PRIVACY Commissioner John Grace recently

Bob Hunter

@ strictly personal @

told

members of the Canadian Club that the federal gov-
ernment has ‘‘about 12 files’? on every citizen of this

country.

Grace noted that the
widespread use of the computer
has ‘‘made it possible to be a
watched society.’’ We all have to
live with a condition he described
as the ‘‘new surveillance.”’

In other words, the kind of
spying via two-way television and
litde fascists lurking in the cor-
ners as described in Orwell’s 1984
is hopelessly quaint compared to
the day-to-day reality of life in
modern Canada.

The theft last autumn of Na-
' tional Revenue records contain-
| ing information on 16 million
Canadians proves that ‘‘a
massive breach of privacy’’ is no
longer just a theoretical oc-
curence, Grace said.

Every time we apply for family
allowance, unemployment in-
surance, Canada Pension
benefits, a pilot’s licence or
whenever we pay taxes, to men-
tion a few examples, details of
our personal lives, which most of
us wouldn't even share with our
relatives, change hands in the
upper reaches of the state’s in-
formation machine.

None of this should come as a
surprise, of course.

I, for one, have been keeping

| files for years on the guys who

are keeping files on me.

It’s an uneven contest, but at
least I have the satisfaction of
knowing that I can trace the

0
|

ols
of Garde

int
orth

evolution of the RCMP’s old spy
Operation into the new agency
called the Canadian Security In-
telligence Service (CSIS).

When they come to take me
away, | might be c.afused as to
why, but I sure as hell won’t be
confused as to how. And I will
certainly know who to blame.

Specifically, CSIS was set up
by former - Liberal solicitor
general Robert Kaplan, whose
argument was that since bad guys
in other countries spied on their
own people, Canada had to do it
too in self-defence — one of the
more tortured excuses for creep-
ing police statism.

Prior to the establishment of
CSIS, Mounties did the dirty
work of opening our mail, pick-
ing our locks, breaking into our
houses, or whaiever else they
wanted to do in the name of na-
tional security.

The problem with the Moun-
ties snooping on us was that they
could theoretically be prosecuted
if they stepped outside the
bounds of the law.

- Once the ‘‘civilian’’ security
service was in place, Canada
became a country with a two-tier
system of justice. There is one set
of laws for citizens, and another
set entirely for the 2,000 gov-
ernment intelligence goons who
are answerable only to their su-'
periors hidden away in the back

rooms of the justice department
labyrinth.

Incidentally, it only took two
years from the time of the
establishment of CSIS on June
28, 1984 before the heavy hand

of Big Brother was felt in the |

courts.

In the small Vancouver Island
town of Duncan last May,
Joseph Wickie, the depu-
ty-director of the B.C. region of
CSIS, intervened in a case involv-
ing a Sikh caught with an
unregistered handgun and some
dynamite.

When West Vancouver lawyer
David Gibbons tried to find out
what CSIS men in the area had
witnessed ‘during their
surveillance, their boss stepped in
to advise the court that his agent,
then in the witness box, couldn’t
answer because it would jeopar-
dize national security.

In other words, the court was
“functus,’’ the legal term mean-
ing powerless..

The connection between the
emergence of an internal spy
agency and the possession by the
government of 12 files on every
Canadian adult?

Simply this: the Canada we live
in today is a degenerate form of
democracy compared to what it
was prior to the rise of computer
banks and civilian spies.

The government has the inside ;

scoop on us all, plus agents whe
can hide behind the shield of na-
tional security, making whatever
use of that information they like.
Sorry. I just report the facts.

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