Canadians don't shoot messengers with bad news, we just sneer at them instead.
CSIS Chief Richard Fadden has spent months trying to tell Canadians that hostile foreign powers and alien non-state actors were trying to influence our public life through covert means. Nobody listened until this week, and then we all acted like teenagers learning their parents have sex lives.
CSIS chiefs tend to be quiet and the organization rarely talks about its activities, and that has become a considerable handicap. Fadden has repeatedly stated that Canada needs an informed public that is ready to fully debate security issues instead of always assuming no news is good news.
Fadden started talking about the systemic engagement of Canadian public figures, mostly politicians and civil servants, by agents of foreign powers and organizations. This goes on even at the municipal and provincial level.
Many public figures are being approached and seduced, and few of them realize it. The evidence is scanty because it is not illegal to be acted on by an agent of influence, and our narrowly funded security services have always had other priorities. The proof instead comes out in anecdotes and footnotes in obscure books that never make the best-seller list.
Remember how Babbar Khalsa managed to wrap itself up in multicultural politics and avoid serious investigation for decades? How many politicians showed up in events managed in temples under Khalsa control? Remember how Liberal Cabinet Ministers (including Paul Martin) turned up at a Tamil Tiger fundraiser in Toronto?
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NDP MP Olivia Chow slams ‘baseless spy stories’
Anthony Reinhart and Colin Freeze, From Friday's Globe and Mail
MP Olivia Chow has lashed out at the country’s spy agency for claiming foreign agents are influencing Canadian politicians, and has urged Prime Minister Stephen Harper to denounce the “baseless” charges of CSIS chief Richard Fadden before they damage international relations.
“As the leaders of the G20 start arriving in Canada, let us not give in to the politics of fear being peddled by former or current CSIS officials,” the Hong Kong-born Ms. Chow told a hastily arranged news conference Thursday in Toronto, host of this weekend’s summit.
“Baseless spy stories belong in novels and movie theatres,” she said, adding Mr. Fadden’s comments, aired Tuesday by the CBC, “need to be condemned by the Prime Minister of Canada.”
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