Documents detail federal push to get war crimes website online
Government warned about pros and cons
Border services staff were under pressure to develop a website featuring suspected foreign war criminals hiding in Canada, even as the legal and privacy implications of publishing the “wanted” list were being assessed, newly released records show.
Five days before the launch, a senior bureaucrat with the Canada Border Services Agency told colleagues in an email that “we have almost no time to do this.”
The release of the records — two and a half years after Postmedia News requested them through access-to-information legislation — comes as the Federal Court is set to rule any day now on the fate of Arshad Muhammad, among the first alleged war criminals arrested after the site went up on July 21, 2011.
His lawyers have argued that publicity surrounding the case puts him at risk of torture if he is returned to his native Pakistan.
Vic Toews, who was the public safety minister at the time the site was created, was presented with a “spectrum of opinion” from legal staff about publicizing names of individuals wanted for removal, Michael Patton, Toews’s former director of communications, told Postmedia News on Tuesday.
Ultimately, the minister decided that the public interest outweighed privacy concerns, said Patton, now a senior fellow at the Arthur Meighen Institute for Public Affairs.
In addition, there was a precedent of police releasing names of people who were the subject of active warrants.
Patton said he didn’t recall any “incredible urgency” to get the site up, but emails suggest the government was moved to respond after the Toronto Sun published stories about suspected war criminals hiding out in the Toronto area.
“We are looking at a number (of) options to respond publicly to this situation as there may be the perception of personal risk to individuals in the community and may put the administration of justice into question,” Patton wrote to colleagues on July 13, 2011.
He asked public safety communications staff to work with CBSA staff to put together a plan as soon as possible to release the names and photos of the alleged war criminals.
“I understand there are a number (of) issues which may not permit this action to take place; however, those issues will be addressed by the legal folks,” he wrote.
While there are personal privacy issues and other risks associated with publishing the names, “I am asking for a communications plan, not a legal or policy piece.”
Three days later, on July 16, Raymond Bedard, director of CBSA’s port of entry operations division, told colleagues in an email, “We have been given almost no time to do this. The goal is to get over this huge hump (i.e. identifying, recording and posting 50 or so profiles on our website by this coming Wednesday) and then taking a step back and seeing what we could do to possibly improve the process.”
In an email July 18, previously obtained by Postmedia News, Bedard wrote that “the problem is that this seemingly nothing item has quickly become the biggest thing around. … Unfortunately, the whole War Criminal thing is complex, confusing, not what it seems.”
A briefing note for the minister outlining the website’s “pros” and “cons” warned that that the government risked publishing the name of someone who had been mistakenly added to the warrants database or of interfering with an ongoing investigation by another law enforcement agency.
But the government pushed ahead with the launch on July 21. The ‘Wanted by the CBSA’ site, which remains online, has helped locate 56 individuals and remove 43 of them, a spokesman for current Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, said Tuesday.