Defence Minister Peter MacKay insists that the Communications Security Establishment, the government’s electronic spy agency, is not listening in on the private conversations of Canadians. Can he be believed?

If a new book on Ottawa’s role in another top-secret national security field is any indication, the answer is a clear no.

Pathogens for War, by University of Western Ontario historian Donald Avery, provides a scrupulously detailed account of the Canadian government’s largely secret role in the development of biological weapons since World War II.

It’s not a muck-raking book. Avery makes clear that he has little interest in sensationalism. And while he’s careful to avoid judgment, his book is largely sympathetic to the efforts of Canadian scientists who were involved in both the development of bio-weapons and the means to protect against them.

But what stands out in this book — which is based on both newly-released archival material and freedom-of-information requests made to Ottawa — is the level of dishonesty on the part of successive federal governments.

Even in its official 1992 report to a United Nations convention on biological weaponry, Avery writes, the Canadian government produced a “disappointing” and “misleading” document that repeated “half truths” about Ottawa’s activity in this field of war research.

The full truth was that Canada was very involved. In World War II, Canadian scientists worked with both the British and Americans to develop weaponized anthrax for possible use against Germany and Japan.

As Avery notes, when Canada’s first bio-weapons lab on Grosse Ile near Quebec City closed at the end of the war, scientists swabbed the entire anthrax operation down with formaldehyde and then dumped the residue in the St. Lawrence River.

During the Cold War, Canadian bio-weapons research centred on the Suffield military base in Alberta. Working with the Americans, Canada took part in what was known as Project 112, testing bio-weapons in Alaska and Alberta and spraying simulated bio-weaponry across North American cities, including Winnipeg.

Whenever asked whether it was involved in the production and testing of biological weapons, Canada’s government would routinely lie. When caught out, as increasingly occurred after the 1970s, Ottawa would admit as little as possible and then lie about the rest.

The government’s standard position was that any research was for defence purposes only, that its armed forces would never use bio-weapons in war and that no toxins were stockpiled in Canada.

As Avery points out, none of these statements was true.

Canadian scientists were intimately involved in U.S. bio-weapons research until 1969, when then-president Richard Nixon unilaterally ended the program. Significant quantities of toxins, including sarin and the nerve agent VX, were stockpiled at Suffield until at least 1989. And the Canadian military had plans in place to respond with bio-weapons if these were used against them first.

Nor was the Canadian government averse to using chemical or bio-weapons on human test subjects. Avery writes that since 1945 live biological or chemical weapons were used in 14 trials involving 712 “volunteers” from the Canadian military

Of course, none of this was revealed in Canada. Indeed, only when the U.S. declassified information in 1977 was it known that chemical and biological agents (including sarin) had been used in live tests at Suffield.

Nor was it known until years later that, in 1950, the Canadian government had secretly offered to let Britain test an atomic bomb in the north, just 102 kilometres from Churchill, Man. (the British eventually declined the offer).

Through most of the post-1945 period, Avery writes, few questions were asked about the government’s bio-weaponry program, either in the press or Parliament.

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That changed in the 1970s when protestors against the Vietnam War linked Suffield to U.S. chemical warfare research and when the scale of America’s bio-weaponry program became public.

Questions were then asked in Parliament. But Canada’s government responded as it always had, by weaving, dodging and not telling the whole truth.