RCMP needs own intelligence team, former top cop tells Air India inquiry

Ottawa: The RCMP needs its own intelligence team, separate from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, to combat terrorism and other national security offences, says a former top cop.
Robert Simmonds, who was commissioner of the Mounties when CSIS was created, told the Air India inquiry Thursday that he's never doubted the competence of the civilian spy agency or the need for it to exist.
But he maintained there's a parallel need for police to gather evidence in a way that will meet the legal test for use in court - rather than relying on CSIS, which usually objects to public disclosure of its sources and information-gathering methods.
Simmonds said he can't understand why CSIS wouldn't be happy to let the Mounties work in parallel with them, if only to protect the cloak of confidentiality they are so concerned about.
He said the investigation of the Air India bombing that took 329 lives in June 1985 - barely a year after CSIS was created - illustrated the practical difficulties that arose with the separation of intelligence and police powers.
The current inquiry, headed by former Supreme Court justice John Major, has heard evidence of failures to share information, erasures of key wiretap tapes, and competition between the RCMP and CSIS in the recruitment of sources.
But the most intractable problem, said Simmonds, was "how do you convert information obtained by CSIS into meaningful evidence to be put before a judge?"
If that can't be done, because of the need to protect confidential sources and operating methods, he said the police need to have the ability to step in and do the job themselves.
Documents tabled at the inquiry show Simmonds tried to get approval from the government to spend $2.6 million a year to set up and staff an intelligence unit within the RCMP that would have filled the void left by the loss of the old security service and the creation of CSIS.
The Mounties eventually did establish a more modest national security investigation section, but it was never funded to the extent they wanted.
Under questioning Thursday, Simmonds acknowledged that even if the force had a full-blown special branch it wouldn't have guaranteed they could have prevented the Air India bombing.
"It would be entirely speculation," he said. "I don't know. I can only say that the base of information readily available would have been more extensive."
The downing of Air India Flight 182 was blamed on militant Sikh separatists based in British Columbia, but only one man has ever been convicted. Another was killed by police in India and two more were acquitted at trial in Vancouver, a verdict that outraged the families of the victims.
08/11/07 The Canadian Press

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Categories: Air India - International Nov 2007, Foreign Nov 2007, NACIL Nov 2007, Safety Nov 2007