Michel Bellehumeur

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

I accept the hon. member's apologies.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I believe that the member just attacked me by saying that I am a devil, whether a good or a bad one, but still a devil. I would ask the member to withdraw his words.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Which ones? He made two objections. Does he want me to withdraw the expression "I think" or the comments that I made on him?

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I apologize if I insulted the hon. member, but nevertheless, that is what I think.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I thought that, after one year in Parliament, the hon. member would have lost some of the illusions he still seems to harbour.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to answer that question from my hon. colleague whom I admire and for whom I have a liking since we once worked together. There is something else I admire about her, her naivety.

When the SIRC came before the Sub-Committee on National Security, we could see that we would not get answers to our questions. To questions as simple as: "On what date did Mr. So-and-So contact Mr. Such-and-Such?" the Service member's answer was: "I cannot answer you, Mr. Bellehumeur".

When I asked other questions on facts not related to national security, I was told: "We cannot answer you, Mr. Bellehumeur. We will take note of that question and we will get an answer for you, but it will come from the Solicitor General of Canada, not from us".

What will we get from the SIRC? What answers will we get to our questions? Answers censored by the Solicitor General of Canada? That does not satisfy me. Nor does it satisfy the taxpayers I represent. We really need a royal commission of inquiry, where the principals will come face to face with us and will be compelled to give the commissioners answers to the questions we asked and to which we did not get answers from the SIRC.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I think that the hon. member did not ask a direct question but made some questionable allegations, which is even worse.

He said that I referred to the events of 1970. Yes, I did. I do not think that we have to go back to 1950 to dig up provincial problems, when the RCMP is exclusively under federal jurisdiction. We are here to prevent more overlapping, to see that the present Constitution and set-up are respected. Later on, when Quebec has decided on its future, it will be different story.

I must say to the hon. member that if we consider what happened in the 1970s and the information released by the CBC on CSIS's investigation of some members of the Jewish Congress in Toronto, the possibility that CSIS financed or helped found the Heritage Front, the employment of Bristow, a member of Heritage Front, as a bodyguard of the leader of a recognized party, I think that we can make comparisons between 1970 and 1994. There are still reasons today to demand a royal commission of inquiry, just as there were when the McDonald Commission started its hearings in 1977. All we want is to get answers to the questions we have been asking since that time. We never got any answers.

Just by looking at the Harlequin reports published once a year by the SIRC for the past two or three years, it is obvious that we will not be able to get answers even though we, as parliamentarians, were democratically elected by the people of Canada to oversee and monitor public expenditures. These little documents published by the SIRC from time to time will not shed much light on these activities. We need a royal commission of inquiry and I think we have enough allegations to warrant the setting up of such a commission. If there is nothing serious in these allegations, why is the Inspector General of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service looking into the matter? Why is the SIRC looking into the matter and why were its people so nervous when they approved before the Sub-Committee on National Security of which I am a member?

Why is it that parliamentarians felt the need to create this Sub-Committee on National Security to study these allegations? Because they had good grounds for doing so. But, despite all that, we will not get any answers unless we set up a royal commission of inquiry to look into the matter. Then our questions would be answered.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

That being said, it may be necessary to look at the origin of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to be able to understand the whole problem. You will see that it goes back to the commission of inquiry concerning certain activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, better known as the McDonald Commission, which published its report in 1981. The commission had been established in 1977 in the wake of a series of illegal acts and practices by the former security service of the RCMP.

The McDonald Commission had the mandate to look into illegal activities on the part of a supposedly reputable institution respected by the majority of English Canadians, and I am talking about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, better known under the acronym RCMP. It is important to go back to the 70s to really understand the history of the secret service in Canada, but first, let us look at the act by which the Canadian secret service was created.

In 1966, the RCMP became the responsibility of the Solicitor General when it was given the status of a government department. Before that, the police force was under the authority of the Minister of Justice. The reorganization that took place in 1970 was the result of another royal commission of inquiry, the MacKenzie Commission, which published its report in 1969. The commission's main recommendation was to create a civilian security service. The commission considered it inappropriate to leave security functions to the ordinary police services, and the special operations branch did not have the complexity or the analysis expertise deemed necessary to play its role in security matters.

It also recommended that a bill be passed to authorize investigation methods like undercover operations, and to improve the security screening process, including the addition of an appeal procedure. Accordingly, a security intelligence service was established under a civilian director. Until then, you could tell RCMP agents by their red uniform, but security agents became less easily identifiable and then, I am sure you agree, unrecognizable.

Let us go back to the 1970s period when things went awry. Uniformed officers, unlike civilians, all had positions of power. At the end of the 1970s, for example, not a single civilian had a position above that of an officer in a planning or operations sub-branch. RCMP employees, therefore, wielded absolute power. Not only did they have police powers, but they were also had considerable leeway with the structure. Civilians knew almost nothing of what was going on in that section of the RCMP.

Ironically, the same thing is happening in 1994 with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, but this time, Parliament itself and the general public in Canada and Quebec are kept in the dark concerning our intelligence service. Questions are asked, but there are no real answers. The fact that elected representatives could not get near or watch the RCMP in those days led to wrongdoings. And believe me, there were a lot of wrongdoings.

The October crisis stunned everybody, both the Quebec population and the government. The then Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau, did not know, when he invoked the War Measures Act, that he was unleashing a mad dog. I hope, and I would like to believe, that he was not aware of that.

The government realized that it knew very little about the sovereignty philosophy in Quebec. Therefore, it asked the RCMP to adopt an active strategy on that issue and to get all the information it could on the bad separatists.

In several cases and in various contexts, members of the security service committed extremely illegal acts and I think it is worth mentioning again some of the actions taken by the RCMP during those days. They set fire to a barn in order to prevent the so-called separatists or sovereignists from holding a meeting. They broke into the offices of a leftist news agency in Montreal, stole and destroyed files, broke into the offices of the Parti Quebecois, a legitimate political party, and even stole lists of members of that democratically recognized party.

When I think about those days, I still shiver with rage. It is a pitiful page in the history of Canada, especially when you see that one of the people involved, Mr. Normand Chamberland, who was accused of stealing dynamite at the time, has been promoted within the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and is now the Deputy Commissioner for Quebec, no less.

It seems that those responsible for enforcing the law can break it once in a while and even get rewarded for it. It is also important to note that the RCMP did not commit that kind of abuse only in the 1970s and only against separatists. The McDonald Commission indicated that other illegal activities had occurred, such as opening of mail, illegal access to supposedly confidential government information, planned prostitution, blackmail and other actions of that type which had been taking place for a long time with regard to various aspects of national security, from spying and counter-intelligence to subversion.

The main recommendation of the McDonald Report advocated the creation of a totally independent intelligence service of a civil nature and it did so for the same reasons as the MacKenzie Commission did, that is the need to restructure the agency with a view to collecting and analyzing data instead of using mainly deterrence and repression. Therefore, the mandate of the proposed new agency would be defined by legislation and the law would state clearly which threats to Canada's security the agency would be authorized to investigate. The definition would cover four areas: first, espionage and sabotage; second, foreign interference; third, political violence and terrorism; and

finally, subversive activities aimed at destroying the democratic system.

The report also recommended that the new agency be prohibited from investigating legitimate advocacy, protest or dissent, and that it not have the power to implement security measures.

All this led to the McDonald report published in 1981. The government indicated that it would accept the principal recommendation to create a civilian security intelligence service. Subsequently, a special transition group was set up at the Department of the Solicitor General to prepare legislation to that end.

In 1983, Bill C-157 was tabled in the House of Commons to create the Canadian Security Intelligence Service or CSIS, along the lines recommended by the McDonald Commission but with some major changes and additions.

As a result of severe criticism from the public that the service's mandate was too broad, the bill died on the Order Paper. During the second session of the 32nd Parliament, a new bill was tabled in the House. This was Bill C-9 which, for all intents and purposes, incorporated all the recommendations of the commission. Parliament adopted the bill, with very few changes, in 1984.

The legislation was intended to restrict the activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and create monitoring mechanisms to ensure that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service did not exceed its mandate.

Central to the bill is the definition of the expression "threats to the security of Canada," which determines the general parameters of CSIS. The definition also specifies that lawful advocacy, protest or dissent are not included. If we consider this definition and the allegations published in the media, especially about spying on a democratically recognized party-we have seen that happen before-and investigating the CBC and certain leaders of the Canadian Jewish Congress, there are some very real problems.

CSIS members seem to have trouble with the definition of lawful advocacy. In any case, if the past is any indication of what the future holds, we can assume that members of CSIS have the same attitude as the former RCMP intelligence section, which does not augur well for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. We have the right to know, and we have the right to call for a royal commission of inquiry.

As far as the basic duties of the service are concerned, these are set forth in section 12: to collect by investigation, and analyse and retain, information and intelligence respecting threats to security. According to section 13 of the Act, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service may provide security assessments on future government employees. Finally, under section 16, CSIS may assist in the collection of information relating to defence and national affairs, by investigating and conducting surveillance of any persons, other than Canadian citizens or permanent residents.

As we consider the history of intelligence services in Canada and their questionable activities, which always raise a number of questions in my mind and in the minds of many taxpayers in Canada and Quebec, there is one question we have every right to ask: "Who watches the intelligence agency that is watching us?"

One would expect that in 1994, our institutions would be monitored by people elected through the democratic process as the legitimate representatives of the present Parliament of Canada. Not at all, that is not the way it works in Canada, in 1994. Legislation was enacted to establish the office of the Inspector General and the Security Intelligence Review Committee, better known by its acronym, SIRC, as we said earlier.

The Inspector General is appointed by the Governor in Council and his duties are to review the operational activities of CSIS and to report to the Solicitor General and SIRC, as well as to monitor the legality and relevance of these activities.

SIRC is made up of five members maximum, chosen from Privy Council members, appointed by the Governor in Council after consultation between the Prime Minister and the leaders of recognized opposition parties in the House of commons. We will see that it is not always the case. Its role is to review CSIS operations and to report to the minister and Parliament.

When it comes to reporting to Parliament, MPs are certainly not overwhelmed with information. As parliamentarians we know virtually nothing of what goes on within the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. This department spends millions of dollars, but Parliament, the supreme authority, knows almost nothing.

Those who watch over CSIS were never elected to the job. They are political appointees, and MPs are deliberately excluded.

Do you think I am reassured by the fact that the deeds, or alleged acts, committed under the Conservative government are being investigated by a group with a Conservative majority? Certainly not, it rather worries me. Who are these valiant watchdogs, that some journalists humorously call lapdogs? Three of them are personal friends of the former Prime Minister of Canada, and very, very close to the Conservative Party. Another comes from the ranks of the Liberal Party of Canada; he is a former president of the party. You know him, he is the lawyer who is getting $250,000 to do some kind of inquiry with some native representatives. As a hobby, he sits on the review committee. Quite a review he must do.

The last member was appointed from among the ranks of the NDP. Ever since I have been sitting on the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and on the Sub-Committee on National Security-I have not seen the latter yet and I wonder whether it is really interested in meeting with us or even in doing its job-I have doubts about the kind of report all of them will be able to produce.

Where are the members representing the current Official Opposition? Where is the member supposed to represent the other opposition party in this House? They are nowhere to be found. We are asked to trust five individuals, appointed by our predecessors, who are looking into extremely important activities which have an impact on their own political party.

The main objective in creating CSIS was probably to have some control or to check into allegations but in reality this has not happened.

As crazy as it may seem, when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was in the planning stages, some members and certain opposition parties said that there was no need to create a civilian body and that all that was needed was a piece of legislation clearly setting out the RCMP's frame of reference so that it would not go overboard.

For someone from Quebec who has lived through the 1970s, which were a turning point in the history of the province, this seems rather strange. I am not referring to myself as I was still quite young in those days. It is somewhat ridiculous to trust this agency once more, but again some people thought that the RCMP could still do the job.

The only thing I find reassuring is that when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was created, there were those who thought that its mandate was too broad. I could not agree more with them and history has proven them right.

Similarly, the definition of the word "threat" is very controversial. And again I agree with those who thought at the time that it was so vague that it could encompass a variety of activities not even closely related to real security. Current events have borne this out.

The government is of the opinion that the definition should be interpreted in the context of, on one hand, the provisions protecting legitimate dissidence and limiting the agency's authority to what is strictly necessary and, on the other, the new monitoring and surveillance system. According to the government, within such a context, the definition is a reasonable one.

When I look more closely at the investigative power of SIRC and its access to information, I get scared. I get very, very scared.

Another concern of mine is the range of the SIRC mandate that allows it to use any investigation technique. The two most serious issues have to do with how this organization is being monitored: first, the office of the Inspector General must have access to information, and second, so must SIRC.

We must acknowledge that, before the Sub-Committee on National Security, I was told that SIRC has access to every document possible. Indeed, it has access to all this documentation, but only if the Canadian Security Intelligence Service agrees to hand it out. And that is not how things work out in reality.

SIRC does not have access to Cabinet documents, either. Yet, as we have learned recently, an assistant of a former Solicitor General of Canada can walk out with two cases of documents, with no questions asked, while SIRC is not even aware of the existence of such documentation. This really belongs in the realm of fiction.

Why can we not grant this investigative power to people who have a vested interest in the truth and are able to reassure the public? In fact, this issue was raised when Bill C-157 was debated. We examined the possibility of implementing some kind of parliamentary review, as recommended by the McDonald Commission. At the time, both Opposition parties and some government members supported the creation of a special Parliamentary committee which would have had access to information regarding CSIS to ensure that it does not overstep its mandate.

Madam Speaker, you are indicating that my time is almost up, yet I could go on and on.

I want the government to know that there is no way we can get definite answers to our questions if we leave it to SIRC. I have sat and I still sit on the Sub-Committee on National Security. When an elected member of Parliament, a legitimate representative of the people is told by witnesses that they do not have to answer either yes or no, we have a problem. A very serious problem indeed. The system is sick. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has become a monster that no one can control, not even Parliamentarians, and this is totally unacceptable in 1994.

That is why only a royal commission of inquiry can get to the bottom of this issue. Taxpayers would then get satisfactory answers to questions they have been asking ever since the creation of CSIS in 1984.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to speak on the motion put forward by the Bloc Quebecois today because I think that it is imperative that we have such a debate. The question we must ask ourselves is why we are now requesting a royal commission of inquiry on the activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

I use the term royal commission of inquiry not because I am a royalist, but because I have to use the tools made available to us by this Parliament. Moreover, I would like you, Madam Speaker, to assure the Solicitor General that in an independent Quebec, we will not call such a body a royal commission of inquiry, but rather a state commission, a commission of inquiry of the sovereign state of Quebec.

[Supply, September 29th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, I think the Solicitor General does not understand the object of the request made by the Official Opposition. The request for a royal commission of inquiry in this case is not just a whim.

If you look back over past events, you see that so far we have had the McDonald Commission and the MacKenzie Commission, which were both Royal Commissions of Inquiry. Meanwhile, some joint committees have examined the issue of national security. But the only reports Parliament has followed up on are those of the McDonald and the MacKenzie Royal Commissions. Parliament has always ignored the reports tabled by the joint committees, except to implement two or three minor and watered-down recommendations to amend the legislation.

A royal commission of inquiry would help us to clarify the whole situation and might even prove to be in the interest of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which is increasingly losing its credibility in the mind of the Canadian taxpayers.

As Solicitor General, you seem to trust SIRC completely. Then, tell me why SIRC is not aware of the allegations recently published in the newspapers, as you put it? Because these allegations relate to events which happened during 1990 and 1991. We are now in 1994-