Police Monitoring Toronto--St. Paul's By-Election
The Liberal government announced on May 21 that the June 24 Toronto--St. Paul's by-election would be monitored by the Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force. SITE was created in 2019 in time to monitor the Federal General Election of that year. It is comprised of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), Global Affairs Canada, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
SITE produces weekly reports about spy agency "intelligence" it receives as well as analysis of "open-source data" which means all forms of public speech in any form, from individual social media postings to journalistic endeavours. The reports go to the Deputy Minister Committee on Intelligence Response which transmits the information and advice to "ministers with mandates to combat foreign interference and protect Canada's democratic institutions." The number of entities with such mandates has so grown that Public Safety Canada established a "National Counter-Foreign Interference Coordinator" whose job is to "drive the government's proactive response to the threat of foreign interference."
At the close of the by-election, SITE produces both a classified and redacted report about its findings. Following the four June 2023 by-elections held in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount, Québec, Oxford, Ontario, Portage-Lisgar, Manitoba, and Winnipeg South Centre, Manitoba, SITE reported that it did not observe "any indication of foreign interference," nor any "cyber incidents [to] suggest that any foreign state actors were specifically targeting Elections Canada."
Following the July 2023 Calgary Heritage, Alberta by-election, having decided to extend its responsibilities to look out for "violent extremism," SITE reported it didn't find "any direct threats ... in social media, message boards, chatrooms, online forums or news media ... No direct threats to any of the candidates, or to the administration of the election were identified."
These same words were used again in the SITE report on the February 2024 Durham byelection, in the "baseline threat assessment ... taking into consideration potential FI (foreign interference) indicators specific to the Durham region." Once again, nothing was detected.
The
Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada goes on record once again that
it categorically opposes government measures to submit the life
of
Canadians, their political discourse, assembly and social media
to the
ongoing surveillance of political police. All attempts to
intimidate
the people with
threats that they should not speak "wrong things" for fear of
being
tagged, defamed, criminalized, are signs that Canada, far from
renewing
its democracy is becoming increasingly autocratic. We call on
Canadians
to vigorously oppose being spied on in the name of national
security,
defence of
democracy and the like. Speak out for democratic renewal and
oppose all
measures to have "Big brother watching," or to turn Canadians
into
snitches under threat that if they do not cooperate they can lose
jobs,
or reputations, or access to services and the like.
No to Intimidation! No to Public Resources Being Used to Spy on Canadians!
This article was published
in
Volume 54 Number 6 - June 2024
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/MS54066.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca