According to a recently published paper, the Prime Minister's Office in the 1970s created the spy group to monitor Quebec sovereigntists.
Many of the documents remain redacted, including one where Trudeau asks if the RCMP can engage in an activity, the nature of which was also redacted. All, or nearly all the documents were prepared by John Starnes, the head of the RCMP’s security service between 1970 and 1973, as part of his submission to the McDonald Commission, which investigated illegal actions by the security service.
“Current civil servants have made the determination that some parts of these half-a-century old texts were too dangerous to publish in order to preserve federal-provincial relations of today. That is obviously nonsensical, but it obviously shows that there are still things in there that would be shocking,” Lisée said in an interview Wednesday.
There are many other documents about the sovereignty movement that are still being kept from the public — including more than 4,500 documents entered into evidence during an inquiry into the 1995 Quebec independence referendum.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.
“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.Molinaro said the documents show that Starnes pushed back against the attempts to politicize his agency, threatening to resign and speak out about the operation rather than provide intelligence to the Vidal Group.
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