Jim Brown, Canadian Press
Legal reforms may be needed to promote co-operation between CSIS and the RCMP and make sure terrorist suspects can be successfully prosecuted, says the head of the Air India inquiry.
Justice John Major suggested yesterday federal law could be rewritten to make it easier for intelligence officers to pass along evidence of criminal conspiracies they uncover through wiretaps made for other purposes.
At present, CSIS doesn’t always share such information with the police because of fears that, if the material becomes part of a criminal prosecution, the spy service will have to disclose everything it knows about a suspect in open court.
Major suggested a mechanism could be worked out to allow the public release of only the specific information needed for a prosecution, with the rest remaining secret.
“You would need some legislative assistance to be able to pick and choose in an appropriate case,” the judge interjected during testimony on the subject by Geoffrey O’Brien, a staff lawyer for CSIS.
“It seems to me that if there was some legislative protection — that you could disclose the crime and the events that relate to the crime but not have to disclose beyond that — that it would be of some comfort to CSIS.”
O’Brien replied that it would indeed be a comfort — but quickly cautioned that legal difficulties could still arise once a case gets to court.
He noted the legal rules for obtaining a wiretap warrant differ markedly between CSIS and the RCMP, with the police required to meet a higher standard for criminal investigation than the spy agency does for monitoring security threats.
A defence lawyer could also argue that partial disclosure of evidence in a court proceeding would violate the Charter of Rights guarantee of a full and fair defence to any charge.
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