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Brian stewart: why are we eliminating the csis watchers? by 123wert sdfsf
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Brian stewart: why are we eliminating the csis watchers? |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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For over 30 years our domestic intelligence agency has been hauntedby the memory of a massive scandal that revealed how Canada'sgovernment had lost control of its own spies. In the late 1970s, the problems that beset the RCMP SecurityService illegal break-ins and wiretaps, intimidation ofsuspects, damage to property, political interference and lying tocabinet ministers were seen as Canada's Watergate. They shook the faith of Canadians in our security service and inthe protection of civil rights, and contributed to the fall of theTrudeau government in 1979. Today we should reflect on just how bad this was, for it reminds usof the critical need for government to ensure that our spies neverrun amok again. In the early 1980s, after a damning report by the McDonaldCommission into the RCMP, Parliament took two critical "neveragain" intelligence reforms.
First, the national police were stripped of the responsibility fordomestic security and a civilian Canadian Security IntelligenceService (CSIS) was created with firm orders to obey the law. Second, an independent inspector general for CSIS was established, with enough clout to monitor secret operationsand so ensure that cabinet does not get blindsided again byunlawful intelligence gathering. The inspector general has unique access to inspect CSIS operationsso that let's be absolutely clear here he or she can protectthe federal government from any possible misadventures. This has been so sensible a safeguard for government, for ourdemocracy and, ultimately, for CSIS itself that it is hard tobelieve Ottawa ever did without such a watchdog.
So why does itwant to do that now? Totally baffling Enter our often surprising Minister for Public Safety Vic Toews,the person the IG reports directly to. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews is scrapping the inspector generalfor CSIS, saving $1 million. (Patrick Doyle/Canadian Press) Toews recently decided that Canada has no further need of anindependent inspector general and is scrapping the tiny office tosave a mere $1 million an amount so small it lay unnoticed forthe longest time inside the government's massive 420-pages budgetimplementation bill. It is a move that has totally baffled those who follow these thingsclosely.
"The government has been entrusted with a valuable tool to ensurethe integrity of its intelligence agency, and it is throwing thattool away for reasons no one can understand," wrote Liberal SenatorColin Kenny, who has a unique perspective. (He was a top aide toPierre Trudeau when the RCMP Security Service was found to be outof control, and has long been an advocate for greateraccountability.) Adds University of Toronto's Wesley Wark, one of Canada leadingsecurity experts: "The inspector general's office was meant toresolve a dilemma for all cabinet ministers charged withresponsibility for CSIS that dilemma being that they couldneither afford to be too involved in the operational activities,nor kept too much in the dark." Indeed, when you consider that only two years ago Toews himself wasextolling the inspector general's vital function "that ensuresthat CSIS is operating within the law and complying with currentpolicies" you have to wonder if this move is only about savingmoney. Toothless tiger The first thing to consider here is that CSIS has grownsubstantially, by 50 per cent since 2001, and today has about 3,100employees and spends almost $350 million a year. Yet now, to save just $1 million, the government is erasing itsmost critical oversight mechanism. Toews argues that the IG office is not being eliminated per se, itis merely being folded into another body that also watches CSIS the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), which reports toParliament, not the minister.
The problem here, though, as everyone in Ottawa knows, is thatSIRC, to be blunt, has become about as toothless an agency watchdogas you can find. It is composed of civilian appointees, often very intelligentpeople, but with nothing like the oversight powers or professionalexpertise of the IG's office and its eight staff. These are critical considerations when dealing with the closed-offworld of intelligence. You have to know where the files are andwhat questions to ask. SIRC's job has mainly been to answer civilian complaints, and itsannual reports to Parliament rarely cause a ripple of interest.
Perhaps the surest indication of how little the government caresabout SIRC is that its last chairman, Arthur Porter, resigned last November under a cloud after media stories about his overseas businessinterests, yet Prime Minister Stephen Harper still hasn't botheredto appoint a successor. Afraid of criticism? Shoving the hollow remains of the inspector general's office intoSIRC will effectively end its relevant existence. It also meansthat another independent voice of warning and periodic criticism inOttawa will have been snuffed out by a government that does notappear to take institutional criticism kindly. Former inspector general for CSIS, Eva Plunkett, says the country'sspy service continues to flout government policy.
(Fred Chartrand/Canadian Press) Paul Kennedy, the former head of the RCMP Public ComplaintsCommission who was dumped by the government in 2009, says this is atrend we should all be familiar with by now. This latest move is particularly concerning to some spy-watchersbecause the former inspector general, Eva Plunkett, who retired inDecember, raised some disturbing concerns about CSIS in her frankannual reports. Most alarmingly, she warned in her final 2012 report of the"reoccurring and high rate of non-compliance with policy, and theever increasing rate of errors in what is a relatively small reviewsample" something, she said, that "should be a serious concernof the service." We don't know exactly what those errors were but they apparentlyshowed up in CSIS's own reports about its operations. Much of Plunkett's reporting to the minister remains secret, butCanadian Press obtained sections of one report that observed "atleast 19 instances of CSIS failure to comply with its ownpolicies." One would think that such troubling conclusions from an experiencedofficial like Plunkett, a civil servant with almost 30 yearsexperience in this field, would unnerve a government enough that itwould want an even tougher, expanded inspector general's office.Instead, it seems simply to want to eliminate the bearer of badtidings. I'm not sure that any of us who follow these things have a sense ofwhat really might be behind this move.
Perhaps the government thinks CSIS needs a freer hand withoutnagging criticism from savvy overseers? Or maybe it is a case ofministers preferring not to be too well-informed, and thusresponsible, if secret things start to go wrong. I'll just add, as someone who was heavily involved covering theoriginal RCMP scandals all those years ago, that I sure hope it'snot the latter. That's how that whole mess came about. I am General Industrial Equipment writer, reports some information about pneumatic diaphragm valve , proportional pneumatic valve.
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