Mr. Speaker, I am really pleased to speak to this motion. I think there is always a place for this kind of debate. I do not feel this motion is correct. I do feel it is flawed. Nevertheless I think it is always a topic that we on all sides of this House should look at from time to time.
Let me address the motion first and foremost. The word used in the motion is "illegal". A royal commission is to be called because of alleged illegal activities. This appears to rise from allegations in the press, in the media, this is the way we understand events, that would suggest that CSIS has been involved in impropriety that requires an investigation.
I would like to address that because one of the accusations in the press was that the CBC was being spied on by CSIS. I think it was that story more than anything else that fueled the reaction that has led to the debate we have before us and the various studies that are going on as to CSIS activities.
I would like to comment on the story that was in the Toronto Star . I have a document here and I wish to show it. It is relevant. The headline from the Toronto Star states: ``Spy agency kept watch on CBC''. I believe this was a page one story at the time.
Naturally a headline like that is going to cause a lot of concern on all sides of the House and with the public at large. When one examines the actual body of the story that is in question here about the CBC being spied on by CSIS, one discovers that this headline is entirely based on one paragraph in the story. That paragraph reads: "The source reported attempts by Howard Goldenthal, a researcher for the Fifth Estate, a CBC program, to obtain information from the Heritage Front leader Wolfgang Droege about whether members of the Canadian airborne regiment in Somalia had any links with racist groups in Canada.»
It was the Fifth Estate, a CBC program, but it could have just as easily been a CTV program or it could have been an inquiry from the press itself. What we really see here is the informant replying to a legitimate concern that was connected to the possibility that there was racist infiltration of the Canadian airborne regiment.
I think we would all agree that it is legitimate for CSIS to want to examine possibilities such as there may be infiltration of the Canadian forces by a group that represents racist elements. That was the tenor and the content of that particular story. However, the headline was: "Spy agency kept watch on CBC". This is the sort of headline that has probably generated more than anything else this type of public concern.
At issue there is the whole question that we are pursuing something, and I mentioned it to the member for Wild Rose, where a whole debate has been initiated on the basis of allegations and not evidence. I cite that as an example and there are other examples in the media that are basically only allegations that are not supported in any way by fact that we know.
Before we go to a royal commission I stress to the members present that we have to go a little further than allegations that appear in the press.
I would like to go on a bit further. This situation concerns me greatly. We have story that suggests that CSIS had an agent, an undercover person, in an organization that may have sometimes been associated with very right wing activities, and that this agent may have engaged in activities as part of his cover that could be construed as right wing or even racist.
What is the difference between this person, if he really did exist, and a police undercover operation involving a plainclothes person penetrating a drug ring? Surely we would all agree that it is perfectly proper for a police agency in an effort to expose crime, in an effort to ferret out threats to national security or municipal security, if you will, to have an undercover agent and we would expect as part of that cover that the agent would take on the persona of the group he is trying to penetrate.
I will take that a step further. I do not have any background any more than any other member here about what was actually occurring. I submit that if this Grant Bristow was an undercover agent doing a legitimate task for national security and as a result of the leaks to the press has been disrupted in a project that had great value to the security of this nation, then I would say something very unfortunate has occurred.
We should be disparaging of what occurred, not coming down on CSIS on mere allegations. CSIS, because it is a security agency and an agency engaged in secret intelligence, does not have the ability to speak out and simply defend itself without jeopardizing agents like somebody who may be doing an undercover operation.
There is another issue here, the whole question of the leak of the documents that led to the disclosure that CSIS was engaged in certain undercover operations.
The one involving the Heritage Front I do not know what damage is involved and I do not know whether it is true. However, I will draw the House's attention to something everyone seems to forget. There was a first leaked newspaper story in connection with this business. That leaked story resulted in a headline in the Toronto Sun on August 13, 1994, sometime before the Toronto Star headline that I mentioned, and it stated: ``CSIS-