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Canada Steps Out of Peacekeeper Role and into the Unknown
Canada Steps Out of Peacekeeper Role and into the Unknown
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), intelligence, and border surveillance agencies have drawn hundreds of millions of dollars to “combat terrorism” in a federal budget that made special reference to the murder of two Canadian soldiers in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa last October. While there is the impression that the current Canadian government has devoted a greater portion of its budgets to defense spending to expand the role of the Canadian military, in reality, the Conservatives have devoted far more relative attention and dollars to internal security. What is clearer is that Canada’s military has become a tool for the government’s self-promotion and for electoral grandstanding, as demonstrated by the way its recent deployments to the Middle East, in concert with Bill C-51, have been exploited.
An additional C$292.6 million over five years has been allocated to the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and the Canada Border Agency services to fight terrorism and intercept the financing of terrorist groups. This new funding is a response to criticism from the opposition, which argued that the Canadian law enforcement team was being ignored. As expected, the Conservatives have used the budget to give Canadians the impression of caring for their safety, while Finance Minister Joe Oliver reinforced the need for additional security measures, warning citizens that jihadists had “declared war on Canada and Canadians.”
The budget also includes C$12.5 million over five years to oversee intelligence services in order to address concerns from the NDP and the Liberals about the lack supervision measures in Bill C-51 – so called anti-terrorism legislation that was recently passed in the House. An additional C$94.4 million over the next five years was allotted to protect Canada’s infrastructure from cyber-attacks. Despite the grandstanding, some analysts suggest that the additional funds account for a mere five percent increase in Canada’s public security budget. Nonetheless, the Conservative government has framed the budget to appeal to people’s anxieties emanating from lingering international crises.
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CSE worried about how its use of Canadian metadata might be viewed
Questions over spy agency’s definition of ‘tracking Canadians’
Canada’s electronic spy agency fretted over how its collection of cellphone and email metadata might be perceived even before CBC published a story on the agency using Wi-Fi data to track airport passengers, new documents obtained by CBC reveal.
A Communications Security Establishment employee warned in an email several days before the CBC story aired that public knowledge of the top-secret experiment, which followed passengers at a major Canadian international airport using their electronic footprints, “would be damaging” to the agency by “putting into question” its collection of the metadata belonging to Canadians.
“There was some internal squirming by CSE around the fact that they had used Canadian metadata to build the analytical model, and had done so over a protracted period,” says national security expert and University of Ottawa professor Wesley Wark.
The electronic surveillance agency came under increased scrutiny in the weeks following the Jan. 30, 2014 airing and publication of the CBC story, which was based on a document obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and analyzed in collaboration with the U.S. news site The Intercept.
- CSE used airport Wi-Fi to track Canadian travellers
- Wi-Fi snooping experiment prompts calls for review
- Canada’s Snowden files: More stories
Now, new documents obtained under the Access to Information Act, provide insight into how the spy agency prepped for Senate committee hearings and media scrums, as questions rained down about their use of the metadata collected about passengers at the Canadian international airport.
Care must be taken, said an email dated Feb. 3, 2014 — the day CSE chief John Forster spoke at a Senate committee — not only to make sure the agency didn’t mislead, but also to make sure “we don’t limit the scope of any future activities.”
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NEW CANADIAN COUNTERTERRORISM LAW THREATENS ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS
NEW CANADIAN COUNTERTERRORISM LAW THREATENS ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS
Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, who campaigns for environmental protection on behalf of indigenous First Nations in Canada, wasn’t surprised when, in 2012, she found out that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been keeping tabs on her. The Toronto Star that year obtained documents showing that federal police had monitored private meetings held between her coalition and local environmental groups.
Now she just laughs when asked whether she’s comforted by assurances from government officials that new surveillance and policing powers outlined under a proposed Canadian Anti-Terror Law wouldn’t be aimed at peaceful protesters.
The passage of the terrorism bill would represent a new “open season on First Nations who are speaking out,” she says.
Across Canada, police surveillance and intervention have long been a reality for groups working to stop development of fossil fuel extraction, including pipeline construction and fracking. The sense that somebody’s watching is part of the price Thomas-Flurer, of the Saik’uz nation, has paid for coordinating the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of six First Nations in British Columbia that have banned the passage of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline through their territory.
The coalition is part of a movement that has slowed the development of the pipeline, which would carry more than 500,000 barrels per day of crude from landlocked Alberta’s oil sands to a port on Canada’s west coast, so much so that a recent CBC News article questioned whether the project was “being quietly shelved.”
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