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Martin Government Plans to Extend Police Powers

Public Safety Minister Anne McClellan will introduce legislation this fall to enable police forces and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agents to read e-mails and tap cell phone calls without a warrant, according to media interviews with several anonymous sources within the Public Safety department. The interviews came just before the start of the annual Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police’s conference, held during the last week of August, and just over a year after a senior FBI official said Canada needed to make these changes to its existing law or become the “weak link” in the “global war on terror”.

At the police conference, participants said law enforcement agencies, including municipal, regional and provincial police forces, the RCMP and CSIS need to “exercise better co-operation and integration” to protect national security. A paper presented at the conference said there has already been “tremendous success” in fighting security threats in Canada by co-coordinating strategies, but added “coherent and seamless policing, including resource and intelligence sharing across domestic and international borders” is critical to public safety.

One of the suggestions made by RCMP Commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli at the closing news conference was for greater use of video surveillance in public spaces. He also talked about the need for increased “flexibility” in terms of engaging in certain practices without getting warrants. Although pressed by reporters, Zaccardelli did not elaborate but many believe he was referring to the measures talked about in the interviews by Public Safety department staff.

In April 2004, Mike Kirkpatrick, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, said Canadian law, which does not give police and CSIS agents the power to require cell phone and Internet service providers to make their equipment easier to tap, was undesirable. “You’re only as strong as your weakest link, so if you have places that don’t adopt such measures than that’s a weak link”, Kirkpatrick said while in Ottawa last year speaking at an international conference on cyber security and law enforcement.

Following September 11, 2001, the Bush administration in the U.S. passed legislation which allows circuit-switched and cell phone conversations to be tapped without a warrant if deemed necessary for national security. In Canada, it is currently much more difficult for police to do this, which Kirkpatrick argued is hindering the ability of Canadian security forces to provide their American counterparts with information on “persons of interest”.

It was the sharing of information with American security officials that led to the deportation and torture of several Canadian citizens of Middle Eastern origin following September 11, the most infamous case being that of Maher Arar. Neither the conference of police chiefs nor the anonymous departmental officials being interviewed would comment to reporters on the Arar case and its implications for “so-called” “seamless policing” and information sharing.

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