Narrowed eyes peering through frosted glass had become a morbid tradition at my office door. The eyes always spelled trouble.

The Director of Parliamentary Affairs, a man in his late 20s, wasn’t prone to unnecessary visits. Prematurely grey, he was battle-scarred in ways that, at his age, bothered me. Cynicism among the political staff had reached all-time highs by the winter of 2015, even as we worked to respond to the attack on Parliament Hill of the previous fall. All hands were on deck to produce a legislative answer to domestic terror, a menace that had left two members of the Canadian Forces dead and struck at the seat of our democracy. Our efforts became the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015, or simply “C-51.”

“They’re going to say CSIS can detain people. Throw them in a hole and keep them there.”

“Who?” I demanded.

“Media. Opposition. And the tinfoil hat crowd.”

“It’s legally impossible,” I replied. “And more to the point, it’s absurd.”

Even as I waved him off, I knew he was right. Anyone who’s been around politics knows the difference between what Columbia journalism professor Andie Tucher calls “the Congenial Truth” and the truth as it actually is. The Congenial Truth is what certain media commentators decide it is and the public — either through passivity or ignorance — accepts. After a few years on Parliament Hill, you learn it’s easier to work around widely-accepted fictions than recklessly confront them.

By the time he left my office, we’d settled on an addition to the bill: “Nothing in this Act shall confer on the Service any law enforcement power.” It was simple, straightforward, clear. No law enforcement powers for CSIS meant no power of arrest. No arrest meant no detention. No secret jails. Period.

The additional wording required no cabinet vetting before it went back to the House of Commons. No further discussion other than the knowing approval of the minister of Public Safety and formatting by officials. That’s because the words were legally meaningless and practically unnecessary. Even before we added them, Canada’s 31-year-old Security Intelligence Service would have had zero authority to hold prisoners, secretly or otherwise. But adding a phrase to make it crystal-clear that CSIS could not act like the police served a purpose: It would prevent people from believing something that wasn’t true. Right?

What we did that day would have been particularly grating to a rare breed of barrister-bureaucrat called a “drafter.” These are the folks who actually write laws. They sculpt legislative masterworks that follow long lines of precedent.

Black sites, you say? Try keeping a secret in official Ottawa. Between access to information, open government, whistle-blower protection, litigation and the usual watering hole gossip, it’s utterly impossible. Black sites, you say? Try keeping a secret in official Ottawa. Between access to information, open government, whistle-blower protection, litigation and the usual watering hole gossip, it’s utterly impossible.

Adding meaningless franken-foolishness to their creations threatens to upset the fine balance required to bring them into existence. If you clarify something that’s already clear (i.e., “no law enforcement power”), do you make other previously-clear statements appear more muddled? I’ve never had occasion to meet a drafter in person and I don’t suppose one would speak to me if I did. Perhaps this essay can serve as an apology, and an explanation.

Given our efforts to be clear — to explain the bill — I was appalled (but not shocked) to open the pages of Canada’s largest circulation newspaper recently and see these words in stark typeface: “… the new law would allow CSIS to set up secret jails.”

The old adage is as powerful today as in years gone by: That which is not expressly prohibited is permitted. That’s the rule for citizens. Unless and until a law says you can’t walk on a particular patch of grass, you can walk there.

What few people understand is that the exact opposite is true for state actors, including police, government departments and spies: Anything not expressly permitted by law is prohibited. You say you want to create a secret prison to hold national security suspects? Not until you show me the authority in an act of Parliament.

Along with lack of legal authority to set up a “secret jail,” the truth (the real truth) is that no state actor would ever want to do such a thing. The incarceration of human beings is a messy, heartbreaking affair. Just ask the men and women of the Correctional Service of Canada. Suicides, hunger strikes, drug smuggling and gang violence: Running a prison is a grinding, thankless endeavour. Running one secretly (in the basement of a suburban Ottawa office building, maybe?) is inconceivable.

Black sites, you say? Try keeping a secret in official Ottawa. Between access to information, open government, whistle-blower protection, litigation and the usual watering hole gossip, it’s utterly impossible.

When Canada’s security apparatus needs to do something “kinetic” — take a door, put a bad guy on the floor — the police are brought in. Not the secret police, the real police: the RCMP, OPP, Toronto Police Service or some other police service. Each contributes to Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams located around the country. Along with a variety of other federal agencies, CSIS is part of INSET, but it doesn’t break down doors. And it doesn’t take prisoners.

So how does this kind of rumour — regardless of how it began — get printed as undisputed fact in a major national newspaper? It’s not right to paint all columnists (certainly not all journalists) with the same disparaging brush. Most of them care about accuracy and care deeply. They call government officials not just for comment, but to make sure they’ve got the law or policy right. Then they call others to make sure what they’ve just heard is correct.

But far too often there are failures of fact-checking. Sometimes it’s easier to decide what the truth is, speak it aloud or in print, then move on to the next story. The media industry is beset with its own challenges — tight deadlines, tighter margins. Sometimes a writer just has to keep moving, damnable facts be damned.

As sure as black ministerial cars pass in front of the Peace Tower, opponents of C-51 are sharpening their pencils in support of the existence of secret jails, the criminalization of activists and a legion of other rumours fuelled by rigid dedication to avoiding the plain text of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015. But if they actually read it, and wrote about it, at least we could debate the law as it is — not as it looks through the mist of congenial untruth.

Reading the legislation and debating its merits would be a service to Canadians. Spouting off without doing so undermines the rule of law and the legitimacy of those we depend on to keep us safe.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.