Distributed by Southam News on Sept. 8, 2002:
 
Mounties kept files on hundreds of politicians
 
By Jim Bronskill Southam Newspapers
 
OTTAWA - RCMP spies kept secret files on hundreds of Canadian 
Politicians and bureaucrats at all three levels of government as part of a project known as the "VIP program," a newly published book reveals.
The now-defunct RCMP Security Service had amassed 668 files under the
program by the late 1970s when jittery Mounties severely curtailed the
effort, according to declassified archival documents.
The disclosure is among several revelations in Spying 101: The RCMP's
Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917-1997, by academic 
Steve
Hewitt, a teaching fellow with the Department of American and Canadian
Studies at the University of Birmingham in England.
The book, a thorough examination of RCMP surveillance of the academic
world, also discusses the Mounties' efforts to keep tabs on other 
elements
of society, including government, the media and women's groups.
The RCMP created security files on 800,000 Canadians, and it has long 
been
known the force took an active interest in politicians and public 
servants
with links to Communist organizations or other pursuits deemed 
subversive.
Last year, for instance, RCMP files spanning several decades on former 
NDP
leader David Lewis were made public. 
However, the considerable extent and scope of the effort to monitor 
elected
officials is detailed in records Hewitt obtained from the National 
Archives
of Canada under the Access to Information Act.
The VIP program targets in 1978 were 335 members of Parliament, 
senators
and public servants, 120 provincial representatives and employees, 25
municipal officials and 107 individuals who had left government.
Hewitt believes the RCMP kept dossiers on politicians out of a desire 
to
leave "no stone unturned."
"One of the points I try to make in the book is that they had this 
unclear
definition of what a subversive was. And better safe than sorry, so it 
was a
case of opening files on all kinds of people."
In the late 1970s, the VIP program was wound down "except for files on 
a
handful of individuals who continued to be targeted," says the book,
published this month by University of Toronto Press.
The archival records do not include the list of targets, as names 
usually
cannot be made public until 20 years after an individual's death under
federal privacy laws.
As the book notes, the RCMP's interest in certain politicians was well
known to the government as early as the 1960s, a fact Conservative 
Justice
Minister Donald Fleming acknowledged in his autobiography.
"I have seen the records they keep on individuals, including members of
Parliament," Fleming wrote. "If they failed to keep one on me I should 
feel
slighted."
In 1984, on the heels of a commission of inquiry into RCMP Security 
Service
activities, a new civilian agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service, assumed the lead role in countering subversion, espionage and
terrorism.
Both spy agencies have quietly monitored the halls of higher learning, 
a
practice that has generated tensions between state authorities and 
academia
given the potential chilling effect of undercover surveillance on the 
free
flow of ideas. 
Hewitt points out that RCMP interest in campus dissent continues, a 
recent
example being the Mounties' investigation of protesters against the
Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit at the University of British
Columbia in 1997.
"They did it at APEC, and they could be doing it now," Hewitt said.
He argues that following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United
States, there is little tolerance in North America for the sort of
dissenting opinions that have traditionally emerged from university
campuses.
Indeed, democratic countries including Canada have passed laws giving 
new
powers to police and intelligence agencies since the terrorist 
assaults, he
notes.
The book traces RCMP surveillance of the academic milieu to the early 
part
of the century, activities that intensified with the rise of socialism 
in
the 1920s. A pre-occupation with left-wing challenges to the political 
and
social order would colour the force's counter-subversion efforts for 
decades
to come.
The Mounties cultivated informants among students and faculty at
universities across the country and sometimes relied on the direct
observations of RCMP members who were taking classes to further their
education.
In 1970, as campus radicalism reached a peak, the Security Service
microfilmed a copy of the 958-page student directory of the Universite 
de
Montreal, which contained personal information on 16,000 individuals.
In his examination of thousands of pages of archival records, Hewitt 
came
across references to several well-known figures.
A September 1970 report mentions a speech by Ed Broadbent, then a young 
MP
and future NDP leader, at an anti-war conference held at the University 
of
Toronto. A notation indicates the possible existence of a separate 
personal
file on Broadbent.
Considerable effort was expended to discover those who secretly 
harboured
"Red" tendencies, but the evidence unearthed to establish such 
connections
was frequently tenuous, Hewitt writes.
Journalists Pierre Berton and Peter Gzowski had files opened on them, 
or
reports added to existing ones, following public appearances that 
aroused
suspicion. Berton chaired a meeting to protest apartheid in South 
Africa,
while Gzowski criticized the quality of Canadian universities during a
session at the University of Toronto.
Security Service members were also on hand when American social critic 
Noam
Chomsky addressed academics in Montreal in May 1967 and outspoken 
actress
Jane Fonda gave a speech at the University of Windsor in February 1971.
Images and other information from the book can be found at
www.spying101.com.