06) CSIS MUST BE DISMANTLED

People’s Voice Editorial

            As opposition builds against the Harper government’s Bill C-51, supporters of this police state legislation increasingly fall back on a few tattered lines from the PM’s message box. Perhaps the most common tired justification is that CSIS needs to break the shackles of “red tape” and “bureaucratic oversight.” It’s an argument straight out of reactionary U.S. movie and TV dramas, where highly-principled federal agents make sad but necessary decisions to torture and murder suspects for the greater good.

            The Harperites and their U.S. allies steadfastly maintain that to “protect freedom” the state must use an ugly combination of torture, drone missile executions, massive surveillance of all forms of communication, suspension of civil liberties, and thuggish threats against critical voices. Real life, of course, is very different. Overwhelming evidence going back centuries indicates that torture almost never yields reliable intelligence information, and that regimes which rely on this tactic base their actions on falsehoods.

            The latest revelations about Canadian citizen Maher Arar are convincing proof that the fascist security agenda is utterly flawed. Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has shed new light on this tragic episode in a media interview, indicating that he and others correctly warned that the agency was punishing an innocent man. The Arar affair ultimately resulted in a public inquiry, and a $10-million payout from the federal government for its shameful participation in his arrest, rendition and torture.

            But many other victims have yet to win justice. Under Bill C-51, the net will be cast even wider, by gangs of unmonitored secret agents. Those who argue that we simply need “better oversight” are either completely naive, or are cynically covering up for the security establishment. C-51 must be defeated (or rescinded as soon as possible) and CSIS itself must be dismantled to protect our civil liberties and democratic freedoms.

(The above article is from the April 16-30, 2015 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)