Measures Strengthen Police Powers Over Polity
"Whole-of-Government Approach" to Threat Posed by "Enemy and Hostile States"
The claim by the U.S.-led NATO forces and Five Eyes (U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) intelligence agencies is that Canadian national security and democracy are threatened by what they call "enemy and hostile states" -- today identified primarily as China, Russia and Iran. This threat, they say, requires the development of what is called a "whole-of-government" approach to fighting foreign interference in Canada's electoral and political process. It has given rise over time to a warmongering agenda and, in the name of Canadian values, an assault on the right to conscience, freedom of speech, organization, assembly and other civil liberties which are quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Besides affecting all of life and destroying the fabric of the society, its cohesion based on rule of law, this is affecting the electoral process itself, considered to be the cornerstone of the democracy because it is designed to give the democratic institutions legitimacy and form public opinion to accept their authority over the decision-making process. The "whole-of-government approach" towards what is called "foreign interference by enemy and hostile states" affects both the monitoring of elections and proposed amendments to the electoral law.
Keep in mind that the political police (the various intelligence and security agencies, including from the U.S.) monitoring and interfering in elections, candidates and the political movements of the people is not new. In 1972, for instance, the media carried a sensationalist report quoting an "RCMP informant" who suggested that Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) candidates were running in the elections "incognito." The informant wanted to "expose" the political affiliation of CPC(M-L) candidates. This was shortly after the party registration regime had been enacted and CPC(M-L) had not yet registered. In the May 1979 election, the RCMP Superintendent announced that the names of candidates would be checked against RCMP files for a history of "subversive activity" and that if any "subversives" were discovered, he said, their candidacy would be added to their dossiers. The RCMP said it wanted to make sure there were no "spies or enemies of the state" amongst the candidates.
We have now come full circle in terms of the methods used in the ruling elite's hopeless attempt to exercise control over the polity.
As CPC(M-L) has pointed out, when we speak about governments of police powers, we are not referring only to the aspects that constitute the usurpation of powers by narrow private interests via ministerial intervention in affairs related to the strike struggles of the workers and people when the aims of the state are opposed. Our main concern is how the police powers are destroying public opinion which means the political institutions and the legitimacy of laws passed by duly elected legislatures and due process and other organized initiatives of collectives on all matters of concern.
Police powers are by definition arbitrary prerogatives which is partly why a civil society was created to help limit them by law so that heads of state and those who wield the executive powers are not able to do so with complete impunity. Rule of law refers to the decision-making taking place in legislatures comprised of those elected to represent constituents of ridings equally apportioning the population, which is said to be represented by its elected representative. If the system of elections is not seen to credibly involve the citizenry in choosing and electing their representatives in a process seen to be free and fair, what is left if not a self-serving system for narrow private interests. The cartel parties have usurped the selection and election process to achieve results demanded and decided by narrow private interests. Today, instead of addressing this serious issue, political police are directly intervening in the electoral process on the most outrageous anti-democratic basis. They are blaming "foreign actors" and demanding that the state be able to scrutinize party members, party decisions, party records and intervene in electoral campaigns in the name of controlling hate propaganda and "foreign interests."
Once governments of police powers and impunity take over, the people become dispensable not only in the economy but also in the polity itself. Hence the significance of the activity of CPC(M-L) for the renewal of the political process by involving the polity in discussion. It is when people from all walks of life are organized to speak out amongst their peers, in their own name, without recriminations that freedom of speech is expressed in the form of actions which open a path to progress. Freedom of speech is not only a civil right, it is a human right. It is the antidote to permitting police powers to take over Canada and wreak havoc at home and abroad.
Interference of Political Police in the Democratic Process in
the
Name of Defending It
The ruling elite are working overtime to blame foreign interference in the democratic process to divert attention from the people's ever more profound discontent, mistrust and opposition to the party-dominated system called a democracy. It is something this government is increasingly fueling as the divide between the concerns and problems of the people and those of the ruling elite grows. Former governments, both Liberal and Conservative, have done the same. The people's absence of power to deal with the problems plaguing the society is more evident than ever to all.
Impunity and arbitrariness abound these days. For instance, the Liberal Budget 2023 (March), supported by the cartel parties, included an amendment to the Canada Elections Act for a "uniform federal approach in respect of federal political parties' collection, use, and disclosure of personal information in a manner that overrides overlapping provincial legislation." This is not just arbitrary because it uses the budget to amend the electoral law, but the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP are actually in the middle of a legal dispute with the BC Privacy Commissioner who contends that when federal parties operate in BC they are subject to the provincial privacy laws, which are more robust when it comes to the use of electors' data by political parties.
This makes it a basic problem of the relations between the federal power and laws and those of the provinces because the constitutional arrangements are no longer adequate to deal with today's concerns. Rather than let the legal battle play out, the cartel parties see fit to simply change the federal law through an amendment to the Canada Elections Act hidden within the more than 700 pages of the 2023 budget.
At present, according to federal law, political parties are not even subject to the country's privacy laws. They are free to use elector's data in the most self-serving ways without consent.
What is new about the political police and elections is their open and flaunted integration into the workings of the political institutions. This is making many of the tenets of liberal democracy and debates about the role of police in a democratic society obsolete. Prior concerns about the role of police in government, how police should be monitored and so on, are to be replaced by openly accepting political police in our lives in the name of protecting national security. The debate about the political direction provided by the political police and the separation of the powers of the state becomes an absurdity when 1) the people have no role in setting the direction of the economy, politics and everything else, and 2) the distinction between street cops and political police is confounded and political police are integrated into the governing bodies, including the body that is supposed to be the impartial administrator of what are called free and fair elections. It blows out of the water the prior norm that legislative bodies adopt the laws which the police and ministers are then supposed to apply with neutrality without political interference.
Now, in the name of a "whole-of-government approach," the political police are openly involved in monitoring elections. "Whole-of-government approach" is a term which was introduced during the pandemic when governments took over the decision-making powers above the rule of law because they declared the circumstances were exceptional. Such states of exception have now become permanent despite the rulings of this or that court declaring them unconstitutional and the amounts of penalties the government is told to pay out for transgressing people's fundamental rights.
The 2019 federal election was the first where this "whole-of-government approach" was manifest. At the beginning of 2019, Elections Canada informed about its preparations for the election, and "Strengthening Election Security" was one of the areas of focus. It spoke of a "changed environment" that it had to respond to in which "Experts [read the political police] continue to identify threats to Canada's democracy, ranging from foreign interference and influence efforts to cyber-attacks and attempts at disinformation. Elections Canada is paying careful attention to these threats to democracy."
But Elections Canada has no legislated authority to deal with such matters. It pointed out that its only role is to make sure Canadians can exercise their right to register as voters, to vote or to be candidates. It said it had no responsibility to "regulat[e] the Internet or social media; polic[e] truth in political advertising; -- correct inaccurate or misleading information related to political party platforms or policies." It listed the police bodies that would be overseeing elections on matters beyond its authority: this included Canada's National Security Advisor (advisor to the Cabinet/Privy Council), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and its subgroup called Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Public Safety Canada.
The dictate of the political police that the U.S. foreign interference agenda must be taken up is evident every time the expression is used. For the second time since all the talk about foreign interference began in 2015-16, at this year's annual Advisory Committee of Political Parties (ACPP) which was held in September, representatives from CSIS and CSE attended the AGM to brief the participants. CSIS was represented by the "coordinator of the fight against foreign interference." CSE was represented by an individual from the Privy Council Office which houses the Ministry of Democratic Institutions, for which Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc is responsible, who presented on behalf of CSE subdivision the CCCS.
The information presented to the registered parties added nothing to the information previously published in the now annual reports on foreign interference given to the Parliament which have repeated the same thing: "through their activities foreign malicious actors, whether foreign states or non-state organizations, attack the democratic process in Canada." The aim of these foreign actors is said to be to sow distrust in our institutions, amplifying divisions in the society and so on. Nothing is said about the actions of the governments and cartel parties themselves which discredit the liberal democratic institutions.
The only addition to this information touted today relates to Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Privy Council informed: "Online disinformation is now ubiquitous in all national level elections globally and generative AI is increasingly being used to influence elections."
It is beyond farcical to attribute the use of AI to foreign interference which endangers Canada's democracy given that it is used by marketing agencies worldwide, including those hired by the cartel parties to run elections.
Notwithstanding the obfuscating character of the information CSIS is providing, it claims only those with high levels of security clearance can have access to the information which "is not public," "is not declassified," etc. Besides giving the impression that only those with privilege can have access to state secrets, it should be noted that this is the same "information" constantly "leaked" through legacy media and by journalists intent on scandal-mongering, not informing the public on matters of concern, how they pose themselves, what is relevant and what is not, etc. The new normal has become to repeat police "media leaks" that there have been cases where candidates were funneled money from China surreptitiously and create utter confusion over what is at stake, as well as target citizens and residents of the so-called enemy states. The Marxist-Leninist Party has pointed out that if this is the case, why has the CSIS not turned over the information to the RCMP or reported it to the Commissioner of Elections, the body to which by right such things should be reported. It is already known that the Commissioner of Elections received no such information.
Not a shred of evidence or factual information had been presented about foreign interference, either during the presentations made by the political police to parliamentary committees or in the copious media reports based on "police leaks." In the case of MP Michael Chong who it is said was the target of foreign interference, Chong himself complained that he was not briefed sooner about being targeted. But no evidence of such funnelled money has been provided.
One example of the ongoing farce is a statement of the representative of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security who said there were several documents from the Government of Canada outlining the facts, in particular the 2019 Alberta Election Analysis report. They must not have even read their own reports because the 2019 Alberta Election Analysis, which was meant to be a dry run for the G7 Rapid Response Mechanism to monitor the 2019 federal elections, found that in the Alberta election there was no foreign interference, even though they had predicted there would be because of the oil factor in Alberta. It reported: "The Alberta election provides an example of a situation where there may be evidence of coordinated inauthentic behaviour undertaken by Canadian actors, making the identification of foreign interference more difficult."
One of the questions the Liberals have posed is whether there is a way to remove false information or malicious ads from social networks. They were told that it was virtually impossible, but parties should avail themselves of police help in securing their computers.
A common response of the political police when any question of importance is asked of them is to say: "We do not comment on ongoing investigations and operational methods. All our investigations are carried out within the framework of the law."
When asked how people are to distinguish between truth and falsehood and what CSIS does to do so, CSIS responded that they seek to detect disinformation through their investigations, taking threat reduction measures and by repeating: "We do not comment on ongoing investigations and operational methods. All our investigations are carried out within the framework of the law."
Elections Canada cogently points out that the most important thing is for political parties themselves to provide a place where people can get the real information. It says that is the best way to counter false news. Elections Canada's official report to Parliament recommends that "To achieve improved transparency and help prevent foreign funding of third parties, the Act should provide that third parties other than individuals who wish to rely on their own funds to finance regulated electoral activities need to provide Elections Canada with audited financial statements showing that no more than 10 per cent of their revenue in the previous fiscal year comes from contributions."
Of course, none of the recommendations deal with the problem the people face of cartel parties which pride themselves for winning elections on the basis of the disinformation of marketing agencies hired for precisely that purpose. Most importantly, the takeover of the political power by political police in the service of foreign interests continues apace.
It is a matter for serious concern.
This article was published
in
Volume 54 Numbers 1-2 - January - February
2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M540016.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca