There’s been a few cases of Canadians getting deported to the wrong country hitting the press up north. There was the case of Berna Cruz an Indian-born Canadian who was deported because INS officers in Chicago decided her legitimate Canadian passport was altered or a fake (or something). Then there was the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was “accidentally” deported to Syria instead of Canada.

When Cruz came home she made a stink in all the papers. But when Arar came home things hit a new low. Arar was apparently deported so he could be tortured for information about al Queda. US officials, while not commenting on his case, admit this is common. The case has been getting press up north since the deportation, and it’s not good press. There are even allegations that the Canadian government is “subcontracting’ torture” to other countries. The Colin Powell and the PM say they’re making inquiries.

Americans don’t seem to understand how bad the backlash from something like this can get. I have heard undocumented reports from Up North that the politics is already moving to the left as politicians and parties try to distance themselves from President Bush. Now imagine a very (VERY!) large and very angry immigrant population demanding retribution – a new hardline anti-American element in Canadian politics. There will be pressure to stop sharing intelligence; Canada is the only country in the world which shares criminal lookouts with the US, and that could end with that kind of political pressure. There’s nothing good about that.

CSIS is good at what it does and it would be a real shame if some cowboy Americans screwed it up. The secret police have no friends in a democratic society. It would be good for folks in DC to remember that.

Damn Foreigner has a number of posts in his Maher Arar section.

Afterthoughts

At one time I was considering a career with CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, pronounced SEE-SIS) and went to a presentation by some west coast CSIS mucky-muck. So I know a bit about them, their history and their statutory authority.

Damn Foreigner dug up allegations that the RCMP may have conducted illegal searches in order to provide the CIA with a copy of Arar’s lease. There were only two copies of Arar’s lease which tied him to someone suspected of terrorist links: Arar and his landlord. Neither gave up copies so, the logic goes, there must have been a secret search with a sealed warrant. I believe that to be true. In the US this would beg the question of whether the document was “illegally seized through an improper search” but that isn’t the case in Canada.

Remember all the trouble the RCMP and FBI got in back in the 1960s? Canada solved it by splitting RCMP and CSIS, the USA just banned secret searches (until the Patriot Act). CSIS’s primary purpose is to segregate the intelligence utility of secret warrantless searches from the due process requirements of criminal investigations. CSIS has the authority to conduct warrantless secret searches to procure terrorism related intelligence, including against Canadian citizens. (I know a few people who are reasonably certain their properties were searched with that authority… But I have nothing to do with that.) Like the CIA in the US, CSIS reports directly to the PM and a select group of the Privy Council – there is minimal parliamentary oversight.

Now we’ve got a new problem: PM Chretien has asked Sec of State Powell to inquire as to the identity of the Canadian who provided the US with information about Arar. If it was CSIS who wrote and passed on the report (including the lease) then Chretien can get the entire file on his desk – he can get the names without asking DOS for help. However, if it was the RCMP that wrote and passed on the report then it is very likely that something illegal was done to compile it. It’s a Catch-22 for the PM: If he can’t get the reports directly then Canada has a rogue police agency.

Is it the RCMP or CSIS?

MP Paul Szabo “suggested that sensitive diplomatic and political maneuverings (sic)are going on.” (url)

Gee… ya think?

Personally, I suspect someone up top at CSIS is keeping quiet and trying to figure out how to dodge the ton of bricks that are about to come down from On High. They didn’t realize how badly the CBP guys want to nail terrorists. They thought sharing intel with the US would be just like before 9/11 or that cooler heads up the chain of command in DC would govern it’s use. But it’s not like that anymore. The intel comes right to the front line and into the hands of a 26-year-old who chose his career because he wants to bust terrorists for the rest of his life. Americans could do worse, I guess.

Update 11/13/03

Damn Foreigner’s post today points out that the U.S.’s deportation of Arar to Syria is a violation of Article 3 of the Convention on Torture… to which the United States is party. Oops.