Murky Special Report on Foreign Interference
In March, the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) delivered a classified report, entitled Special Report on Foreign Interference in Canada's Democratic Processes and Institutions, to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The redacted version was released in June. It corresponded to the Preliminary Report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference which had been released a month earlier, except for one particular allegation. It stated that NSICOP saw "troubling intelligence that some Parliamentarians are, in the words of the intelligence services, 'semi-witting or witting' participants in the efforts of foreign states to interfere in our politics."
This report was based on some 4,000 documents totaling more than 33,000 pages from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the RCMP, Public Safety, Global Affairs Canada and the Privy Council Office. The same documents were provided to the Public Inquiry on Foreign Interference, but it did not conclude that there are such parliamentarians. The House of Commons passed a motion referring the matter to Public Inquiry Commissioner Justice Hogue to take up, to which she has agreed. She did not attempt to explain how it is that her inquiry did not raise the same allegations.
Since then, controversies have continued to unfold about the report. There have been calls from some Members of Parliament and political commentators that "names should be named" while others acknowledge that this would be a violation of due process. The nature of the "intelligence" has itself been called into question since Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh obtained clearances so that they could read the classified version and drew quite different conclusions. May concluded there was nothing to be alarmed about while Singh said the exact opposite. Since they, like NSICOP members, are sworn to secrecy, Canadians have no clue as to how they arrived at these opposite conclusions.
All of these conflicting renditions by those who are privy to highly classified reports say a lot about the nature of state secrets. It is necessary to keep in mind that state secrets have as their objective the protection of sources of intelligence and operational methods of the state. So long as Canadians are kept in the dark as to the details of the alleged threats, the assertions of CSIS and CSE that those whom they spy on and the leads they investigate constitute a threat to the "security of Canada" are to be blindly accepted as fact. The intelligence agencies are authorized to conduct these investigations on the basis of "reasonable belief" that an individual or organization is conducting or is suspected of conducting activities that may pose a "threat to the security of Canada."
This approach does not rest on how the security of Canada is defined or upon factual evidence, but on "reasonable belief" and "probabilities." It has resulted in the commission of horrible crimes against Canadians, as in the case of Maher Arar, where claimed evidence was in fact mistaken belief and probability. And the case of Maher Arar was far from being the only one. Once conspiracy theories are permitted as a basis for making judgements, there is no such thing as rule of law.
The
creation of CSIS in 1984 separated intelligence gathering and
police
enforcement under the guise that before being turned into
evidence,
intelligence must not be used for policing purposes.
Nevertheless, Bill
C-51, the Conservative government's Anti-Terrorism Act,
2015,
authorized
CSIS to "take reasonable and proportionate measures to reduce the
threats." CSIS was empowered to seek a court order allowing its
agents
to violate Charter rights. Through these
"disruptive threat reduction
powers," CSIS can use the same dirty black ops that made for the
infamous RCMP, "wrong-doing,"
such as when it bombed a farmhouse to prevent an alleged FLQ
meeting
from taking place or when it forged tax returns to discredit and
create
havoc for political leaders, as it did in the case of Hardial
Bains,
founder and leader of the Communist Party of Canada
(Marxist-Leninist).
Bill C-51 met with broad opposition and became a central issue in the 2015 Federal Election, with demonstrations and protests across the country demanding its repeal. The Liberals promised they would amend the legislation. Instead, they modified it to provide a veneer of "due process" to the "disruptive powers" of CSIS which were affirmed with Bill C-59, the National Security Act, 2017 which among other things empowered various agencies to review the exercise of these powers. The Liberals also expanded the power of the CSE to carry out "active cyber operations ... on or through the global information infrastructure to degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities of a foreign individual, state, organization or terrorist group as they relate to international affairs, defence or security." Bill C-59 received Royal Assent in June 2019.
Demonstration on
Parliament Hill, March 14, 2015, against Bill C-51.
In 2015, the "threat reduction measures" introduced in Bill C-51 were adopted in the name of combating terrorism. By 2017, when the Liberals affirmed and expanded the use of "threat reduction measures," the aim of combating foreign interference and defending Canadian democracy was the rationale.
Most recently, through Bill C-70, the Countering Foreign Interference Act, CSIS has been granted powers to share its intelligence with entities outside of the state and government agencies, which amounts to another form of disruptive powers.
All of these powers accorded to the spy agencies amount to giving the police the right to conduct disruptive operations, especially during elections which are a live theatre for them. In all likelihood this will be blamed on Russia, China, rogue hackers, etc.
In the course of the Public Inquiry on Foreign Interference, CSIS reported that since 2019 it has used its disruptive powers against what it deemed to be foreign interference on nine occasions. Predictably, they did not share what they did, to whom, and why.
According to an NSICOP post-fact review of the use of disruptive powers by CSIS, the spy agency used unidentified "third parties" in some cases. It said CSIS failed to assess the impact of these measures on the also unidentified victims. The report says CSIS failed to acknowledge that "[redacted] can have significant and lasting impacts on the subject and their families. For example, measures that impact the [redacted] interfere with [redacted.] ... the associated hardships can affect the subject's inherent dignity. The norms of our liberal democracy dictate that people should be able to [redacted.]"
So much for Canadians being able to figure out what CSIS has been up to with its "threat reduction measures." The entire exercise is an egregious abuse of police powers and impunity in the name of defending democracy. To say this poses an obstruction to casting an informed vote is to state the obvious, let alone the obstruction it poses to citizens, permanent residents and others exercising their rights to freedom of speech, conscience and association. Anarchy has been raised to the level of authority and what are called the democratic institutions have been undermined from within, not as a result of foreign interference. This is the truth of the matter.
The atmosphere of anarchy and chaos is clearly not conducive to serious political discourse amongst one's peers! Nobody can be held responsible for anything. Why put the political spies and police in charge of information with the power to target views and individuals that in their assessment undermine what they call liberal democratic institutions? What is liberal about these institutions which put the police in charge? What is democratic about them? It is a course that will increase the chaos which already exists in which accusations and counter-accusations about meddling in the electoral process and elections will dominate the airwaves to create anxiety and acquiescence.
It not only covers up who is paying whom to spy for whom. More importantly, the pretense that powers of disruption and embroiling the leaders of political parties to keep state secrets will control the spying, counter-spying, hacking and counter-hacking and the sale of ever stronger encryption systems is deplorable. The competition between telecom giants and for sources of investment capital in the field of artificial intelligence, and who reaps windfalls from this hacking and counter-hacking and the sale of ever stronger encryption systems cannot be both unfettered and fettered at the same time. It reveals the sorry state of what are called the liberal democratic institutions the police powers are said to be protecting against subversion.
The fox has put himself in charge of the hen house and we are to believe it is to protect the hens! Needless to say, Canadians are not hens, and they have no intention of being eaten. The conditions of life show with certainty that these measures sound the death-knell for an electoral process which is said to be "free and fair" but brings cartel parties to power by having them form governments which are said to have the consent of the governed. Canadians must do something about that.
These measures are also integral to the all-round militarization of all aspects of life which is making the peoples of the world vulnerable to the danger of wider wars of destruction and genocide than those already taking place under the auspices of the U.S./NATO and U.S./Zionist-led forces. This is because the products of artificial intelligence are not being put to use to humanize the social and natural environment but for genocide and war to further the U.S. striving for global domination.
The people of Canada can stop this. A good first step is to denounce the idea of putting the police in charge of elections to target foreign interference in the electoral process, or to protect our infrastructure, or our ability to engage in democratic discourse, or elect a government of our choosing.
This article was published
in
Volume 54 Number 9 - September 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M540093.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca