Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to support the motion of the member for Scarborough-Rouge River.
Let me begin by first making an observation about the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. We recognize that the role of CSIS is one of counterespionage and counterterrorism in Canada. Its role is to ensure that foreign governments do not
have an improper influence on the lives of Canadians in the sense that it would compromise Canada's security.
That is a very important function in Canada because we are a multicultural society. We value very greatly immigration from all lands. We value our tremendous ethnic and cultural diversity. The fear is that this ethnic melting pot, as it were, may be influenced by some of the foreign nations from which immigrants come and the traditional ethnic hatreds that some countries have.
To that end CSIS protects our interests by doing intelligence work in the ethnic communities in Canada in order to prevent terrorists or foreign governments getting a hold. In doing that we as Canadians have to be concerned that while CSIS fills that very important function that it does not go too far and that the rights of Canadian citizens are protected, including ethnic Canadians.
To cover off that problem we have built into the CSIS act a very excellent control, the Security and Intelligence Review Committee. It is basically a committee of Canadians of conscience who are appointed. They have sweeping powers to doublecheck what CSIS does to make sure that while it does operate in secrecy it operates in a way that has the interests of all Canadians at heart.
Now we come to the Communications Security Establishment. This organization springs from the second world war and Canada's involvement in code and cipher breaking. It is well known what it does now. It is an agency whose role is to intercept communications and to process them. Its direction is toward the collection of foreign intelligence.
I should say it has quite an interesting history. It arose from an organization called the examination unit and specialized in the second world war in breaking Vichy French codes and some Japanese and then went on to break the codes of the free French.
Indeed we will find when the book is written on the subject that the Communications Security Establishment during the early part of the cold war undoubtedly specialized in analysing the diplomatic codes and ciphers of France. I think we will find that this was one of the reasons for the vive le Quebec libre speech of Charles de Gaulle. I think he was very annoyed to discover that Canada had France as a target.
There is nothing unusual in that as all nations monitor the telecommunications of other nations, be they friends or enemies. It is a way of determining whether contracts are kept, if governments are interfering in the diplomatic and commercial affairs of one's own nation.
This type of study takes two shapes. It is code and cipher breaking where you actually attempt to break the codes and ciphers of another nation, be they diplomatic or commercial ciphers. It also takes the form of traffic analysis. When you cannot break the codes and ciphers of another nation you examine where messages are being sent and the volume of messages. That gives an indication of what that country is doing in terms of its diplomatic or commercial activities.
Over the last 15 years code and cipher breaking has lessened in importance in the field of communications intelligence, primarily because code and ciphers have become increasingly hard to break. More than that, it is because communications satellites particularly have enabled governments to monitor the affairs of other nations in a much more efficient manner than could be done hitherto.
I believe the collapse of the Soviet Union had much to do with the fact that satellites were monitoring its lack of economic progress more than with any other cause. The Soviet Union could not hide from the satellites that trains were not running, that there was pollution everywhere and that the Soviet Union was in an economic mess. It worked the other way as well. The Soviet Union was monitoring Canada and the United States and the western world. It could see that it was losing the economic war.
In the world of intelligence the agency that looks after domestic counterespionage and the foreign intelligence gathering agency like the Communications Security Establishment are complementary. They always work together. In the case of foreign and diplomatic intelligence it is important for CSIS to monitor what is happening to foreign nationals on Canadian soil who may be engaged in espionage. The parallel activity is the Communications Security Establishment which monitors the actual traffic in diplomatic and commercial communications. These things always go together.
There is the same situation in Canada with its ethnic makeup. While we have CSIS looking after anti-terrorism shall we say, it inevitably has to probe into the affairs and activities of various ethnic communities in Canada. Similarly the CSE has to be in tune with what may be happening in terms of communications, whatever it can derive either from telecommunications or other communications sources what is happening to the nations that may not have Canada's interests at heart or may be attempting to influence ethnic communities in Canada. The two are complementary and very necessarily so.
This type of activity overlaps in subtle ways. I would like to go back for a second to World War II and tell a very brief story which illustrates this point. It was a great triumph for Canadians during World War II and was not reported very well at all.
In 1940 in North Africa the British were facing the Italians in great numbers. Britain had very few troops on the ground in Egypt and the Italians had an enormous army in the western desert. Britain had its back to the wall with the fall of France and
was very fearful with Italian entry into the war about what would happen in North Africa.
The Canadian army intelligence had the advantage of being able to monitor the telegraph lines that left Canada from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia and went to Britain, the Canary Islands, Spain and ultimately to Italy. Telegraph traffic coming out of the United States had to pass momentarily through Canada before it went on to Italy.
Even before Mussolini declared war on the allies after the fall of France, or as France fell, Canadians were monitoring the traffic of Italian Americans communicating with relatives in Italy. Mussolini, in an attempt to raise money to buy weapons, had asked Italian Americans to remit U.S. dollars to Italy so relatives would be paid a bonus in lira in Italy. Italian Americans were constantly sending remittances to their relatives in Italy. This was just before the Italians declared war and just after.
Canadians were monitoring all this. As the banks in the United States required that the remittances give names and addresses, it was found that many remittances were being sent to Italians in the military. They were being sent to the actual bases where the Italian military personnel were located. This enabled Canadians to construct the entire Italian order of battle before Mussolini declared war. Wavell, the famous British general who defeated the Italians in the western desert, knew exactly where every division or every unit in the Italian army was in the desert.
We can see how in the intelligence field, communications intelligence, foreign intelligence gathering can be mixed with something that is essentially a domestic phenomenon. In this case it is out of country; it is the Italians but it is a communications phenomenon.
I told the story for the basic reason that we should have a situation in the intelligence world where one arm of secret intelligence gathering, which is CSIS, is responsible and answerable to some review committee which, shall we say, has an oversight role. We cannot have half a loaf; we need the entire loaf. I submit that no matter how competent the Communications Security Establishment inevitably there is some overlap. Both arms of secret intelligence should make this independent review, and for that reason I entirely support the motion.