MONTREAL — New revelations about a secret anti-sovereigntist spy unit in the office of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau are a sign of how much remains unknown about the federal government's response to the Quebec independence movement.
According to a recently published paper, the Prime Minister’s Office in the 1970s created the spy group to monitor Quebec sovereigntists, and asked the RCMP to provide it with intelligence — a request that was resisted by the RCMP's defunct security service.
Published online on Aug. 28, the paper, called"The FAN TAN file: Quebec separatism and security service resistance to politicization 1971—72," says the spy unit was also known as the"Vidal Group" — after its head of operations Claude Vidal. It alleges that the spy unit targeted legal elements of Quebec's independence movement, including the Parti Québécois, and used the federal Liberal Party apparatus in Quebec to gather intelligence.
"We're talking about events that took place 53 years ago and we're still playing with, at best, a damaged a deck of cards," he said. Kealey said he wonders whether the redactions may cover up other narratives about Starnes, who headed the RCMP security service at a time when it conducted illegal actions and who never spoke about Vidal group in his memoir or in later interviews.
Other documents, including notes from federal cabinet meetings in 1975, 1976 and 1977 — around when the PQ was first elected in Quebec — still haven't been released, he said. The 2006 investigation, overseen by retired judge Bernard Grenier, concluded that two federalist organizations funded by Ottawa failed to report spending of more than $500,000 during the referendum campaign, which was won by"No" side. Grenier ordered the thousands of documents that were presented during the hearings to be permanently sealed.
"The idea that one would run a surveillance and 'political action' cell out of a party political office in a democracy was blood curdling .... It would be massively unconstitutional," said Davies, who is also a professor of intelligence studies at Brunel University London.
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