I suspect that history will one day be very kind to whistleblower Edward Snowden. Yesterday’s traitor is gradually becoming tomorrow’s patriot as he slowly unmasks the “secret surveillance state” growing around us. In fact, there is already talk of him being able to return to the U.S. at some point. But it may be here in Canada where he will be owed a special debt.

Just as Canadians appeared to be sleepwalking towards accepting a dangerous government-sponsored “anti-terrorism act” that would undermine human rights and the rule of law, the debate has appeared to turn in recent days. Government ministers are now more on the defensive. Critics of the proposed legislation are regaining their voice. And Snowden himself has intervened.

At a discussion March 4 at Ryerson University about the state of mass surveillance in Canada, Snowden — on a video link from Moscow — warned that the freedoms and liberties people enjoy are being changed without their consent. And in terms of stopping terrorism, he added, there are no genuine benefits: “Surveillance can’t stop a lone wolf. Never in a single case has it stopped a terrorist attack.”

But his most damning comment focused on the question of accountability and oversight, a key issue in the Canadian debate: “Something that we can see when we look at all of the conversations happening around the world is that Canadian intelligence has one of the weakest oversight frameworks of any western intelligence agency in the world.”

Even though, as Snowden points out, terrorism kills fewer people in Canada than lightning, that fact hasn’t deterred the government. In fact, the reverse has happened. With its constant focus on the so-called “Islamic threat,” reinforced by a media echo chamber in Canada that has often added to the alarm, it is not surprising the government believes it has public opinion on its side. At least for now.

The anti-terrorism bill would dramatically expand the mandate of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Its critics warn the new powers and weak oversight would combine to lead to abuse and inevitable scandals in the years to come. And a review of recent Canadian history suggests this is more than likely. CSIS was created in 1984 as a result of illegal acts by the RCMP Security Service in its battle against FLQ terrorism in Quebec in the 1970s. But that hardly solved the problem.

It was a year later, in 1985, that the bombing of Air India Flight 182 occurred, the largest mass murder in Canadian history. The death toll was 329 passengers and crew, most of them Canadian. In his 2010 report into the disaster, then-Supreme Court Justice John Major blamed a “cascading series of errors” by the government and its agencies — primarily CSIS and the RCMP which kept battling with each other — for their actions before and after the bombing. He described a Canadian intelligence operation that was both bumbling and incompetent.

My recollection of that period comes particularly from a 1987 CBC documentary that Brian Stewart and I produced for The Journal program that revealed for the first time that CSIS destroyed 150 wiretaps of the suspects before and after the bombing. It reinforced the suggestion that not only was this bombing preventable, but there was also a systematic coverup after it occurred.

So that is just some of the recent history of Canadian intelligence. Major, now retired, recently said that it doesn’t ensure that CSIS and the RCMP share information on unfolding threats, which was a central problem in the Air India incident: “When you have that many agencies involved, it’s a recipe for confusion unless there’s somebody steering the ship.”

In his remarks at the Ryerson discussion, Snowden warned the bulk collection of data has fundamentally altered the relationship between citizens and government, but he added this caution: “We cannot throw away all of our rights, all of our liberties, all of our traditions, because we are afraid of rare instances of criminal activity.”

Although a backlash against Canada’s proposed law seems to be growing, no one believes a Conservative-dominated Parliament won’t approve it. That makes Canada’s general election campaign this October an even more important opportunity to debate these issues.

Tony Burman, former head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, teaches journalism at Ryerson University. He can be reached @TonyBurman tony.burman@gmail.com

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