Ottawa wants to close court doors on case of alleged CSIS spying on activists
OTTAWA Federal lawyers want closed-door hearings in a highprofile B.C. court case about allegations that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spied on antipipeline activists.
The civil liberties group that filed the complaints against CSIS opposes the federal secrecy request, saying it blatantly violates the principle that justice must be seen to be done.
The matter was argued Thursday in an open session of the Federal Court of Canada.
The judge’s decision, expected in about month, will determine how much the public gets to see and hear when the court considers whether Canada’s spy agency overstepped the law in monitoring environmental activists.
The case began four years ago when the B.C. Civil Liberties Association complained to the CSIS watchdog after media reports suggested the spy service and other government agencies considered opposition to the petroleum industry as a threat to national security. The association’s complaint to the Security Intelligence Review Committee also cited reports that CSIS provided information to the National Energy Board about “radicalized environmentalist” groups seeking to participate in the board’s hearings on Enbridge’s now-defunct Northern Gateway pipeline project.
The association also alleged CSIS passed information to oil companies and held secret conferences with petroleum industry players at its headquarters.
The association argued CSIS’s intelligence gathering violated the law governing the spy service, which forbids CSIS from collecting information about Canadians unless there are reasonable grounds to suspect they constitute a threat to national security.
Last year, the review committee rejected the civil liberties association’s complaint.
That prompted the rights group to ask the Federal Court to toss out the decision and order the committee to take a fresh look.
Meanwhile, the committee — citing confidentiality provisions in the law governing CSIS — placed a sweeping seal of secrecy on evidence it heard in the original probe, including the transcript of the hearing and all documents created or obtained by the committee during its investigation.
In a written submission in advance of Thursday’s hearing, the government says the traditional notion that courts should be open is of vital importance to the fair administration of justice, and confidentiality orders are granted only in special circumstances.
However, in this case, “the public interest in confidentiality outweighs the public interest in openness.”
In its submission, the civil liberties association says there is no evidence of any risk in making the unclassified materials public, or hearing arguments in open court about the committee’s probe of alleged spying.