Mr. Fraser:

Mr. Speaker, it certainly was not I who made that remark about which you complained. It must have been somebody on the government side.

I was saying that we are here today because this is the last day of debate on Bill C-9. For those who are not knowledgeable about the terms of Parliament, this is what is called third reading. Just so that the public knows what has happened, I think it should be on the record that a number of months ago this Bill was first debated in the House at what is called second reading. That is supposed to be a debate on the principle of the Bill.

At that time the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) said that the Bill contains a legislative mandate which sets out rules which will become law, within which the security service of Canada must operate. It was obvious at that time that the security service of Canada, which has been operating for many years under the aegis of the RCMP, had and needed some extraordinary powers. It was the decision of the Government to mandate those powers into law primarily because, after the revelations of wrong-doing in the early 1970s and late 1960s, it was stated publicly in 1977 in this House that the Government felt there should be such a mandate so such wrong-doings would not happen again. On that, your Honour, there obviously cannot be any disagreement.

The Government also felt that the security service should be removed from the aegis of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Government's reasons for this were that almost 14, maybe 15, years ago-certainly as long as 12 or 13 years ago-members of the security service who also were Royal Canadian Mounted Policemen did things they should not have done. Therefore, after the revelations of 1977 in this House, the Government appointed the McDonald Commission.

The McDonald Commission studied the matter for a number of years and it came up with many recommendations,

one of which was that the security service should be removed from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A not very thinly disguised implication was "because you can't trust the Moun-ties".

It was also very clear, however, that what went wrong with the security service under the Royal Canadian Mounted Police back in the early 1970s and late 1960s was that a Prime Minister and various Solicitors General on the government side in the Liberal Party failed to exercise appropriate control over the security service, and failed to ask the most fundamental, ordinary questions that any good commander of any force would ask, and they implicitly told the Mounties to find information and not to discuss with the Government what they would do and how they would do it.

Mr. Hnatyshyn:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I sincerely apologize to my distinguished colleague, the Hon. Member for Vancouver South (Mr. Fraser), for interrupting his excellent presentation, but in light of the fact that unanimous consent was asked on behalf of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Communications to table a report, I have now had an opportunity of discussing this matter with the Hon. Member for Thunder Bay-Nipigon (Mr. Masters) and my colleague, the Hon. Member for Hamilton-Wentworth (Mr. Geoff Scott), and I think if you were to seek unanimous consent now consent would be forthcoming to table the report in question.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Guilbault):

Is there unanimous consent to table the report now?

Mr. Deans:

Mr. Speaker, we would be pleased to give unanimous consent. I thought there must have been a breakdown in communications someplace, and I am delighted to see the report table in the House today.

Mr. Masters:

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for the interruption in the dissertation of the Hon. Member for Vancouver South (Mr. Fraser). I thank the Opposition House Leader for his courtesy. We all have communication problems from time to time, even the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture.

Mr. Jack Masters (Thunder Bay-Nipigon):

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the first report of the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture, in both official

June 21, 1984

languages, on the taxation of visual and performing artists and writers.

[Editor's Note: For above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Hon. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, what happened in the early 1970s, and it happened partly at least as a consequence of the concerns of the FLQ in Quebec, the Government of the day, was that the Solicitors General of the day, and the Prime Minister of the day, with a wink, a nudge, and a nod, told the Mounties in the security service to go out and find everything they could and "not tell us, the Government, what they were going to do or how they were going to do it". That is an abysmally disgraceful part of the record of any Government of Canada.

I remember well, Sir, hearing the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) make a statement when questions were being raised in the House of Commons in 1977 as the revelations came out. Questions were being raised by the Progressive Conservative Party and the other Party in the Opposition, which were being stonewalled by the Prime Minister. The questions were: What has gone wrong? Why can the Government not control illegal actions of the security force? The Prime Minister's notion is one which should be studied by law students for many years to come. His notion was that it was not up to him, that it was not up to the Government, to be concerned with the everyday activities of the security force and that if it did secret, illegal things, the courts would protect us. That was the theory of the Right Hon. Prime Minister, a theory which every first year law student knows is absolute nonsense and any practising lawyer knows is absolute nonsense, because secret, illegal activities will not even get before the courts.

I remind Hon. Members of that, because there was an attitude at the time on the part of the Prime Minister, and apparently on the part of Solicitors General, that in the murky world of intelligence gathering the Government ought not to

Security Intelligence Service

know and certainly did not want to know. As events transpired, when members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police exceeded what was appropriate and proper, they were abandoned immediately by their political masters who should have taken their responsibility.

The point I am making is that the RCMP and the security service of Canada were betrayed by their political masters, and those political masters were Liberals, including the Prime Minister of Canada. It became very convenient to find someone else to blame other than the Government. Finally, as more revelations became clear, the McDonald Royal Commission was set up under Mr. Justice McDonald and two other eminent commissioners.

It is interesting that the McDonald Commission came down with the conclusion that the security service should be removed from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It indicated that members of the RCMP could not be trained properly in intelligence gathering work, that it was impossible for an agency working under the aegis of the RCMP to do the special and sophisticated work required. The Commission believed, for reasons which I never found very logical, that it had to be some kind of special breed of creatures, perhaps born in some distant land, and only they, after special training, were fit for work in intelligence gathering.

Also, it pointed to the abuses which were certainly there for many years. It is interesting that it completely ignored the fact that the RCMP is a very sophisticated police force in crime detection, prevention, and the collection of information with respect to crime. The Commission forgot, as it sat month after month, year after year, in its deliberations, that it was looking backwards, not forwards, and that what it was examining had happened many years ago. It did not seem to occur to them that the difficulty was not with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as such, but the lack of control and the lack of adequate constraints on the part of their political masters. The blame lies squarely with the Prime Minister and Liberal Solicitors General, and to place the blame anywhere else is a cruel and wretched cop-out. This is 1984, and the sins of commission or omission that were complained of happened 13, 14 or 15 years ago.

When I asked the Solicitor General about this security service in committee, this security service which until at least today is still under the aegis of the RCMP and reports to the Government through the Commissioner of the RCMP, I pointed out that all this talk of the new security service under this bill was just not so, that there was nothing new about the security service. After this Bill passes it will be the same people, the same building, same files, same typewriters, and same telephone. All that will change under this Bill is that, instead of an RCMP commissioner, there will be a director reporting to the Solicitor General. Then there will be some consequential changes with respect to pensioners, payment, and internal administration.

June 21, 1984

Security Intelligence Service

I asked the Solicitor General how, if there was such a desperate need to remove the security service from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the traditions, constraints, and concepts of justice and duty and country which go with that magnificent force, it was getting along all these years since those distant days 13 or 14 years ago when things went wrong. He had to say they were getting along very well with the security service under the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He said the people were very fine people, that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was a very fine organization, that his relations with the Commissioner were very good, and that he had nothing but good things to say about the RCMP. That seemed a little strange in view of the fact that the whole reason for getting the security service away from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was because they had had a lot of bad things to say about it.

I asked the Minister, and I quote:

The fact is, Mr. Minister, that for many months now-for many years in fact-since the revelations in the House of Commons in 1977 and the action which was taken consequently, the security service has been working as a part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The Commissioner has been reporting to the Solicitor General effectively, competently and in a manner which I am sure you would agree meets with your approval. You testified that this has been done in a manner which meets the appropriate sensibilities of the Canadian public. Is that not so?

That was my question to the Solicitor General. The Solicitor General replied: "Yes, that is so." If the security service today is exactly the same security service which was in existence months and years ago, and which has been operating properly and well, it is very difficult to understand the strange, tortured logic of those who say that the only route to go is to take the security service away from the aegis of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

One can say that the attachment to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is just emotional, just sentimental. It is a romantic view that the traditions of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are such that perhaps there would be more public trust in the knowledge that a secret intelligence-gathering organization fell under the aegis of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. After all, though, that is all romanticism and this is 1984. There is not much room for that any more.

Let me tell you what another group said about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association is an association which is well and favourably known to me and to many others. It is a serious association acting within my province and it concerns itself with the whole question of civil liberties.

When I was a boy growing up, we did not use the phrase "civil liberties" very much. We used another phrase that was well understood, "British justice". It was the tradition that we thought we had brought from the best of the old country and incorporated into our system. Today, the phrase "civil liberties" is used, but then it was justice and it is today justice for individuals living in freedom in this country of which we are speaking.

The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association is an association which is concerned with justice and is understandably and properly concerned with the ever-present potential for abuse in a police system or in a security intelligence system. But it is one which does not have a romantic, sentimental attachment to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or to any police force for that matter. Its purpose is to be skeptical and to be careful in its consideration of police and security services. Therefore, it has no romantic notions about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A representative of this association had the following to say before the committee:

The second concern deals with the civilianization of the security service. The Senate Committee and McDonald Commission cite essentially two reasons for civilianization. One is that the intelligence personnel of the security agency require different training and abilities from those training and abilities that RCMP officers have and, secondly, the police hierarchy is incompatible with the strict process of review and control that is envisaged for a civilian security agency.

Mr. John Russell, the member of the association who was giving evidence at the time, had this to say:

I think the lie is given to the first item by the fact that the RCMP security section is going to be given over to the new security service.

We are left with the conclusion that either the RCMP does train competent personnel, in this case, or the service will begin its life with unsuitable employees. In our view, we would prefer that the security service, if there is to be a security service, should remain within the purview of the RCMP, where threats to national security are more likely to be placed in a realistic context. That is, they will be assessed in relation to other criminal activity and not isolated.

Your Honour-

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Guilbault):

Order, please. The Chair regrets to interrupt the hon. gentleman but his time is up.

Mr. Hnatyshyn:

No, it is unlimited time.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Guilbault):

The Chair will let the hon. gentleman continue for a moment.

Mr. Fraser:

I am placed in a difficult position, Your Honour. I had inquired of the Table this morning and I was told that under the rules today I had unlimited time. I do not intend to go on in an unlimited fashion but I had structured my remarks accordingly. I hope I have sufficient time to finish my remarks.

Mr. Hnatyshyn:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on that point of order. I believe, Mr. Speaker, that under the provisions of Standing Order 35(1) which deals with time limits with respect to interventions in debate, the following is the case:

Unless otherwise provided in these Standing Orders, when the Speaker is in the Chair, no Member, except the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, or a Minister moving a government order and the Member speaking in reply immediately after such Minister, or a Member making a motion of "no-confidence" ... shall speak for more than twenty minutes-

Accordingly, I would suggest that at third reading stage there is not the constraint of a 20-minute limitation on the person replying on behalf of the Opposition with respect to this legislation. I would suggest that the Hon. Member, as he has indicated, has something further to say. Although he will not

June 21, 1984

abuse the privilege, I know that he would like to complete his remarks.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Guilbault):

The Chair has just been advised along the lines put forward by the Hon. Member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn). As a matter of fact, the Chair invited the Hon. Member for Vancouver South to continue his remarks.

Mr. Kaplan:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Listening to the reading of the rule by the Member opposite, it struck me that the Hon. Member speaking was not entitled to unlimited time because he was not speaking in reply to a speech made by a Minister on this stage of the Bill. On the other hand, the Hon. Member did indicate that he had structured his remarks in such a fashion and that he had had some assurance that he would be allowed to complete his remarks as he had structured them. In view of that, Hon. Members on this side have no objection to his continuing.

The Acting Speaker (Mr. Guilbault):

The Chair has made the decision in any event. Second, the hon. gentleman is not speaking in reply to a speech, he is speaking in reply to the mover of the motion. The Minister moved a motion earlier today. Although he has not yet spoken, he actually moved it and the Hon. Member for Vancouver South is entitled to unlimited time.