Pierre Trudeau spy unit reflects secrecy of Ottawa toward Quebec sovereignty | 24CA News
New revelations a couple of secret anti-sovereigntist spy unit within the workplace of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau are an indication of how a lot stays unknown in regards to the federal authorities’s response to the Quebec independence motion.
According to a not too long ago revealed paper, the Prime Minister’s Office within the Nineteen Seventies created the spy group to observe Quebec sovereigntists, and requested the RCMP to offer it with intelligence — a request that was resisted by the RCMP’s defunct safety service.
“We’re talking about the Prime Minister’s Office running a secret intelligence-collection operation and ? then wanting the RCMP to contribute collecting intelligence and providing it to this group,” stated Dennis Molinaro, who teaches at Ontario Tech University and co-wrote the paper revealed within the journal Intelligence and National Security.
The paper, primarily based on paperwork launched underneath entry to info legal guidelines, alleges that from at the very least spring 1971 to winter 1972, a secret physique recognized by the code title FAN TAN operated exterior Canada’s official intelligence system.
Published on-line on Aug. 28, the paper, referred to as “The FAN TAN file: Quebec separatism and security service resistance to politicization 1971-72,” says the spy unit was often known as the “Vidal Group” — after its head of operations Claude Vidal. It alleges that the spy unit focused authorized parts of Quebec’s independence motion, together with the Parti Québécois, and used the federal Liberal Party equipment in Quebec to collect intelligence.
Many of the paperwork stay redacted, together with one the place Trudeau asks if the RCMP can interact in an exercise, the character of which was additionally redacted. All, or practically all of the paperwork had been ready by John Starnes, the top of the RCMP’s safety service between 1970 and 1973, as a part of his submission to the McDonald Commission, which investigated unlawful actions by the safety service.
Gregory Kealey, a professor emeritus within the division of historical past on the University of New Brunswick, stated the discharge of the analysis paper is a testomony to why Ottawa wants be extra clear about previous actions of police and home intelligence providers.
“We’re talking about events that took place 53 years ago and we’re still playing with, at best, a damaged a deck of cards,” he stated. Kealey stated he wonders whether or not the redactions could cowl up different narratives about Starnes, who headed the RCMP safety service at a time when it carried out unlawful actions and who by no means spoke about Vidal group in his memoir or in later interviews.
Former Parti Québécois chief Jean-François Lisée stated it doesn’t make sense that unredacted copies of 50-year-old paperwork aren’t obtainable.
“Current civil servants have made the determination that some parts of these half-a-century old texts were too dangerous to publish in order to preserve federal-provincial relations of today. That is obviously nonsensical, but it obviously shows that there are still things in there that would be shocking,” Lisée stated in an interview Wednesday.
Other paperwork, together with notes from federal cupboard conferences in 1975, 1976 and 1977 — round when the PQ was first elected in Quebec — nonetheless haven’t been launched, he stated.
The paperwork within the analysis paper “show how far Prime Minister Trudeau himself was willing to go in infringing on civil rights in order to fight separatism, illegal and legal,” Lisée stated.
There are many different paperwork in regards to the sovereignty motion which are nonetheless being stored from the general public — together with greater than 4,500 paperwork entered into proof throughout an inquiry into the 1995 Quebec independence referendum.
The 2006 investigation, overseen by retired choose Bernard Grenier, concluded that two federalist organizations funded by Ottawa did not report spending of greater than $500,000 in the course of the referendum marketing campaign, which was received by “No” facet. Grenier ordered the 1000’s of paperwork that had been introduced in the course of the hearings to be completely sealed.
Last May, Quebec’s legislature unanimously adopted a movement calling on the province’s chief electoral officer to launch all paperwork, however they continue to be sealed.
Philip H.J. Davies, who co-authored the paper on the key spy unit, stated the implications it raises are troubling.
“The idea that one would run a surveillance and ‘political action’ cell out of a party political office in a democracy was blood curdling …. It would be massively unconstitutional,” stated Davies, who can also be a professor of intelligence research at Brunel University London.
Molinaro stated the paperwork present that Starnes pushed again in opposition to the makes an attempt to politicize his company, threatening to resign and converse out in regards to the operation fairly than present intelligence to the Vidal Group.
But, Molinaro stated, there’s nothing within the fee’s report in regards to the unit.
“One of the troubling questions we pose in the paper is: why wasn’t this released as part of the report that the McDonald Commission put out?” Molinaro stated.
That fee, which confirmed that the RCMP had engaged in a whole bunch of unlawful break-ins, burnt down a barn and stole the PQ membership record, would result in the removing of home intelligence tasks from the RCMP and the creation of Canadian Security Intelligence Service, often called CSIS.
Pascal Bérubé, a PQ member of Quebec’s legislature, stated the revelations within the analysis paper are a part of a sequence of betrayals and coverups which have marked Quebec’s relations with Ottawa — together with the theft of the PQ membership record by the RCMP and the unlawful financing of the federalist marketing campaign.
“No one can now deny that Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s office was behind the surveillance that the Parti Québécois has been the victim of since its founding,” he stated.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
