23Jan04-Martin blasts raid by RCMP-`We have no intention of being a police state' -PM says force should focus on who spilled secrets
Jan. 23, 2004. 11:12 AM
Martin blasts raid by RCMP
`We have no intention of being a police state'
PM says force should focus on who spilled secrets
SUSAN DELACOURT
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
OTTAWA—Prime Minister Paul Martin, putting himself on the side of press freedom, says he wants the RCMP to worry more about who is giving out state secrets and less about the reporters who receive them.
"We are not a police state and we have no intention of being a police state," Martin said yesterday in Davos, Switzerland, where he first learned late on Wednesday night that the RCMP raided the house of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neill that morning.
The Prime Minister also signalled that the controversy may prompt Parliament to start an immediate and early review of the Canadian anti-terrorism legislation passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes in the United States — the law under which O'Neill could be charged and imprisoned for up to 14 years if found guilty.
Parliament resumes sitting on Feb. 2.
"This law ought to be reviewed," Martin said. "Parliament can decide to review as early as it sees fit."
The RCMP told O'Neill it was searching for clues on who leaked information to her more than two months ago on the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen deported to Syria after being detained on a flight stopover in the United States in 2002.
The raid has provoked outrage from journalists and civil libertarians and put Martin and his government on the defensive about threats to media freedom.
"Freedom of the press is one of the important pillars underlying our democratic freedoms and I take that very seriously," Martin said.
"What is at issue here is a leak that dealt with private information about a Canadian individual and that just simply wasn't fair that information be leaked," the Prime Minister said.
"Obviously, given the fact that it was security information made it all the more serious. I'm not going to comment any further except to say that what is of interest, should be of interest to everybody, is who leaked that information, not the journalist that received it."
Asked whether he viewed O'Neill as a criminal, the Prime Minister flatly said: "Clearly not."
But while Martin was trying to tamp down the outrage over the raid, Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan was speaking out forcefully in favour of the RCMP investigation that prompted it.
In a Nov. 8 story, O'Neill reported on leaked documents that, among other allegations, said Arar had told Syrian interrogators he had trained at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan.
McLellan and Martin have been saying for at least a month the government wants to find out who told O'Neill that Arar had attended Al Qaeda-linked training camps — and that this was a prime reason for his deportation to Syria.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I take you back to the fact that what is happening here is the criminal investigation of a leak that has undoubtedly affected the reputation of a man, his wife and his children," McLellan said yesterday to reporters in her home town of Edmonton.
"And there were some very serious assertions made in those leaks and I think Canadians need to focus on that. Canadians, I know this, they want to get to the bottom of who would provide that information in a situation with such lack of regard for that man, his wife and their children. So let's focus, let us focus on why this criminal investigation was begun in the first place."
Critics of the government fear the RCMP may have been motivated to extraordinary search techniques precisely because McLellan and Martin have publicly stressed the need to find the source of the leaks.
"They (the RCMP) will launch a criminal investigation like they would do in any other case," McLellan said Jan. 8 in a Le Devoir report from Ottawa.
"It's not clear who these sources are."
The next day, Martin told reporters: "These leaks are totally unacceptable."
But the Prime Minister and McLellan maintained yesterday no one in the government was informed of the raid on O'Neill's house in advance.
"This is a police matter and it would be inappropriate," McLellan said.
"It is so important to ensure the integrity and independence of any criminal investigation. Therefore, someone in my position or the Prime Minister's position is never given advance notice, nor in my opinion, should we be given advance notice."
The RCMP told O'Neill and her lawyers on Wednesday the investigation was proceeding under the 26-month-old Security of Information Act, which makes it a crime to possess information that may be deemed a matter of national security.
Under that law, no prosecution can proceed without the go-ahead of the attorney-general.
Complicating this already complex case is the fact that the current attorney-general is Irwin Cotler, a former human-rights lawyer who has removed himself from all matters dealing with Arar because he gave legal advice to the family.
Cotler was also a vocal opponent of some of the harsher measures in the government's anti-terrorism package in 2001, professing discomfort with some of the powers that it placed in the hands of the executive.
Now Cotler holds those powers, though because of his conflict, this whole controversy will fall into the hands of his deputy minister or McLellan, who is also the minister of public security.
McLellan echoed Martin yesterday in saying that the furor over the O'Neill search may prompt Parliament to start an immediate review of the anti-terrorism legislation, which must be revisited anyway by the end of this year, under the three-year "sunset" clause that civil libertarians demanded when the measures were first introduced in 2001.
The RCMP, for its part, was saying little yesterday, arguing it would be inappropriate to comment on an investigation that is still ongoing.
Staff-Sergeant Paul Marsh, spokesperson for the RCMP, said the search was "one part of the puzzle" in an investigation that's been under way since the fall.
"We're going to use those means that are legally available to us in order to determine the source or sources of the disclosure of the classified information," said Marsh, refusing to get into specifics about the search.
"If at the end of the day, after an examination of all the facts it's determined that charges are warranted, then we'll move forward," he said.
On Parliament Hill, MPs expressed their surprise and outrage at the "atrocious" raid.
"I think it was excessive. I think you've seen instances where Hells Angels' headquarters didn't garner that type of police invasion," said Conservative MP Peter MacKay (Pictou-Antigonish-Guysborough), a former crown attorney.
Bloc justice critic Richard Marceau said "the RCMP has become a political organ of the government which tries harder to protect itself and to protect the federal administration in place than to conduct transparent inquiries."
WITH FILES FROM VALERIE LAWTON AND BRUCE CAMPION-SMITH
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