OTTAWA—A senior CSIS official admitted Monday the spy agency may have spied on the communications of Canadian journalists in the past.

The admission comes weeks after Quebeckers were shocked to learn Montreal city police and Quebec provincial police had tracked communications of several high-profile columnists and investigative journalists in that province in attempts to find suspected leaks of information by police sources.

It runs contrary to assurances offered by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, and the country’s top spook, CSIS director Michel Coulombe, that federal agencies do not target journalists’ communications.

Each made cautious statements couched in the present tense after the Quebec revelations prompted outrage. But the prime minister and his top security officials were careful to evade direct answers about whether journalists had been targeted federally in the past.

On Monday, Coulombe was unable due to personal reasons to make a scheduled appearance before the senate standing committee on national security and defence.

Under pointed questioning, two other top CSIS assistant directors squirmed and tried to dodge questions by Sen. Claude Carignan, the Conservative Opposition’s leader in the Senate who has tabled a private member’s bill to enshrine legal protection for journalists’ sources.

Tom Venner, assistant CSIS director for policy and strategic partnerships, said CSIS “only investigates people and activities that fit the definition of threats to the security of Canada as defined in the CSIS Act – terrorism, espionage, foreign interference.” He went on to say, “There are no safe havens from those definitions and from those categories.”

“If you are engaging in those type (sic) of activities then you may be investigated.”

He and Brian Rumig, assistant director of CSIS operations, said CSIS and the federal government “absolutely recognize the sensitivity around institutions such as the media, academia.” They said special “policies and levels of authority” ensure any investigations that target people in those sectors meet a “higher threshold.”

But under repeated questioning by Carignan, Rumig finally conceded it was possible CSIS had spied on reporters either directly or indirectly.

“We would not investigate someone simply because they are a journalist,” said Rumig. But he said, “I’m going to guess ...that in the past in the course of 30 years of the service being in existence yes, there might have been a journalist who because of his or her activity in support of threats to the security of Canada might have been investigated by us. Currently I don’t know those numbers,” he said.

Carignan drew an undertaking by the officials to provide the number in writing to the committee. In an interview Carignan said he was very concerned by the revelation.

“If you use journalists to have information about threat examples, you could put at risk this journalist. Imagine a journalist goes and talks with people from the other side, and the enemy thinks that they could be used by the agency to have information, their life is at risk. For me that’s very dangerous for journalists when you’re doing your job.”

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