Tories to create new security bodies: document
Last Updated Sat, 12 Jun 2004 16:27:15 EDT

MONTREAL - An internal party document obtained by the French-language
service of CBC suggests the Conservatives want to set up a U.S.-style
national intelligence agency to manage information from the Canadian
Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP.

But while one of the party's candidates confirms the plan, a party official
says it no longer forms part of the Conservatives' agenda should they be
elected on June 28.

The new agency, which a Tory candidate in Quebec likened to the American
National Security Agency, would report directly to the prime minister and
account for itself privately before a parliamentary committee. "It's a
matter of having a super agency to co-ordinate efforts and information from
each of these groups," Outrement candidate Marc Rousseau told
Radio-Canada. "We must harmonize our policies with those of the
Americans."

The Liberals have been reluctant to change Canada's internal security
system so that it is integrated with agencies such as the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security and the Central Intelligence Agency. "It's
certainly not the goal to have one policy that subservient to American
policy," Rousseau said in the Radio-Canada interview. "We're
really talking about a policy of collaboration and co-operation."

The same document revealed that Stephen Harper's party wants to create
another super-agency that would blend Canada Customs, the Canadian Coast
Guard, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority and the harbour police
into one entity to monitor activity at the country's borders.

Yaroslav Baran, the Conservatives' deputy director of communications, said
the months-old document Radio-Canada cites does not reflect the party's
current platform on national security, released one week ago. "It is
not our policy to merge the RCMP and CSIS, nor is it our policy to merge
our coastal security agencies," Baran told CBC News Online on
Saturday.  He called the document "a general position guideline that
served as a stop-gap until the platform came out. Our election platform,
obviously, supercedes previous papers, and only the platform should be
regarded as policy."

The Conservative platform, which Harper unveiled one week ago, is mostly
silent on specifics of a national security policy, with the exception of a
promise to more quickly deport a backlog of 30,000 to 36,000
"criminals and false refugees."

The closest it comes to giving a position on harmonized security is this
statement: "We must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States
and other allies when we should, in order to sit eye-to-eye with them when
we must. We should have a stronger relationship with the U.S. to deal with
issues like the increasingly protectionist stance of U.S. trade policy,
border security, and the war on terrorism."


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