Law Forces 6,000 Canadians to Take Security Secrets to Grave

March 7, 2004
By Jim Bronskill

OTTAWA (CP) - Thousands of Canadians involved in the hunt for terrorists and spies will be forbidden from ever discussing sensitive aspects of their work under a new federal secrecy law.

The government expects between 5,000 and 6,000 current and former security and intelligence officials to be designated as persons "permanently bound to secrecy," internal memos obtained by The Canadian Press reveal.

The move to make officials take secrets to the grave is being ushered in under provisions of the Security of Information Act, part of a package of anti-terrorism measures passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The security act, which contains a wide range of tools to safeguard federal information, was recently invoked by the RCMP to search the home of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill.

But little attention has been given to other elements of the law that demand permanent secrecy with the aim of shielding "special operational information" about covert intelligence gathering and military battle plans.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service will store the names and related records of those sworn to silence in a database. Compilation of the list, which is ongoing, began last March, according to memos and briefing notes released through the Access to Information Act.

Under the Security of Information Act, people automatically bound to secrecy include current or former members of CSIS, certain sensitive RCMP departments and intelligence watchdog agencies.

It also covers members of the Communications Security Establishment - the government's electronic spy agency - as well as former employees of the Communications Branch of the National Research Council (the forerunner of CSE, defunct since 1975) and the RCMP Security Service (disbanded in 1984).

Other individuals, including federal public servants at various agencies, provincial and municipal employees, and temporary contractors, will be bound to secrecy on a case-by-case basis.

"Special care must be taken to ensure that the designation is warranted because of the permanent nature of the designation," says one briefing memo.

Federal officials in charge of hand-picking these individuals "have only recently started the process," said Mario Baril, a spokesman for the Treasury Board Secretariat, which is administering the secrecy initiative.

Among the types of "special operational information" people formally bound to secrecy cannot discuss are:

- Past or current sources of confidential data.

- Names of spies involved in secret intelligence collection.

- Plans for armed military operations.

- Places, persons or groups who were - or are intended to be - targets of covert intelligence efforts by Canadian spy services.

A person bound to secrecy who reveals such information "without authority" could face up to 14 years in prison. It is unclear how one might obtain authority to disclose a secret, though one insider has suggested persons sworn to silence could discuss sensitive matters once they are declassified.

Still, intelligence experts question whether it is sensible, or even possible, to maintain a broad permanent veil of secrecy.

"It fails to reflect the reality that, while there are categories of information which are important to safeguard, secrets don't stay secrets permanently," said Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto history professor.

The new secrecy regime is "Draconian and nonsensical," and could prove to be a bureaucratic nightmare, Wark said.

Reid Morden, a former head of CSIS, said the provisions could conflict with other legal measures, such as access-to-information laws, intended to increase government transparency.

"I don't know whether people will be able to make this (prohibition) stick in terms of 'until the grave.' "

In 2002, federal officials recommended the new law be interpreted narrowly to include only certain key kinds of information, thereby limiting the number of people covered by the secrecy clauses.

"Nevertheless, approximately five to six thousand people are currently targeted by the legislation," says a 2003 memo prepared by the Treasury Board Secretariat.

The secrecy provisions were among several elements of the 2001 anti-terrorism bill intended to modernize the decades-old Official Secrets Act.

A CSIS background paper on the revamped security law says the provisions clarify the rules on what spies can divulge.

"For current and former employees in the security and intelligence community, there is now a much clearer statement of their responsibilities to safeguard sensitive information - and a much clearer statement of their potential criminal liability should such sensitive information be disclosed without authorization."

Wark fears the law could dampen informed public debate about the government's security and intelligence powers, and hinder efforts to examine the secret operations of previous decades.

"To bury the historical record in this way, I think, is abusive of power and is very shortsighted in terms of failing to understand that there is a value to be had in trying to learn lessons from the past," Wark said.

The RCMP used the Security of Information Act to obtain judicial warrants to search O'Neill's home and newspaper office in January for clues about leaks in the case of Maher Arar.

The 33-year-old Ottawa man was detained by American officials on suspicions of terrorism during a September 2002 stopover in New York as he returned from vacation overseas.

U.S. authorities subsequently sent Arar to his birthplace of Syria, where he was imprisoned for several months. Arar, who says he was tortured in custody, denies being involved in terrorism.

O'Neill's Nov. 8 article cited "a security source" and a leaked document offering details of what Arar allegedly told Syrian intelligence officials while imprisoned.

Because the source of her story remains a mystery, it is unclear whether the person was "permanently bound to secrecy" under the law.

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