by Ravi Embar

Created on: June 04, 2008   Last Updated: November 05, 2010

Guarding the Guardians  

Who will guard the guards? (“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”), the very discerning Roman poet, Juvenal wondered in 160 A.C.E.  Incidentally, this question was also the basis of a novel (“Digital Fortress” by Dan Brown) about a corrupt clandestine government agency official. 

In a recent change of policy, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) stated that it will no longer allow access to an entire section of customs clearance records to the Canadian public. This change in CBSA policy was a move to allay the concerns of CSIS and RCMP about sharing of sensitive information with an agency that was making its records available to the public at large.

In the Meher Arar case, a Canadian engineer holding dual Canadian and Syrian nationality was returning to Canada but was detained while in transit by US immigration officials, based on erroneous RCMP information, and deported to Syria.  Mr. Arar stated that he had been tortured in Syrian captivity and was finally released after his wife tirelessly and successfully managed to convince Canadian officials of his innocence.  The RCMP and CSIS were forced by the Canadian court to reveal evidence of their faulty and sloppy intelligence analyses, after numerous delays and attempts to withhold evidence of their ineptitude claiming reasons of national security.  The RCMP laid the blame for the ineptitude on a new employee – a recent female African immigrant.  By the time that CBC was investigating the allegations of an RCMP cover up, the female immigrant had emigrated to Massachusetts, USA.  CBC calls to the immigrant’s home provoked a warning from the husband to stop hounding his wife.    

Robert Dziekanski, a Polish immigrant to Canada died after RCMP personnel at the Vancouver, BC airport used Tasers to shock him into submission. 

Mr. Dziekanski did not speak English and had become upset after he was delayed at the airport and was confined to a secure area.  His mother had waited for hours at the airport and finally returned to Kamloops, BC prior to his arrival.

In 2002, the day before I joined the government, I was returning to Canada from the US and after showing my passport to the Canadian border agent, was asked to stop at the Customs building.  A woman officer came out and I handed her my passport.  She asked me to open my car’s trunk and examined my luggage. 

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