source. While he did not break the law nor found the

Heritage Front, he did provide the government and local police forces
with useful information, and played an important role in having certain

extremists arrested and deported. In short, the source and his handler,

in SIRC's words, deserved Canada's thanks, not its condemnation. 38

But the report is not all glory for SIRC or those who wanted it quickly

made public. Some of the bigger, more philosophical questions remain
unanswered. Particularly nagging is the question of whether CSIS should

have used a human source in the way it did. To infiltrate an
organization is one thing; to play a leadership role in it is quite
another. Similarly, to say that it saw no evidence of the Progressive
Conservative government instructing CSIS to infiltrate the Reform Party

or of a Conservative Party conspiracy "with or without CSIS," begs
another question. Would SIRC necessarily have seen such instructions?
Would not such discussions, had they occurred, have taken place outside

SIRC's statutory purview, well inside some tightly shut political
office? Given the difficulties of proving the negative that there was
no conspiracy should not SIRC have been somewhat more measured in its
finding? 39 And what of the decision not to tell the minister that
Heritage Front members had infiltrated the Reform Party and the
minister's subsequent position that he was not obliged to tell Reform
and that they were quite capable of doing their own security? Does this

not warrant at least some specific commentary about the need for
specific ministerial directions in politically-sensitive cases? As
well, their criticism of the media generally and CBC's accusation that
CSIS infiltrated the Canadian Union of Postal Workers in particular,
was muted at best. 40 Given that the media has a formidable capacity to

undermine public trust in democratic institutions as well as enhance
them, was this not worthy of even more spiked commentary? And what of
SIRC's position that greater policy guidance is needed concerning the
use of human sources? Is not this observation just a shade late given
the strong recommendations that the Special Committee had made on this
score in 1990? In addition, SIRC is silent on what must be an important

point related to a service employee providing early-warning information

directly to the Reform Party. Is it appropriate for service employees
to take an active political role, as this individual did, in electoral
campaigns? And, did not this action deserve some critical commentary?
41 Finally, the cynical must ask why this report was made public with
such haste and almost in its entirety. Clearly, it paints a positive
picture of both CSIS and SIRC, two institutions established in the
dying moments of the last Liberal administration that had come under
fire during the Conservative years. Would the new government have been
so ready to publish SIRC's findings had they not been the bearer of
such good news?

Parliament's Action

While it is still unclear whether the Sub-committee on National
Security (SCNS) will ever report on the actions of Grant Bristow, the
SCNS has already taken both positive and negative steps. On the
positive side, five points can be singled out. First, the SCNS started
its analysis of the McInnis-Bristow Affair in a way that was quite
different from previous reviews. At one of its earliest public
sessions, it provided SIRC with a list of questions it wanted answered.

At an executive session, the SCNS was provided with a briefing by
counsel on the constitutional basis of parliamentary powers. This,
together with the fact that it focused all its attention and resources
on the matter, suggested that the SCNS intended both to play a more
activist role and to make this exercise a showcase of what it could do.

While, the structure and answers provided in SIRC's report suggest that

this objective has been partially accomplished, the delay in completing

its report and tabling it in Parliament seriously question the Sub
-committee's capacity.

Second, the Sub-committee has seriously challenged the 1977 precedent
that effectively prevented former ministers from answering questions
when it was in the government's interest for them to be silent. It did
this by getting former Solicitor General Douglas Lewis to give
evidence. Though he is now out of politics, his testimony provides an
alternative precedent to the shackles imposed by the Speaker's ruling.

Third, the SCNS is now using lengthy executive sessions with its
research staff present to go through the reports of SIRC and the
Inspector General in detail. Such executive sessions are a well-used
feature of the American congressional intelligence oversight system,
which the Special Committee had duly noted when it visited Washington.
These were conducted, as is fitting for sensitive matters, at in camera

meetings. Though it was understood that public sessions would
subsequently provide a record of the essential details without
revealing sensitive security-related information this objective was not

always followed.

Fourth, the SCNS has adopted tactics used by the Special Committee in
1989-90. It has followed up testimony provided in hearings with
detailed questions requiring written responses. This has proven
invaluable to staff (who have to write committee reports) for a variety

of reasons. It has alleviated the structural restraints imposed by
committee procedures, particularly insofar as time limits prevent a
line of questioning from being developed and witnesses can employ the
old tactic of running out the clock by giving lengthy preliminary
statements and long-winded answers. In addition, it provided staff with

an opportunity to develop lines of questioning not touched on by
committee members and to fill in the gaps left in testimony.

Finally, the SCNS's very first report, which dealt with document and
personnel security,42 has been influential. According to the
government's obligatory response, the government has acted on, or is
about to act on, four of the five recommendations made by the SCNS.
Most importantly, the exempt staff in minister's offices are now to
come explicitly under the government's administrative security
policy.43

However, not all of the SCNS's moves have been constructive. Though
getting Lewis to testify was an obvious coup, it is evident that he was

handled with kid gloves. When he claimed that he could not answer
certain questions for reasons of law, no one pressed him on the issue,
offered him a secure environment in which he could have testified, or
reminded him of the substantial powers of Parliament to call for
people, papers and records. Also, the Subcommittee chose not to call
other former Solicitors General.

Similarly, the SCNS did not force the issue with Lewis's former deputy
minister. Though the Sub-committee threatened to subpoena witnesses,
Peter Harder, the Deputy Solicitor General from 1991 to 1993, refused
to testify, indicating that it would be inappropriate for him to appear

before the committee on grounds that he was no longer responsible for
the administration of the department.44 Unfortunately, the
Sub-committee accepted this argument and in so doing established
another unfortunate precedent. It should be noted that the testimony of

Jean Fournier, the deputy at the time of the inquiry, was that he could

not answer fully whether there was any intention to discredit the
Reform Party. Obviously, he could respond only on the basis of the
written records that remained in departmental files. He could neither
answer for the oral record nor for the written records of the minister
that were shredded on leaving office. Significantly, Harder's testimony

could perhaps have put to rest the possibility of a conspiracy.

The SCNS also decided not to ask either Bristow or McInnis to appear.
While obtaining testimony from Bristow was not so vital because he had
been interviewed extensively by SIRC, the decision not to hear from
McInnis was incredible. True, police investigations continued for most
of the time that the Sub-committee conducted its inquiry into
administrative security policy.45 However, this is an unconvincing
argument for not hearing from a key witness like McInnis. As careful
parliament watchers know only too well, "continuing police
investigations" and " sub-judice" claims have been used very broadly as

mechanisms for preventing parliamentary discussion of
politically-sensitive topics.

Mcinnis's testimony was needed for two important reasons. First, and
perhaps foremost, McInnis decided to go to the media not to SIRC, which

is ostensibly there to hear from would-be whistleblowers about events
such as these. Furthermore, in explaining his decision he described
SIRC as a toothless lapdog, not a watchdog.46 Given that he supposedly
had a unique eye on the CSIS-SIRC relationship and made such
disparaging remarks, Parliament needed to examine the basis for his
decisions and any political motives he may have had. Secondly,
McInnis's testimony was needed to learn what if anything he knew about
Bristow's actions. In all likelihood, this would have been very little,

as Derek Lee suggested publicly at the time. While the experience might

have provided little immediate information of value to the
Sub-committee, it nevertheless would have made explicit what McInnis'
part in the affair really was. McInnis was not the "whistleblower" he
purported to be. According to one observer:

He was in the process of releasing classified documents to his friends
(in the media) when the Heritage Front Affair erupted. One of the
'leaks' was then published in the Toronto Star, and McInnis fabricated
a story to justify his leaking of documents. He hoped, of course, that
it would not become public knowledge that he had leaked any more
documents than the single House Book card published in the Toronto
Star.47
If this picture of McInnis is correct, there is an evident
inconsistency between the picture of Bristow painted by SIRC's report
and the Bristow supposedly perceived by McInnis from the minister's
office. This discrepancy obviously goes right to the heart of SIRC's
credibility. Arguably, Parliament's responsibility encompasses not only

establishing whether the oversight bodies created by the CSIS Act are
doing their job, but as Parliament's surrogate, whether criticism
levied against it, particularly by those inside the executive branch,
is warranted. In the latter regard, the SCNS failed miserably to come
to SIRC's aid and to fulfil its mandate. 48

The relationship between the SCNS and SIRC appears to have been rocky
from the beginning of the 35th Parliament. Both sides clearly at times
adopted a confrontational attitude. Part of this was due to the lack of

trust clearly exhibited by members of both organizations. According to
individuals who have observed the committee at work, certain members of

the Sub-committee have continued to hold the views they had at the
start of the process.49 Perhaps if the Sub-committee had heard
testimony from CSIS itself, such rigidity might have been averted. But
rigidity and partisan politics were not apparently the only problem.
The leaking of the third draft of the Sub-committee's report was more
likely the result of in-fighting by government members over how
critical the report should be.

At one point, it looked as if Parliament would adopt a more activist
position, when a decision was made to discuss a motion to see all of
SIRC's previous reports. Such reports provide the only real avenue by
which Parliament can check to see whether SIRC is fulfilling its
mandate. Nevertheless, it appears that such a discussion has been
deferred, if not put off indefinitely.

In addition, there is the broader issue of public access to the
Parliamentary record, so essential to the public's trust. Recently, the

Standing Committee on Members' Services, for reasons of economy,
decided that it should control the decision on whether committees
should publish their transcripts. This has led the Board of Internal
Economy of the House of Commons, which the Speaker chairs, to effect
changes in the way the parliamentary record is published. For the year
to 31 March 1996 the House should save approximately $4.8 million by
not publishing an official bilingual version of the Minutes of Evidence

or indexes. However, transedited versions in English and French will be

available on a limited basis to MP's, their staff and parliamentary
researchers and through them to individuals wanting copies.50 In
addition, the record can now be read on, or down loaded from, the
Internet. While this system obviously has advantages in terms of cost
savings and in providing speedier access for anyone with a computer or
access to a library with on-line services, it is unclear what effect,
if any, this decision will have on the broader public access to the
parliamentary record.

Another negative dimension that is evident in the Sub-committee is an
element of partisanship and individuals not operating as a team,
features clearly absent in the Special Committee. In many respects,
this is to be expected given the political realities of the current
Parliament and the particular nature of this event. Significantly, the
current Parliament has two previously unknown parties, one of which is
avowedly separatist while being the Official Opposition. The House also

contains a very high proportion of new members with no previous
political experience. Both of these factors, as may be anticipated,
lead not only to an unwillingness to play by Parliament's normally
accepted unwritten rules, but to a lack of familiarity with how the
traditional parliamentary games are played and under what
circumstances. With the Reform Party, the initial element of
partisanship was to be expected. They, after all, were perceived by not

only members of the party but by numerous outsiders as being the
subject of CSIS's efforts and the target of the Conservative
government's political attacks. Nevertheless, the sudden provision of a

second set of questions given to SIRC by the Reform Party can only have

brought a sense of division to the SCNS when it needed a concerted
effort to obtain the government's and the public's trust. Similarly,
given the recent revelations about former Parti Québecois minister,
Claude Morin, being a paid informer for the RCMP Security Service in
the 1970s, the Bloc Québecois could not be expected to stay totally
silent with a referendum fast approaching and with the possibility of
CSIS being employed to infiltrate sovereigntist political parties,
however divided. What is unfortunate and threatens the success of the
SCNS in the long run is that the go-it-alone attitude of the Reform
Party has continued. Recently, just as the Sub-committee was being
reconstituted and deciding on a path of action for the current sitting,

the Reform Party member on it decided not to raise her allegation that
there had been a Russian 'mole' working in the Security Service for
more than two decades, but instead to threaten the Solicitor General
with releasing the evidence if he did not investigate the matter.51

WORK IN PROGRESS: OVERSIGHT OF THE CSE

During its review of the CSIS Act and the Security Offences Act, the
Special Committee had reason to examine the links between the CSE and
CSIS. Despite difficulties in obtaining official answers, this
examination revealed that Canada's ultra secret signals intelligence
agency had been established by Order in Council, not by statute. And
while the Special Committee found no evidence of abuse, it noted that
the CSE had the capacity to invade the privacy of Canadians in a
variety of ways but was "to all intents and purposes unaccountable."52
As a result, in what was one of its most important recommendations, the

Special Committee proposed that the CSE be given a statutory mandate
and placed under the constant purview of a revamped Security and
Intelligence Committee (SIRC). Under these new terms of reference, SIRC

would not only conduct its existing responsibilities but would have a
broader remit over the entire intelligence community and would report
directly to Parliament on all matters, including the activities of the
CSE, particularly regarding that agency's compliance with Canadian
laws.

In the executive branch's obligatory response to the legislature, which

was tabled almost five months later, the Progressive Conservative
government suggested that it had been considering providing the
Minister of National Defence, the minister ostensibly responsible for
the CSE, with some additional capacity for reviewing the agency. It
went on to note in a rather cavalier fashion that the government would
make an announcement when a decision on the most appropriate approach
had been made. 53 Subsequent access to information requests lodged
before the 1993 general elections suggest that, in fact, little or no
action on this particular file was taken by that particular
administration.

The lack of visible action by the government led to two important
developments. While several MP's tried to develop a Private Members
Bill, most gave up because of the difficulty of drafting legislation
covering a technological activity about which little was known.
However, Derek Lee, a former Liberal member of the Special Committee,
tried a different tack. He suggested a statutory amendment to the CSIS
Act that would have the limited effect of extending SIRC's review and
monitoring role to cover the CSE. The Conservative government, however,

declined to accept this proposition on grounds that it would have the
effect of either diffusing SIRC's role regarding CSIS or diminishing
ministerial accountability. 54

The second initiative concerned the new all-party Sub-committee on
National Security. It formulated a work plan of actions it intended to
take in the coming months. One of the first was the development of a
staff background paper that posed several questions about the future of

the CSE and how and to whom it should be made accountable. 55 While
this paper noted the Special Committee's recommendations regarding the
accountability of the CSE, it unfortunately failed to draw attention to

the fact that the Special Committee had tied its recommendation
regarding a monitoring and review role for SIRC to changes in the way
SIRC operated, particularly regarding its capacity to report directly
to Parliament. It was, therefore, quite wrong when it said that similar

recommendations had been made by former government officials. In John
Starnes' case, the former Director General of the RCMP Security
Service, not only did he not envisage a revamped SIRC but specifically
advocated handling the amalgamation of the CSE and CSIS by executive
order, thus avoiding a parliamentary debate. 56 Similarly, while
Jean-Jacques Blais, a former Minister of National Defence and
subsequently a member of SIRC, argued for a broader role for SIRC to
cover other intelligence agencies, he saw no need to broaden SIRC's
capacity to speak directly to Parliament.57 Subsequently, the
Sub-committee broke new ground by meeting privately with Stewart
Woolner, Chief of the CSE. Immediately following this meeting it heard
public testimony from Ward Elcock, one of the two deputy ministers to
whom Woolner reported. The testimony of the ever cautious Deputy Clerk
of the Privy Council for security and intelligence matters is
interesting on at least two scores. First, though his responses
normally followed the bureaucratic practice of answering the question
while providing the barest of details, he was unusually precise on
whether CSIS used the CSE to circumvent its legislation. Having
stressed that CSE did not target Canadians, he added: "To be even more
specific, CSE does not target Canadians through intercepting their
cellular or microwave-link telephone calls or landlines. We do not do
that."58 Secondly, he confirmed that the government was still actively
considering whether to increase the system of accountability under
which CSE operated.

A further source of pressure for greater accountability came at a much
more politically sensitive moment. Following the rejection of
constitutional change in the 1992 national referendum,
pro-sovereigntist sentiment once again emerged victorious at the polls.

On this occasion, however, the federal government had more to cope with

than merely a Parti Québecois government in Quebec City; it had to
deal with the Bloc Québecois across the floor of the House of Commons
as the Official Opposition. It was in this new context that Mike Frost
and Michel Gratton chose to published Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and

American Intelligence Establishments . Written by a former CSE insider
with the help of Prime Minister Mulroney's former press secretary, the
book not only alleged that the CSE had acquired "third-party
intercepts" of communications between the French government and
Quebec's political leaders in the 1970s, but continued to target such
communications in the run-up to the sovereignty referendum that was to
be held in the fall of 1995.59 Though the government fiercely denied
any illegality, the opportunity provided Lucien Bouchard, the Bloc
leader, who had previously served as a minister in the Mulroney
government and as Canada's ambassador to France, and presumably knew
something of such matters, with an ideal opportunity to undermine the
federal government's credibility in Quebec by claiming that it was
hiding the truth and by calling for a royal commission.60

At the same time, the Privacy Commissioner, who reports to Parliament
through the Minister of Justice, announced that his office would
conduct a review to establish whether the CSE conformed with the
Privacy Act. Though the timing of this announcement appeared to be
directly connected to the allegations made in Spyworld, an official
spokesperson said that the review was merely part of a regular series
of compliance audits conducted on government agencies. She also noted,
however, that it was unlikely that the public would ever come to know
much about the findings of the report because the Commissioner was
constrained by the Official Secrets Act.61 Responding to questions
about why little information could be revealed about possible
violations of privacy laws and whether or not the CSE had spied on
Quebec separatists, the new Liberal Defence Minister, David Collenette,

continued the practice of asking the public to indulge in paternalistic

blind trusts when he said, "Quite frankly, I think Canadians are just
going to have to trust the Prime Minister and the government that any
fears they may have . . . are totally unfounded."62

Within a month, Derek Lee, now the new Liberal chair of the Sub
-committee on National Security, reintroduced his motion to have SIRC
review and monitor the CSE by amending the CSIS Act . The general
purpose of the motion to place Canada's most secret intelligence
organization, the CSE, under some form of independent oversight was
broadly supported. Nevertheless, it soon became evident that the motion

would only receive all-party support if it were modified. For its part,

the Bloc wanted the Chief of the CSE to table an annual report in
Parliament similar to the one provided by the Director of CSIS.
Similarly, because SIRC lacked credibility in the eyes of Reform's
members, that party wanted some other body to act as the external
review body over the CSE's operations.63 Once adopted, the minister
agreed that the government would act on the motion. Apparently, it was
now logical for Canadians to receive some more substantive assurance
that the CSE operated within the law. 64

Even while the minister was privately soliciting the views of
interested non-governmental organizations on how this should be done,
another revelation came to light that would further pressure the
government to act. On this occasion, Jane Shorten, a former senior
intelligence analyst with the CSE who had been let go in 1994 because
of lack of work, risked prosecution under the Official Secrets Act and
revealed to the media (just as the prime minister was meeting with
members of the Asia Pacific Economic Group in New Zealand) that the CSE

had been eavesdropping on the governments of such friendly states as
Japan, Korea and Mexico. Unlike McInnis, Shorten had taken appropriate
action before whistleblowing to the media. Apparently, she had
approached the chair of the Sub-committee about her concerns and had
expressed a willingness to appear before it. 65 Given that other CSE
employees had expressed similar concerns, 66 and there are major
privacy concerns at issue, it is more than a little surprising that the

Sub-committee did not take up this offer and investigate the matter,
particularly since government ministers and officials had recently
claimed that countries like Canada did not spy on friendly states. 67
One possible explanation is that while this generated significant
attention abroad as demonstrated by journalistic inquiries and
diplomatic notes there was little public disquiet at home. True, the
CTV made much of their scoop and would claim that they were
instrumental in moving the government's planning to introduce
accountability mechanisms for the CSE ahead. But there was no apparent
objection from the Canadian public about the impropriety of the matter.

Arguably, this suggests that Canadians are more urbane than former
Canadian intelligence officials have led us to believe and turns on its

head their view that Canadians would not stand for the establishment of

a foreign intelligence service.

CONCLUSIONS

A full evaluation of the Sub-committee participation in the McInnis
-Bristow affair cannot be reached without the SCNS tabling a report in
Parliament and the House of Commons debating the issues raised.
Nevertheless, certain conclusions can be made about the future of
intelligence oversight in Canada, from the events that have already
transpired.

First, the current system of oversight does not work well. SIRC cannot
and does not speak directly to Parliament regarding either CSIS or on
intelligence matters more broadly. It simply does not have the mandate.

As a result, a lack of trust has developed in the institution's ability

to review and monitor the agency in its charge. Clearly this view is
now shared widely among MP's of all parties, many in the media, and
among the public at large. Trust is the crucial issue on which the
success of institutions like SIRC rests. That SIRC is now demonstrating

that it is a competent researcher should be a sine qua non, not a
rationalization for its future existence. Without a broad level of
trust, there will be calls for its abolition, which in the end may
prove insurmountable.

Second, the way in which members of SIRC have been appointed in the
past has been the most significant factor in affecting the level of
trust that Parliament, the media and the public have in that
institution's capacity to operate in a non-partisan and thorough
manner. The present government is to be commended for moving away from
partisan appointments and looking for intelligence expertise. But as
the old adage goes, one swallow does not make a summer. The entire
committee should be drawn from individuals who have credentials in
which the broadest spectrum of the public can trust. While it may come
as a surprise to many, credentials demonstrating the pursuit of the
public interest, not partisan ones, are not hard to find.

Third, there may be pressure to introduce some form of oversight
mechanism governing the CSE that neither includes a statutory framework

nor has effective independent oversight. Such a model should be
discarded, as it will not fly over the longer term. It will not achieve

the quintessential ingredient; it will only engender the public's
cynicism, not its trust.

Fourth, it is important to note that oversight serves two masters. On
the one hand, it is there to ensure that intelligence agencies operate
within the bounds of propriety and with appropriate levels of efficacy.

On the other hand, oversight must also be there to protect the
intelligence agencies and independent oversight bodies from false
accusations. Such accusations can be equally damaging to the
effectiveness of intelligence institutions because of the impact they
have on the public trust and internally on the organizational culture,
particularly regarding such important dimensions as morale and team
spirit. The incapacity of SIRC to speak freely over the McInnis-Bristow

affair has clearly had a significant negative impact on the members of
CSIS as an article by former CSIS employee Peter Marwitz reveals.68 It
is critically important, as the Special Committee observed from its
visit to Washington, to have knowledgeable people in politics who
understand the intelligence community structure, how it operates, and
its resource needs.

Fifth, while governments have routinely posited that SIRC is a
surrogate for Parliament, no one has suggested, as David Harris has
wrongly implied, that SIRC could be replaced by a parliamentary
committee. The suggestion that an independent body like SIRC could be
replaced by a parliamentary body is blatantly absurd. To understand
why, one needs to face up to the reality of Parliament. Parliament is,
by its very nature, a partisan body. It is inevitable that what takes
place on the floor of the House will be partisan in nature. While this
does not mean all committee work necessarily will be partisan, it does
imply that the possibility always exists that even such crucial public
interest activities, such as the oversight of intelligence, could erupt

into partisanship at any moment, regardless of any strictures placed on

it. Furthermore, parliamentary committees have structural reasons why
they cannot provide on-going oversight, why they chose certain topics
to consider and not others, and why they sometimes prefer to put out
fires rather perform systematic reviews. Members frequently have other
duties and demands on their time to perform that make it impossible for

the committee to meet on a regular basis. Committees do not function
continuously. When Parliament is between sessions (i.e., while
prorogued) they may not function at all and when between sittings they
require special authority. They do not have sufficient research staff.
The staff that they do have does not have any first-hand experience
with intelligence. Furthermore, Parliament has so far refused to have
any of its staff security cleared. And in SIRC's case, its members
perform a quasi -judicial function in hearing complaints, a role that
parliamentarians should not be asked to perform.

Sixth, the oversight model, first proposed by the McDonald Commission
and subsequently further developed by the Special Committee that
reviewed the CSIS Act, of having an independent body report directly to

a special type of parliamentary committee deserves closer and renewed
attention. The model has particular advantages. It would permit
Parliament to do what many argue is its primary function. Not only
could it provide budget oversight and cover those matters that are
outside the remit of the independent oversight bodies, but by
establishing whether office holders are operating within and according
to their statutory mandates, it could fulfil its true watchdog role.
Furthermore, it is the only institution that could adequately
intertwine two independent bodies like SIRC and the IG where there is
no overlapping mandate, as was the case with the McInnis-Bristow
affair. In fact, it appears that if the government does not legislate
the model into being, Parliament may just continue to operationalize
it, piece by piece, in an ad hoc manner.

This, of course, has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it
could permit the government to achieve what may be its objective
without having a full debate on intelligence or by amending
legislation. On the other hand, progress depends on a Sub-committee on
National Security that is prepared to be activist in pursuing the
public and Parliament's interests, to ensure that all key witnesses are

interviewed in an in camera environment where they may feel able to
reveal information privately, a chair that has the government's trust,
and a willingness among committee members to work together on certain
issues in a non-partisan manner. As we have seen, these factors are not

always present.

Endnotes

1. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting

of the British Political Studies Association at York in April 1985. The

author wishes to thank several people at that meeting for their helpful

comments. In Canada, CSIS' Communications Staff forwarded copies of
letters the Service had written to the media and certain crucial media
transcripts. Philip Rosen of the Library of Parliament's Research
Branch drew on his extensive experience to provide me with invaluable
insights. Maurice Archdeacon, SIRC's Executive Director, was kind
enough to critique an earlier draft that saved me from numerous errors;

so too did the Journal's anonymous reviewers. Any errors of fact and
interpretation that remain, however, are entirely the fault of the
author.

2. For a discussion of the role of scandals, see Andrei S. Markovits
and Mark Silverstein, eds., Politics of Scandal: Power and Process in
Liberal Democracies (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988), especially Reg
Whitaker's, "The RCMP Scandals," pp. 38-61.

3. For an analysis of Parliament's difficulties, see Stuart Farson,
"The Noble Lie Revisited: Parliament's Five-Year Review of the CSIS
Act: Instrument of Change or Weak Link in the Chain of Accountability,"

in Philip C. Stenning, ed., Accountability for Criminal Justice:
Selected Essays (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), pp.
185-212.

4. I am especially indebted to Derek Lee MP, Chair of the Sub-Committee

on National Security of the House of Commons, for discussing these
issues with me and for sharing his speaking notes and briefing papers
related to many of the subjects discussed below.

5. On 10 October 1991, the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of

Regulations disallowed a piece of delegated legislation (Agricultural
Exhibition Loans Order) for the first time. On 19 November 1992, it
turned down two more, one dealing with Indian Health Regulations, the
other prohibiting demonstrations near the entrances to Parliament.

6. In its June 1993 Report, the Standing Joint Committee for the
Scrutiny of Regulations rebuked the government for issuing an Order
that purported to exempt the Kemano II hydro-electric project in
British Columbia from the Environmental Assessment Review Process.

7. Despite written reminders, the Minister of Finance failed to table
(as required by law) orders governing the implementation of the
Canada-US Free Trade Agreement. Following a question of privilege, the
Speaker ruled that non-compliance constituted a prima facie contempt of

the House.

8. With some justification the two affairs have been seen as separate
and distinct entities. SIRC, for example, did not have the authority to

go into minister's offices to examine the actions of Brian McInnis.
Similarly, the Inspector General was not asked to examine matters
related to Grant Bristow. The parliamentary sub-committee worked on two

reports one dealing with administrative security policy, the other
concerning the Grant Bristow affair. Not all parliamen tarians have
seen them as separate entities. Jack Ramsey, for example, clearly saw
them as related matters and referred to them as the "Brian
McInnis-Grant Bristow Affair." See Canada, House of Commons, Debates,
29 September 1994, 6325-26. For him the underlying issue was

whether "CSIS and other institutions were politicized by the Brian
Mulroney government and whether the McInnis-Bristow incident was the
premeditated extension of that politicization." This article also sees
the affairs as being all of a piece and refers to them collectively as
"the McInnis-Bristow affair."

9. C.E.S. Franks, Parliament and Security Matters (Ottawa: Ministry of
Supply and Services Canada, 1980), p. 21.

10. Ibid.

11. Canada, Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Freedom and Security under the Law,
Second Report, vol. 2, (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Service, August,

1981), pp. 883-91.

12. Ibid, pp. 896-902.

13. Bill C-9, Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act , 2nd Session,

32nd Parliament, 3233 Elizabeth II, 1983-84, section 69.

14. For a discussion of CSIS's failure to civilianize itself and the
work of the IAT, see Stuart Farson, "Old Wine, New Bottles and Fancy
Labels: The Rediscovery of Organizational Culture in the Control of
Intelligence," in Gregg Barrak, ed., Crimes by the Capitalist State: An

Introduction to State Criminality (Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1991), pp. 185-217.

15. See Canada, House of Commons, Special Committee on the Review of
the CSIS Act and the Security Offences Act, In Flux but not in Crisis
(Ottawa: Queen's Printer, September, 1990), p. 91.

16. Security Intelligence Review Committee, Annual Report: 1988-1989
(Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services Canada, 1989). Chapter 2
contained a section on the ministerial directions SIRC had reviewed in
the past year. It stated that "[w]ith one reservation . . . nothing we
saw permits any unreasonable or unnecessary use of the Service's powers

or unduly impinges on individual rights."

17. Ibid, recommendations 49 and 52.

18. I have discussed the Special Committee's investigation into SIRC's
report on CSIS's "Report on the Innu Interview and the Native Extremism

Investigation" in "The Noble Lie Revisited," pp. 185-212. The Special
Committee's principal problem with the research was that SIRC only
analysed CSIS documents and interviewed staff at headquarters, not
personnel in the region or the members of the local community or the
Innu who had been on the receiving end. Subsequent reports, most
particularly that covering the Heritage Front, suggest that this
deficiency has been corrected.

19. While having different ministers responsible for Canada's two
principal intelligence agencies can be used to thwart parliamentary
committees from digging too deeply into related matters or functions
that run across government, having senior bureaucrats testify before
separate committees is not without its problems. Consider the testimony

of Margaret Bloodworth and Stewart Woolner before the Defence Committee

in which the two revealed the budget of the CSE for the first time. See

Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on National Defence and
Veterans Affairs, 2 May 1995. They declined to answer questions that
would have identified the proportion of the budget allotted to INFOSEC
versus SIGINT, not realizing that the proportion allotted to INFOSEC
had previously been identified as being between 20-22 percent in
testimony by another official before the Standing Committee on Public
Accounts. See Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Public
Accounts, Minutes of Evidence, 10 October 1991, 7: 12-16.

20. Canada, Solicitor General of Canada, On Course: National Security
for the 1990s (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services Canada, February

1991).

21. Most observers subscribe to the view that less than a handful of
the Special Committee's 117 recommendations were acted upon. However,
the Deputy Solicitor General, who ostensibly had responsibility for
responding to the Committee's report, told a SIRC Conference in
Montreal in September 1992 that the vast majority were encompassed by
policy initiatives.

22. Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Privileges and
Election, First Report, 29 May 1991.

23. For another interpretation of the Bristow affair, see Reg Whitaker,

"The 'Bristow Affair': a Crisis of Accountability in Canadian Security
Intelligence," Intelligence and National Security (forthcoming).

24. Kirk Makin, "Tory Aide admits leaking CSIS memo," The Globe and
Mail, 26 August 1994, p. A1.

25. See Rosemary Speirs, "Spy watchdog fears for image," Toronto Star,
7 September 1994, pp. A1, A9.

26. CBC, Prime Time News, "Information Leak on CSIS," 7 September 1994,

22:00 to 23:00 ET.

27. For a description of how Canada now clears government personnel and

maintains security over its assets, see Stuart Farson, "Propriety,
Efficacy and Balance: A Preliminary Appraisal of Canada's 'New',
'Improved' Administrative Security program," in Peter Hanks and John D.

McCamus, eds., National Security: Surveillance and Accountability in a
Democratic Society (Cowansville, PQ: Yvon Blais, 1989), pp. 127-55. For

a historical treatment, see Reg Whitaker, "Origins of the Canadian
Government's Internal Security System, 1946-1952," Canadian Historical
Review, 65, no. 2 (June 1984), pp. 154-83.

28. CSIS, in fact, issued several news releases during the critical
period. On 19 August 1994, it denied spying on the CBC. On 23 August it

denied investigating political parties, and on 8 September it responded

to CBC's accusation that it spied on postal workers. "CSIS has not and
is not investigating the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). CSIS
has not provided information to the management of Canada Post on the
activities of some CUPW members during contract negotiations."

29. Stephen Bindman, "CBC accused of relying on fake papers," Vancouver

Sun, 10 September 1994, p. A8.

30. Chris Cobb, "CBC reluctant to let facts get in the way of a
goodstory," Ottawa Citizen, 26 September 1994, p. A9.

31. According to a personal communication from SIRC to the author, SIRC

also wrote to the Chairman of the CBC challenging the CBC's
interpretation of events and asked for the other evidence that it
supposedly had. In SIRC's words, "[t]he response we received said
clearly that the CBC did not have in its possession any 'other
documents'."

32. Jeff Sallot, "Inquiry into Bristow Case lacks only one thing:
Bristow," The Globe and Mail, 15 September 1994, p. A6.

33. David Harris, "Much to lose in CSIS probe," The Ottawa Citizen, 12
September 1994, p. A9.

34. The groups included the Toronto Committee on Community and Race
Relations, the B'nai Birth Canada, the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Union. See Kirk Makin, "Is
Canada's spy agency out of control?"; Rudy Platiel, "Royal Commission
needed, groups say"; and Jeff Sallot, "CBC accused of Making mistake in

saying agency spied on CUPW." All are in The Globe and Mail , 10
September 1994, pp. A1, A5.

35. I have discussed the problem of SIRC's credibility in "Accountable
and Prepared: Reorganizing Canada's Intelligence Community for the 21st

Century," Canadian Foreign Policy, 1, no. 3 (Fall 1993), pp. 64-65. See

also Reg Whitaker, "The Bristow Affair," and his "Politics of Security
Intelligence Policy-Making in Canada: II 1984-1991," Intelligence and
National Security, 7, no. 2 (April 1992), pp. 53-76. For a contrast
with the earlier period, see Lawrence Lustgarten and Ian Leigh, In from

the Cold: National Security and Parliamentary Democracy (Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press, 1994), especially pp. 458-66; and Peter Gill,
"Symbolic or Real? The Impact of the Canadian Security Intelligence
Review Committee, 1984-88," Intelligence and National Security, 4, no.
3 (July 1989), pp. 550-75; and his more recent, Policing Politics:
Security Intelligence and the Liberal Democratic State (London: Cass,
1994), especially pp. 274-305. For SIRC's own view, see Michel Robert's

comments in Canada, House of Commons, Sub-committee on National
Security of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor

General, Minutes of Evidence and Proceedings , 16 December 1994, 5:11.
It should be noted that the current government has moved away from
clearly partisan appointments by reappointing Paule Gautier to replace
Michael Robert after his appointment to the bench. Looked at in Reform
Party terms, the government now also has no member on SIRC. The view of

the Bloc Québecois is similar. See the views of Francois Langlois in
Canada, House of Commons, Sub -committee on National Security of the
Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General, Minutes of
Evidence and Proceedings, 16 December 1994, 5:10-11.

36. Stevie Cameron, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the
Mulroney Years (Toronto: Macfarlane Walter and Ross, 1994).

37. It should be noted that Solicitor General Douglas Lewis was also
the chair of the PC's Ontario campaign. See Sheldon Alberts, "Probe
sought into spying allegations," Calgary Herald, 24 August 1994, p. A3;

Kate Mallow and Mike Scandiffio, "Reform Party suspects Doug Lewis of
Spy Campaign," The Hill Times, 25 August 1994, pp. 1 and 9.

38. Canada, Security Intelligence Review Committee, The Heritage Front
Affair (Ottawa: SIRC, 9 December 1994).

39. For the views of SIRC's Executive Director, Maurice Archdeacon, on
the difficulties of proving a negative i.e., that there was no
conspiracy see his forthcoming article "The Heritage Front Affair,"
Intelligence and National Security (forthcoming, 1996). This suggests
that the onus should be on those who allege directly or indirectly such

an assertion to provide some form of evidence to that effect.

40. True, SIRC's condemnation of The 5th Estate was more blunt.
However, that directed at Prime Time News was much more lenient.
According to Chris Cobb, "CBC program apology saved it from wrath of
spy committee," Vancouver Sun, 16 December 1994, p. A4 this was due to
the apology provided by the CBC on The National, 2 December 1994.

41. Apparently, SIRC did comment on this matter to the Sub-committee.
Private communication with the author.

42. Canada, House of Commons, Standing Committee on Justice and Legal
Affairs, First Report of the Sub-Committee on National Security on
Document and Personnel Security , 4 October 1995.

43. See the letter of Marcel Masse, President of the Treasury Board,
and enclosures dated 28 February 1996.

44. Kate Malloy, "CSIS committee threatens to subpoena witnesses," The
Hill Times, 20 October 1994.

45. The Minister of Justice, Allan Rock, finally announced his decision

not to charge McInnis under the Official Secrets Act almost a full year

after RCMP investigations began on grounds that it was not in the
public interest to do so. See Anon, "Rock drops case against Tory
aide," The Globe and Mail, 20 July 1994, p. A4. It is not known whether

"police investigations" were used in this case as a means of
discouraging the SCNS from investigating or whether there were bona
fide reasons for not proceeding with a prosecution. It has been
reported that McInnis had recently been diagnosed with leukemia. See
Robert Fife, "Spying on posties denied," The Ottawa Sun, 9 September
1994. Also, Ron Atkey, SIRC's former chair and constitutional expert,
had opined that while McInnis was more vulnerable to charges relating
to the CSIS Act, breach of trust and theft, the search and seizure
provisions of the Official Secrets Act under which McInnis's house had
been searched were open to constitutional challenge. See Kirk Makin and

Jeff Sallot, "Atkey doubts value of RCMP raid on McInnis home," The
Globe and Mail, 9 September 1994, p. A7.

46. His remarks were voiced on CBC's Prime Time News . See Rosemary
Speirs, "Spy watchdog fears for image," Toronto Star, 7 September 1994,

p. A1.

47. Confidential communication with the author.

48. Significantly, the terms of reference of the Sub-committee include
"the operations of SIRC on behalf of Parliament." See Canada,
Sub-Committee on National Security of the Standing

Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, Minutes of Proceedings and
Evidence , Tuesday, 7 June 1994, 1:3.

49. Various confidential interviews.

50. See Canada, House of Commons, Board of Internal Economy, Press
Release, 22 March 1995. Transediting is a process of limited editing.
It eliminates such things as overlaps in tapes, repetitions and
verification of quotes.

51. Interview with Reform MP, Val Meridith, on As it Happens, CBC, 28
March 1996.

52. Canada, House of Commons, Special Committee on the Review of the
CSIS Act and the Security Offences Act, In Flux but not in Crisis
(Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1990), pp. 152-53.

53. Canada, Solicitor General of Canada, On Course: National Security
for the 1990s (Ottawa: Ministry of Supply and Services, 1991), pp.
54-55.

54. Canada, House of Commons, Debates , 20 May 1992, 10976-86.

55. Philip Rosen, "Communications Security Establishment Background
Paper and Work plan," (Ottawa: Research Branch, Library of Parliament,
1992).

56. John Starnes, "Cryptographic unit would be more accountable under
CSIS," Ottawa Citizen, 17 July 1991.

57. Jean-Jacques Blais, "Committee should be expanded to review other
agencies," Ottawa Citizen, 2 July 1992.

58. Canada, House of Commons, Sub-Committee on National Security of the

Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General, Minutes of
Proceedings and Evidence , 15 June 1993, 11:8.

59. Mike Frost and Michel Gratton, Spyworld: Inside the Canadian and
American Intelligence Establishments (Toronto: Doubleday, 1994), pp.
240-42. A similar assertion had earlier been made by Jean-Francois
Lisee, In the Eye of the Eagle (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1990), p. 88.

60. Canadian Press, "Copps denies book's spying allegations," The Globe

and Mail, 21 October 1994, p. A5.

61. Anon, "Privacy official reviewing spy agency," The Globe and Mail,
26 October 1994, p. A4.

62. Ibid.

63. Motion M-38 discussed in Canada, House of Commons, Debates, 15
November 1994, 13 December 1994, 21 March 1995.

64. Jim Bronskill, "Watchdog in works to monitor spy agency," Vancouver

Sun, 23 March 1995, p. A7.

65. CTV News, 13 November 1995.

66. Confidential Interview, 1 December 1995.

67. Earlier in the year, in response to allegations that the CIA had
spied on the Japanese delegation to the auto trade talks in Geneva,
Solicitor General Herb Gray had claimed that countries like Canada did
not do such things. See Anon, "Canada spies on allies, former agent
claims," Ottawa Citizen, 13 November 1995, p. A5. Interestingly, when
senior officials had appeared before the Standing Committee on National

Defence and Veterans' Affairs, they had been more limited in their
denial. Margaret Bloodworth, Deputy Clerk Intelligence and Security,
limited such non -spying arrangements only to those countries that were

party to the UKUSA SIGINT agreements (i.e., United States, United
Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada). See Canada, Standing
Committee on National Defence and Veterans' Affairs , Minutes of
Evidence, 2 May 1995. Equally interesting was the fact that Prime
Minister Chretien avoided making any such denial when confronted by
reporters in New Zealand where members of the Asia Pacific Economic
Group were meeting. See Shawn Durkan "Chretien mum on CSE spying,"
Ottawa Sun, 14 November 1995, p. 14.

68. See Peter Marwitz, "Do Canadians have reason to be worried about
CSIS," The Globe and Mail, 10 October 1994, p. A17.

Net-kook Spotter

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Printable version

INTRODUCTION

THE REFORM PERIOD

Parliament for its activities.

THE McINNIS-BRISTOW AFFAIR23

Parliament's Action

always followed.

a foreign intelligence service.

CONCLUSIONS

always present.

Endnotes

the House.

10. Ibid.

1981), pp. 883-91.

12. Ibid, pp. 896-902.

1991).

p. A1.

49. Various confidential interviews.

62. Ibid.

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"Members of the 3rd right (Nazi/facist)?"

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--
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---- Big Dumb Dave. (bigdum...@yahoo.com)

"Members of the 3rd right (Nazi/facist)?"

---- Scotty a.k.a. mr. third right. (clueless...@canada.com)

.--------------------------------------.
( BAHHHH! KATO is an friend too )
( my rear end BAHHHHH! )
`--------------------------------------'
, ,/
O@O
@ @@@
@@@@@
@@@@@
|| ||

"Netkook Detector" <spo...@netkook.com> wrote in message
news:dbh_f.1850$Zl.911@edtnps89...

"KATO"

unread,

Apr 10, 2006, 12:26:56 AM4/10/06

--
"You gotta be smarter than your oponant."

---- Big Dumb Dave. (bigdum...@yahoo.com)

"Members of the 3rd right (Nazi/facist)?"

---- Scotty a.k.a. mr. third right. (clueless...@canada.com)

.--------------------------------------.
( BAHHHH! KATO is an friend too )
( my rear end BAHHHHH! )
`--------------------------------------'
, ,/
O@O
@ @@@
@@@@@
@@@@@
|| ||

"Netkook Detector" <spo...@netkook.com> wrote in message
news:0bh_f.1849$Zl.644@edtnps89...

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