e other press News January 15, 2003 http://otherpress.douglas.bc.ca Feds’ Appeal Keeps Pot Issue Smouldering Law ruled ineffective and invalid Ryan Kennedy he Varsity ORONTO (CUP)—Smoking marijuana has been known to spawn forgetful potheads, but it was the feder- jal government who lacked short-term memory last Thursday, as a judge ruled their marijuana law ineffective and therefore invalid. Paving the way for potential decriminalization of the “sweet leaf,” or at least an exemption, Ontario judge Douglas Phillips ruled in favour of a 16-year-old Windsor toker who argued there is no law in Canada governing the use of marijuana for recreational purposes, or the possession of 30 grams or less of the drug. The boy as arrested carrying five grams. The ruling comes as a result of an earlier case in which it was determined that denying marijuana to chronic pain sufferers who benefit from the drug was unconstitu- tional. Instead of simply erasing the possession law that was on the books, the judge in that case gave the federal government one year to create a better one to be passed through Parliament. The new federal guidelines were instead handed down through cabinet, and therefore deemed inadequate by Phillips in his ruling. The 16-year- old was arrested a day after the one-year moratorium had lapsed. “T think it’s also satisfying to know that this particular law has been declared invalid, particularly given how bur- densome it is in terms of criminalizing the behaviour that hundreds of thousands of Canadians engage in,” the teen’s lawyer, Brian McAllister, told the CBC. To celebrate the ruling, marijuana activists in Toronto planned to hold a “smoke-in” at Nathan Phillips Square on Friday, complete with ice-skating and a snowman smoking a joint. Not surprisingly, the federal Justice Department has announced it will appeal the ruling. The feds don’t exact- ly have a united front on the issue, however. Last year, federal Justice Minister Martin Cauchon raised the pos- sibility of complete decriminalization of marijuana, caus- ing many advocates to entertain the idea of blazing more than just legal trails. Gov't Spies Turn Campus Cloak-and-Dagger New book details 80 years of RCMP spies on campuses Caitlin Crawshaw The Gateway EDMONTON (CUP)—Spying is not necessarily the stuff of James Bond movies: it might be happening on lyour campus. A new book by professor Steve Hewitt reveals how the RCMP has been spying on Canadian universities for over 80 years and argues that the secret service in Canada is alive and well in universities today. Hewitt’s book, Spying 101: The RCMP’s Secret Activities at Canadian Universities 1917-1997, shows that the government has a long history of keeping tabs on students, faculty members and student organizations. “Essentially, my book is a study of what was called in the Cold War “counter-subversion.” .... [The RCMP] were looking for subversives on Canadian campuses,” said Hewitt. The Security Services of the RCMP were responsible for Canadian intelligence activities for most of the cen- tury, gathering information on potential threats to national security. At Canadian universities, this division collected a great deal of information on the activities of individuals and organizations deemed “subversive,” using methods that included taping phone conversations, planting spies in university classes and using paid informants. Many of the activities were not legal by Canadian law, but the RCMP was never disciplined for its illegal actions. Interestingly enough, Hewitt found that such illegal methods weren't necessarily main factors in raising red flags for the RCMP. “When it came to universities, the biggest source of information was not through telephone taps or mail- openings or hidden microphones, but through people— your friends, other members of your group, your organi- zation—who were co-opted by the police and used to supply information,” said Hewitt. ; “It included students, it included faculty, it included staff. There's a clear indication in terms of the University of Alberta that people in the Registrar's Office were allowing police access to student files.” Not until the 1970s did things start to change, Hewitt explained. Internal questioning of the illegal activities led to the government instituting a specific mandate for the security service, restricting what the RCMP could do to collect information. In spite of this, however, the RCMP continued to break the law, and a number of scandals occurred in relation to RCMP investigations of Québec separatists. “The most infamous involved a barn-burning by the RCMP security service because they were worried about members of the FLQ [the Front de Libération du Québec separatist group] meeting up with Black Panthers from the US. They were going to meet at this barn, [and the RCMP] couldn't plant a microphone, so they burnt the barn down,” he said. But in reality, most campuses were so conservative no real information was gathered, said Hewitt. Most of the information collected over the years was never used and most of it was ultimately destroyed, he said. “[The RCMP] were really good at collecting informa- tion,” Hewitt said. “They were packrats but they could- nt really analyze what was significant or insignificant.” The author describes his work as the first academic work on Canadian domestic intelligence activities, and says it is largely due to the “Access to Information Act”, enacted in the early 1980s. The act allowed Hewitt to view many of the documents compiled by the govern- ment from their surveillance activities. But he explains that many documents continue to be censored. Hewitt was only given access to approximately half of the 33,000 documents pertaining to his research. Nevertheless, this was a tremendous number of docu- ments, and sorting through the material was the trickiest part of Hewitt’s project. Obtaining funding and getting published was much easier, Hewitt explained. “One of the reasons I got the funding was because of the subject. There was the sense that it was a little bit sexy, and it could dig up some dirt.” In 1984, a federal act created the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and removed the RCMP’s role in intelligence, an attempt to separate intelligence work from law enforcement. But while CSIS has taken over most of the duties of the old RCMP security service, a great deal has changed. Informants, for instance, cannot be used without per- mission from the Solicitor General, and the agency does not have access to student records as the RCMP once did at many universities. Anti-terrorism legislation from after September 11, 2001 also altered the focus they now take. There is new justification for government surveillance of post-secondary institutions. This includes investigat- ing groups that have “the potential for violence,” says Hewitt, and certain students from “nations that support terrorism...in the eyes of the United States” are given more attention. The “Access to Information Act” has also been affect- ed: there is a greater justification for the government to restrict information under the new laws. However, Hewitt adds that in spite of this possible jus- tification for surveillance, CSIS is a far cry from the old RCMP security services on campus. “It’s certainly not to the same scale of the old RCMP, and there’s more in the way of checks and balances in terms of what they can do,” said Hewitt. “[But] one of the things that concerns me, is that the RCMP still has a domestic intelligence role to play, which doesn’t have the same checks and balances, the same review, as does the work of CSIS. The RCMP, for example, was active during the APEC conference at UBC.” page 5 ©