CSIS betrays the irrelevance of Bill C-51

When Stephen Harper’s Conservatives proposed sweeping new security measures last year, the thirdparty Liberals didn’t quite know what to do.

Justin Trudeau’s party attacked Bill C-51, arguing that, among other things, it gave the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service too much power.

Yet in the end, the Liberals voted for it anyway, promising to reopen and amend some areas of the new statute if they won power.

Bill C-51 is now the law of the land. The new Liberal government has not yet proposed amendments. And, as the Star’s Tonda MacCharles reported this week, CSIS is quietly exercising its new muscles.

Director Michel Coulombe told a Senate committee Monday that the security service has used its new authority to disrupt potential security threats almost two dozen times since the fall.

Exactly what CSIS did was not explained. Bill C-51 allows the service to do anything short of assault, sexual violation, perversion of justice, or murder if it feels the need. It can even override the constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

But any of these more extreme measures requires a judicial warrant. Since, according to Coulombe, no such warrants were issued, it seems the service did not break any laws.

Instead, CSIS continued to do what it has long done.

Sometimes, the director said, agents talked to targets to let them know they were under investigation.

Sometimes, agents talked to the families and friends of suspected terror supporters in an effort to encourage de-radicalization.

Such activities were well within the CSIS mandate before Bill C-51 was passed.

So the obvious question arises: If the service continues to do what it has always done, why does it need Bill C-51’s extraordinary new powers?

The CSIS response, repeated by Coulombe Monday, is that Canada’s allies give their spy agencies similar powers. Yet, as law professors Craig Forcese and Kent Roach told a Senate committee last year, there is no evidence that this statement is true.

Critics have pointed out that there are good reasons to keep CSIS out of the threat-disruption business.

First, it can easily get out of hand. CSIS was created in 1984 in large part because the RCMP, which had been handling national security, became too involved in playing dirty tricks against so-called security threats.

In one famous instance, the Mounties burned down a barn to prevent Quebec separatists from meeting there.

Second, a hyperactive security service can easily interfere with the ability of real police to build legitimate criminal cases.

Third, the remarkably intrusive powers granted CSIS by Bill C-51 are cloaked in secrecy. Even the fact that judicial warrants have been sought must be kept hidden.

Roach and Forcese note that the law, as written, would allow CSIS to operate a secret prison system.

“We cannot risk a parallel system of detention by a covert agency able to act against people who have committed no crime,” the two security experts told a Senate committee last year.

Trudeau’s Liberals have pledged to make changes. In particular, they would eliminate the ability of CSIS to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And they would make all of Canada’s various security agencies subject to oversight from a new parliamentary committee.

But the Liberal election platform made no mention of CSIS’ new power to break ordinary statute law. Nor does it speak to the fact that, as written, the new law would allow CSIS to set up secret jails. Are these powers to remain?

If they were desperately needed to combat security threats, there might be an argument for keeping them. But clearly they are not. Coulombe’s comments this week indicate that CSIS is using the authority granted it by Bill C-51 in the most minimal of ways. In effect, it is doing little different.

If so, good for CSIS. The world has too many blowsy security services involved in disrupting real or perceived threats. In national security, as elsewhere, modesty is a virtue.

If Canada’s security service thinks for some odd reason that it needs specific, legislative authority to talk to targets or their families, then that should be granted.

But the overly broad language allowing CSIS to break most laws should be repealed. Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.