Toews passes the buck.

Faithful to the Conservative Party of Canada and its practice of opacity and of evading accountability, the Minister for Public Safety blamed civil servants for documents that had been heavily censored. Vic Toews was reacting to a question raised by Gilles Duceppe, the BQ leader in the House of Commons.

According to a Radio-Canada news report, Djemila Benhabib discovered in 2007 that CSIS had checked out her credit rating. She contacted the agency to ask why she was being investigated. When CSIS stonewalled, Benhabib presented a complaint to the Security Intelligence Review Committee. Two years later, the Committee sent her a copy of the CSIS report written about her with most of the pages blacked out. It also concluded that the agency had the right to look at her credit file, but did not give her the justification for this action.

Djemila Benhabib is the author of a book "Ma vie à contre-Coran" - loosely translated: My Life Against the Current/Qur'an - which opposes democracy to theocracy. She holds ferocious views regarding shariah, and the preservation of secularity in the public realm. She is convinced that she was investigated because of her Arab and Muslim ancestry.

When Duceppe raised the point in question period, he observed that recommendations presented 3 years ago, to reform the policies and practices of the intelligence-gathering agencies, have not been implemented. "Perhaps the prime minister does not really want to carry out a reform since this culture of censorship and secrecy at the expense of human rights is quite useful for the current Government."

Ahem

Back in September, I asked this legitimate question: Could this whole business be a cruel confidence job?

One of the comments in response was:

"Well sir, you should read the judges decision - NOTHING in there about me setting them up.In FACT the judge said MOST of what I said was CORROBORATED by intercepts anyway and concluded the evidence was OVERWHELMING. As to your claim that I sold the clip to NEFA --- careful...how many of your words have had to be eaten already?An ELATED and VALIDATED Shaikh."

purported signed by himself.

Today the same Alison@Creekside posted this at The Galloping Beaver:

Mubin Shaikh on Friday:
"I thought that if the RCMP didn't tell me I couldn't do it, I inferred that I could do it," Mr. Shaikh testified.Lawyers for Canada's first underage convicted terrorist argued in court Friday that without Mubin Shaikh, assigned by CSIS and paid by the RCMP, there would have been no terrorist conspiracy at all.

Go read the whole blogpost.

Could this whole business be a cruel confidence job?

Alison of Creekside is a very droll lady and a sharp political blogger. She writes today about the 'secret' undercover footage that a CSIS operative took of the young Muslim men currently on trial for alleged terrorist activities.

This video evidence (which the trial judge did not allow to be released to the media) has been posted on the website of the NEFA (Nine Eleven Finding Answers) Foundation. "Exclusive" footage they say. This made me wonder if the CSIS operative, Mubin Shaikh is the one who sold the footage to NEFA. Once I started down that road, I also considered if Shaikh set up these young men to be charged with terrorist acts. To justify his deceit, he said:

.... the suspects had already chosen their path and needed no encouragement from him.

Nice work if you can get it.

Were the Harper Conservatives to be elected to government, events of this nature where individuals con and set up members of their own communities, and people rat each other out for money would become more common I suspect, This happens whenever authorities make sure their spook organizations have deep pockets and shallow minds.