The Heritage Front Affair
We have considered and discussed the information we
collected from the interviews, hearings, written documents,
videotapes, and audiotapes which we amassed during the
investigation of the "Heritage Front Affair". In this
chapter, we provide our conclusions.
We found that CSIS had placed a human source in the Heritage
Front and its associated organizations. We concluded,
furthermore, that CSIS was correct to investigate the
leadership of the extreme right and we were satisfied with
the level of targeting which the Service approved.
We believe that CSIS made the right decision when it re-
directed its Source to the extreme right from the
investigation of a foreign Government's attempts to
influence domestic activities in Canada. The Service, in our
view, used the investigative technique which offered the
best value for money when it instructed the Source to report
on the white supremacist targets. Consequently, we agree
with the decision to place a human source in the white
supremacist movement to investigate what we conclude was and
is a threat to the security of Canada.
We concluded too that the data shows that Wolfgang Walter
Droege founded the Heritage Front. We have no doubt that
whether Droege's acolytes, Gerald Lincoln, James Scott
Dawson, and Grant Bristow, were present or not it was Droege
who had conceptualized the plan, and he would have acted to
form the new organization; he told us that he would have
done so with or without their support.
The record shows that prior to, during, and after the trip
to Libya, Droege wanted to establish a new group - a group
to be more public and to appeal to a wider population than
previous organizations. His new group would be designed to
appeal, as do other white supremacist groups, to the meanest
and basest sentiments of Canadians.
We noted that the Heritage Front was not the first
organization which Droege managed successfully; His Ku Klux
Klan group thrived fourteen years ago, before Droege's
exploits in conspiracy, drugs and weapons landed him in
American prisons (see chapter I).
Although Droege seemed to operate on a more consensual, or
at least stable, basis than Don Andrews and the Nationalist
Party of Canada, Droege ran, nevertheless, an authoritarian
top-down organization.
We observed that Grant Bristow, Gerald Lincoln and James
Dawson actively supported Droege's initiatives. Grant
Bristow as he confidante of Droege, was part of the inner
leadership of the Heritage Front.
We concluded that Bristow instructed Heritage Front members
about security and counter intelligence methods. The
instruction was given at the direction of Droege and took
the form of techniques which either represented simple
common sense or were ineffectual.
For the most part, we think that the Source which CSIS
infiltrated into the Heritage Front did not initiate
programs, though he would suggest alternatives or
refinements. In the early years, he was involved in counter
intelligence, and was often given other tasks by Droege.
Eric Fischer, formerly of the Airborne Regiment of the
Canadian Armed Forces, assumed the physical security
responsibilities. We learned that the Source often provided
misleading information to his Heritage Front associates,
whether in terms of his conduct in harassing opponents, or
when he was directed by Droege to pass on information on
these Heritage Front "enemies."
Although he first tried to avoid appearing in public
meetings as a speaker or master of ceremonies, we noted that
the Source was obligated to do so in order to maintain his
credibility within the movement. The speeches he gave,
however, involved reporting information rather than inciting
the audience to violence. At the meetings of which we are
aware, he did not make racist statements. We acknowledge
that he made crude, abrasive, and probably racist statements
in the presence of his racist associates in order to
maintain his position in the group.
We concluded that statements which portray Bristow as an
excellent recruiter and fundraiser for the Heritage Front
are exaggerated or, when asserted by extremists, deceptive.
Bristow exhibited a manifestly abrasive and offensive
attitude towards most of his extremist colleagues,
especially the younger ones. This approach was both a
reflection of his personality and was also purposely enacted
to discourage younger racists from staying in the group, we
were told. We found no evidence that Bristow recruited
anyone into the Heritage Front.
Much media attention has focused on the funds which Grant
Bristow provided to the Heritage Front and to white
supremacists in the United States. We have shown in chapter
VIII that the allegations that Bristow provided funds to US
white supremacists Tom and John
Metzger are false, and
represent a successful attempt
to mislead the media.
The funding which Bristow did provide to the Heritage Front
was not significant and represented his share of the
expenses incurred, which were divided between all executive
members of that group. We noted too that from 1989 through
to the end of 1992, Bristow earned a modest salary from his
full time employment and this, supplemented in a minor way
by the jobs he carried out for Droege and others, did not
allow for lavish spending.
We concluded that Grant Bristow made some direct and
indirect contributions to the movement over a seven year
period. But we also ascertained that these contributions had
no substantial impact on the viability of the Heritage
Front, a group that had no office, no staff, and no capital
costs.
The CSIS Source, on the other hand, received little money
for most of his reporting career and it was only for one
year that the Service provided major funding. In this case,
as well, the cost of living in Toronto, and supporting a
family, make a mockery of the allegations that CSIS
supported the extremist group in any significant manner The
majority of the group's funds, we were informed, came from
membership and magazine subscription revenues. During the
heyday of the Heritage Front, Droege was earning substantial
income from his bailiff work and Gerald Lincoln was said to
be the major financial contributor to the magazine.
The CSIS Source played a major role in the Heritage Front's
harassment campaign. This commenced with the racists and the
anti-racists gaining access to the messages on each other's
answering machines.
We accept the premise that the Source's activities in this
area began on the instructions of Wolfgang Droege. As
described in chapter V, the harassment campaign against the
anti-racists in particular was, at one point in early 1993,
rapidly escalating out of control and threatened to result
in physical violence between the two groups. The Source,
with the permission of his handler, redirected the
previously uncoordinated threats of the Heritage Front
members into an information collection program.
This approach had several results. The Source became the
repository for the information which the Heritage Front
collected. After learning the technique from Droege, the
Source would instruct Heritage Front members on how to
collect the information from the answering machines and then
he told them how to deal with the targets in order to
collect information about other anti-racists. The Source
told others that he had harassed some opponents when, in
fact, he had not; the threats to a school principal being a
case in point. The Source would also alter some of the
information on Heritage Front opponents when Droege told him
to share it with other persons or groups.
We have described in chapter V how we understand the process
worked. The information which we received indicates that the
decisions concerning the "IT" campaign were made by the
handler and the Source. If the program had been limited to a
minor level of harassment, we would not take issue with it.
But we consider that the campaign did have a substantial
detrimental impact on those who were its targets.
The conflicts between the racists and the anti-racists in
the streets of Toronto were well known. The media gave
considerable attention to these events and CSIS senior
management should have been sufficiently alert to ask what
was going on behind the scenes; the harassment program would
then have been brought to their attention. We saw no
evidence that this was the case.
We are mindful of the mutual harassment between racists and
anti-racists which characterized this period. Nevertheless,
the Source was involved in a campaign which tested the
limits of what we believe Canadian society considers to be
acceptable and appropriate behaviour from someone acting on
behalf of the government. We concluded, for example, that
the around-the-clock harassment of individuals, at least one
of them a woman, tested the bounds of appropriate behaviour.
We similarly believe that calling an employer to discredit
an employee, the alleged stalking of targets, and the other
examples that we describe in chapter V required a higher
level of decision making from CSIS than was evident in this
situation. Though CSIS management should have taken the
initiative on this issue, it would have been useful if a
fuller account of the complexity of the situation had been
forwarded to Ottawa from the Toronto Region.
We do not hold the Source responsible for the omission. He
did the best he could under the circumstances to tranLsform
a situation clearly headed towards violent confrontation by
transforming it into a less vicious program. Had CSIS
management seen engaged in assessing the best possible
options, less harassment and intimidation might have
occurred. We do not believe that senior management was
sufficiently involved in what was obviously a very difficult
situation.
In any event, CSIS senior management at Headquarters in
Ottawa apparently knew little or nothing, at the time, of
the harassment program that occurred in late 1992 and early
1993.
Jewish organizations and individuals experienced
considerably less harassment than the anti-racist activists.
When asked to collect and provide information on Jewish
leaders and groups, the Source obtained the information from
publicly available sources such as telephone books. When
asked to provide information on residences or other personal
data, the Source either equivocated or again gave open
source material.
When information on the Jewish community was provided-to the
Heritage Front by other white supremacists and the Source
had access to it, the material was handed to CSIS. If
required, police agencies were alerted. We are convinced
that if he had wanted to, he could have collected personal
information on Jewish leaders. But he did not want to and,
to the best of our knowledge, he did not.
The Source did engage in individual acts of intimidation or
harassment, as we described in chapter V. They elicited
concern or fear from those who experienced the oral attacks.
The Source said that these episodes were necessary, at the
time, to support the role he was playing with the racists.
When the handler was
informed about the incidents, he told the Source to desist
and he did so.
We concluded that the Source should not have intimidated
members of the Jewish community. We are also of the opinion
that in handing over information to CSIS, which in several
cases was then communicated to law enforcement agencies, he
may have prevented physical violence.
Overall, our analysis of the "balance sheet" is that the
Source's efforts ultimately worked to enhance the protection
of the Jewish community against the racists.
Though we did not conduct an intrusive investigation of
people unconnected to CSIS, Bristow, or the Heritage Front,
we did follow every lead we discovered regarding the
infiltration of the Reform Party.
We concluded that CSIS did not spy on the Reform Party.
Further, we saw no evidence that the Progressive
Conservative Government instructed CSIS to investigate the
Reform Party of Canada.
An issue was whether Grant Bristow signed up Heritage Front
members and other undesirables for the Reform Party. Those
persons who are closely associated with the fringe right or
the extreme right have stated that Bristow actively
encouraged Heritage Front people to join the Reform Party.
Private information exchanged between Droege and his trusted
cohorts clearly shows that Droege and Overfield wanted their
associates to join the Reform Party as a means to encourage
white supremacist policies (Overfield) or to effectively
discredit the Party (Droege).
The statements made by Droege and his associates to the
media and to the Review Committee that Grant Bristow signed
people up, whether at Paul
Fromm's C-FAR meeting or
elsewhere, are contradicted by reliable information we
obtained.
As regards Grant Bristow and the Conservative Party, he did
work for David Crombie in the mid-1980s. As a favour to his
supervisor, Bristow worked for several hours in the 1988
election campaign for Otto Jelinek. His activities on behalf
of Jelinek were marginal at best, according to people who
worked on Jelinek's campaign.
The initiative to establish a security team to provide
protection for major Reform Party rallies and small
constituency association meetings in Ontario was developed
and carried out by Alan Overfield. His objective was to
increase his influence within the Reform Party in pursuit of
a racist agenda. His intention was to take over, if
possible, some twelve constituency associations in order to
persuade the Party to implement white supremacist policies.
Overfield was elected to the Beaches Woodbine riding
executive. The President of the constituency association,
knowingly or otherwise, permitted Overfield to exercise
considerable influence over him; to the extent that other
Heritage Front members or associates also joined or tried to
join the executive.
Overfield has been involved with racist groups since the
1970s and he and some of his associates were determined that
they would not repeat the mistakes which previously resulted
in their being expelled from the national Social Credit
Party of Brnest Manning. Overfield enlisted the support of
his long-time friend and employee, Wolfgang Droege, to staff
the security team. Among those Droege asked to participate
were key members of the Heritage Front including the Source.
But the Source was not instrumental in forming the group; on
the contrary, we have seen evidence that he objected to the
involvement of Heritage Front members in this activity. The
Source said that he attended four Reform Party meetings or
rallies in total.
Toronto Region was advised by the Source that Bristow was
involved with the security group after the first Beaches-
Woodbine constituency information meeting in 1991. At the
large rally in Mississauga, Grant Bristow provided
protection for Preston Manning but he was not privy to
sensitive Party discussions. Mr. Manning's Press Secretary
and others have confirmed this categorically. Mr. Manning
himself does not remember meeting Bristow.
Our review of the documentation at CSIS and our interviews
of employees have established beyond a reasonable doubt that
the CSIS Source did not report on any Reform Party
activities. There was absolutely no credible evidence that
CSIS was acting on the basis of political direction when its
Source reported on the activities of the Overfield security
group. This is not to say there were no politically oriented
plots at work by others.
We concluded that Wolfgang Droege had a plan which differed
from A1 Overfield's. Droege saw the Reform Party as his
competition and his statements and actions, right from the
inception of the security group, were directed toward
eventually
discrediting that Party before the 1993 federal election.
It was early August 1991 before Service Headquarters
instructed Toronto Region that the Source was to have
nothing more to do with the Reform Party. In our opinion,
the two month time lag was too long. We think that the
Source should have been instructed to cease all such
activity during the same month that Headquarters learned of
it.
As mentioned above, the Source was instructed to cease all
activity with the Reform Party in early August. Yet he
participated with Overfield's group at the January 1992
Pickering rally. Both the Source and the handler stated,
convincingly, that such activity immediately stopped when
the instruction arrived to that effect.
We concluded that the August instruction from Headquarters
was not sufficiently precise. The message reiterated that
there was to be no reporting on the Reform Party, but it did
not explicitly state that the Source was to leave the
security
group. The managers at CSIS HQ and Toronto Region all
interpreted the August communication to mean security group
activity was to stop, but the Source read his instructions
differently, and we can see why.
We examined the reasons why CSIS did not inform the Minister
that Heritage Front members had infiltrated the Reform
Party. We took into account the fact that the period in
which the decision was made was one of transition for the
executive level of the Service, and that the Deputy Director
of Operations was the Acting Director for most of the Summer
and Fall of 1991.
The Acting Director at the time believed that there was no
obvious threat to the security of Canada. However, our view
is that the decision was of major importance, and should
have been taken by the Director himself, not his second-in-
command. We are not prepared to second guess what the
Director's decision should have been; he may well have come
to the same conclusion as his Deputy Director Operations and
Analysis.
In any event, the Solicitor General of the day was not
informed about the infiltration issue.
Our investigation revealed that in the Summer of 1991, a
person known to some Reform Party officials as a CSIS
employee raised doubts about Wolfgang Droege's participation
in the Overfield security team. In addition, Wolfgang Droege
was identified as a supporter of the Reform Party on June
19, 1991, in the "Toronto Star". The information that Droege
was a white supremacist was brought to the attention of at
least two Ontario Reform Party officials. Overfield was
apparently confronted about the information and confirmed
Droege's white supremacist credentials. We think it is
likely that the Executive Council of the Reform Party was
not given the information by its Ontario officials. Some
members of the Party started to investigate infiltration by
racists in early 1992, but an investigative committee was
not established until the media expose of February 1992.
In the course of our review, we investigated the many
questions posed by the Heritage Front's activities in
relation to the Reform Party. We learned that lawyer and
former Reform Party member Louis Allore paid Droege $500 to
try to enter an Oshawa meeting at which Preston Manning
appeared, in order to embarrass
him. Michael Lublin, a former Reform Party member, probably
was involved in and definitely knew of the transaction.
We believe that Michael Lublin suggested to Droege that he
attend John Gamblets Reform Party nomination meeting in the
Don Valley West riding to demonstrate support. That gesture
would again serve to discredit the Reform Party. Lublin
informed us that he alerted the media in advance of the
event.
We believe that Lublin and Droege communicated on a number
of occasions in order to enhance their credibility in their
respective communities.
We conclude that Conservative Party officials were certainly
interested in what the Reform Party was doing and, further,
that a number of Reform dissidents were formerly associated
with the Conservatives. We saw no evidence, however, of a
Conservative Party conspiracy, with or without CSIS'
participation, to discredit the Reform Party through the use
of the Heritage Front. Nor did we see any evidence that the
Reform Party used the Heritage Front to discredit Reform
dissidents who were previously associated with the
Conservative Party.
During our investigation of the Service's actions in
relation to the Reform Party of Canada, we learned of a CSIS
investigation which took place from October 1989 to January
1990. See chapter VII.
We concluded that the Service had an obligation to
investigate whether the Government of the foreign country
was involved in attempting to influence the outcome of a
Canadian election.
In the wake of the allegations in August 1994 that CSIS had
an informant in the Heritage Eront, considerable attention
was paid by the media to alleged CSIS interference in the
police arrests of Sean Maguire and of
Tom and John Metzger,
all notorious American white supremacists.
In the arrest of Sean Maguire, we concluded that CSIS did
not intervene to protect Grant Bristow. A CSIS Source had
informed the Service that Maguire was in Bristow's car and
that there were guns in his car trunk. When the police
arrested Maguire, they found the guns and they detained
Bristow. He was subsequently released when the police
concluded that he had not broken the law.
After talking to the Police of jurisdiction, we are
convinced that had Bristow's possession of the firearms
proved to be illegal, he would have been arrested and
charged. No infractions were associated with the properly
stored firearms in his car. The Toronto police file on the
incident is thin because Maguire was arrested on a federal
Immigration warrant which did not involve a local police
investigation.
We concluded that the media's allegation of CSIS
interference in the arrest was wrong. We also noted that the
Maguire took place on the basis of CSIS information.
The arrest of John and
Tom Metzger is a more complex case.
Neither CSIS nor the Source had details of their illegal
entry into Canada. When the Service learned that they had
arrived, the police were informed and a joint Police-
Immigration task force arrested them after a Heritage Front
meeting. As in the Maguire arrest, the persons found in the
car with the Metzgers were released, Wolfgang Droege
prominent among them.
The
Metzgers were the subject of an Immigration alert in
advance of their arrival, but they slipped across the border
from the United States. After their arrest, they appeared
before an adjudicator and, ninety minutes later, they were
deported. The Source informed CSIS that Bristow took their
luggage to them in Buffalo, New York, prior to their
departure for California. The Source stated that Bristow,
who had to work the next day, spent approximately thirty
minutes with them.
The intense media interest following the "Toronto Sun" story
on August 14, 1994 led to Tom
Metzger appearing on "The
Fifth Estate" television program. He stated that Grant
Bristow came to California to give him money and the names
of leftists and Jewish community leaders. The broadcast
provided an uncritical forum for Metzger and other white
supremacists to freely publicize their activities and to
seriously frighten the Jewish community in Canada.
We learned of discussions that took place between Droege and
Tom Metzger prior to the CBC interviews. We concluded that,
as a result of Droege's instructions, Tom Metzger lied about
receiving money and information on Jewish groups from Grant
Bristow. The broadcast aired uncorroborated information from
notoriously violent and unreliable sources.
Metzger's
statements were prepared in consultation with his neo Nazi
associate in Canada, Droege, and the comments were designed
to - and had the effect of - increasing the climate of fear
within the Canadian Jewish community.
Despite allegations to the contrary, the Service had no
advance notice that synagogues in the Toronto area would be
defaced after the
Metzgers were arrested. As we mentioned in
chapter IX, CSIS issued a Threat Assessment which warned of
vandalism, but this is standard practice after the extreme
right suffers a blow, and police forces are well aware of
the risk to Jewish and other
institutions in such cases.
We further believe that most of the other comments aired
during the CBC broadcast were provided by a former
Immigration Officer who provided confused and ultimately
misleading information. This approach discredited CSIS, the
Government of Canada, and the various Police Forces and
other agencies involved in opposing the racist groups in
Canada. Not incidentally, the television program provided an
unprecedented opportunity for violent racists in both the
United States and Canada to be portrayed as credible,
honest, and truthful witnesses.[1]
We concluded that the information which the Service
collected concerning the CBC was obtained in a lawful
investigation. Of greater importance, CSIS did not spy on
the CBC, its journalists, or any of its other staff. The
information reported to the Solicitor General was not
obtained by the Source.
Taking into consideration all of the extenuating
circumstances concerning the information requirements of the
Minister and the nature of the information collected, we are
of the opinion that some of the information collected and
reported was not "strictly necessary." If the Service wanted
to update the Minister on the threat to national security
presented by white supremacists in the Canadian Armed
Forces, it could have done so without reference to a CBC
program.
We reviewed the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation exposes of
CSIS spying on postal workers or the Canadian Union of
Postal Workers which aired in September and October 1994. We
concluded that the allegations were completely without
foundation.
We believe that one or more CBC journalists misread a leaked
Housebook Card to the Minister.
Following the completion of its own investigation, the CBC
has, in effect, withdrawn its allegation that CSIS spied on
the Postal Workers.
We could not fail to notice the intense media interest in
the wake of allegations that a CSIS informant infiltrated
the Heritage Front. We have taken all the allegations
seriously, because we have a responsibility to the people of
Canada to do so.
In several cases where the print and broadcast media have
made mistakes and we have asked for corrections, we were
pleased to find them responsive to our requests.
In some cases, the media have produced stories about "The
Heri tage Front Affair" which attempted to place issues in
context and they clearly sought to corroborate the sources
they used. We acknowledge the considerable obstacles
attendant on any story which involves the intelligence
community. Nevertheless, most journalists have, in our
opinion, behaved responsibly in producing their stories,
despite the disadvantages imposed by the secrecy associated
with the case.
That said, we feel obligated to point out that one edition
of "The Fifth Estate" about the Heritage Front Affair was
not balanced.
This edition of "The Fifth Estaten broadcast presented the
testimony of violent racists without any serious attempt,
that we could determine, to corroborate the statements.
All human source activities are governed by the limits of
the CSIS Act and direction issued by the Solicitor General
under section 6(2) of the CSIS Act. It is also governed by
CSIS internal direction in the CSIS Operational Manual. In
their directions to sources, CSIS officers are bound by the
limits of sections 2 and 12 of the CSIS Act.
Under the CSIS Act, the Minister can provide written
direction to the Service. On October 30, 1989, the then
Solicitor General released comprehensive guidelines for the
use of Human Sources. In the direction, the Minister notes
that "a special responsibility rests with the Service to do
everything reasonable to ensure that its confidential
sources operate within the law, and do not behave so as to
bring discredit on the Service or the Government".
The Minister further stated that confidential sources shall
be instructed not to engage in illegal activities in
carrying out their work on behalf of the Service and that
they should be instructed not to act as 'agents
provocateurs' or in any way incite or encourage illegal
activity.
However, the level of policy guidsnce available to CSIS
officers is, we believe, seriously deficient.
We believe Direction and Policy in this area should be re-
examined. It should at a minimum provide full assistance to
CSIS staff by providing thoughtful answers to a number of
important questions. Among them:
* what kind of a proactive role is acceptable
for a source in an organization targeted by
CSIS?
* is it appropriate to have a source direct or
be a leader within an organization or movement?
* should sources be engaged in counter measures
which would serve to destroy, rather than
maintain terrorist groups or movements?
* do the benefits of maintaining a source
outweigh the benefits to be gained by taking
measures (i.e. with Police Forces) to destroy
the group?
We recognize that the answers to these questions are not
simple. As we have stated in our report, the members of
racist groups, for example, go from one organization to
another for a variety of reasons and the groups form and re-
form under different names. Today's Heritage Front member is
tomorrow's Nationalist Party of Canada member or a follower
of
Ernst Zundel or, more likely in view of recent court
cases in North America, an aggressive racist who claims that
he belongs to no particular group in order to avoid
prosecution.
If CSIS were to use only "passive" sources in the racist
right, then the quality of the information available to the
intelligence community and to police forces would be
considerably less useful at best or useless at worst. Most
good sources are active. In the case of the present Source,
the information he provided contributed to eighty Threat
Assessments over five years, hundreds of reports, the
deportation of no fewer than five foreign white
supremacists, and the weakening of some racist efforts
against Jewish groups, anti-racists, and minority groups.
We note too, in response to the question of "countering" or
eliminating extremist groups, that the 1981 Royal Commission
under Mr. Justice D.C. McDonald took a dim view of RCMP
Security Service practices.[2]
While the Commission referred specifically to direct actions
by employees of the old Security Service, we are not
inclined to support such activities if performed by a source
of the CSIS. We are also cognizant of the danger that in
destroying one group, as opposed to watching it, another one
which is worse may be created.
Our investigation of the Heritage Front Affair made us aware
of the fact that there was insufficient policy direction
available. For example, we observed no clear direction
concerning what was taking place in relation to the
harassment campaign; there was no "global picture" of what
was going on.
We co nsider that the Service should regularly draw up a
"balance sheet " on the benefits of a particular source
operation. In other words, the management and staff
associated with a high level source should regularly stand
back from day-to-day transactions to assess the operation in
its totality. To a certain extent this takes place during
the application process for the renewal of targeting
authorizations. But in the current case, a major activity of
the Source, the "IT" campaign, was not brought before Senior
Management and so was not discussed; we think that this was
an important oversight.
Our conclusion is that current directions from the Solicitor
General and the Director should be expanded and improved to
deal with some of the issues we have described.
We realize that the best way to avoid criticism is to do
nothing. Therefore, we do not advocate detailed rules that
would unduly limit CSIS in its duty to protect the Canadian
public and State. We recommend, rather, Ministerial
guidelines that require CSIS management to carefully weigh
the benefits and the dangers of each human source operation
on a regular basis; taking due account
of the special circumstances of each case.
We believe that the actions of sources should not bring
discredit to the Service, nor the Government, nor the
society in which we live. That said, we understand that, for
the most part, targets of CSIS or of the Police are not
generally among the highest moral levels of our society.
Employing any source, whether among drug dealers or
terrorists, becomes a risk management situation in which the
intelligence benefits must be weighed against the risk of
disclosure and any inappropriate activities of the source.
There is some direct or indirect criticism in this report
about elements of the Heritage Front Affair, but there is
one aspect of the operation that deserves praise. That is
the work of the Source in close cooperation with the Toronto
Investigator who was his contact with CSIS.
The work of sources is important and sometimes vital to the
well being of Canadian Society. We are satisfied that both
the Source and his handlers in this naffairn discharged
their duties in a competent and responsible manner.
Both men, throughout this period, believed that they were
doing valuable work helping to protect Canadian society from
a cancer growing within. They deserve our thanks.
Finally, we would like to put on the record our unshakeable
conviction that the Government of Canada, through all means
at its disposal, should continue to ensure that it is always
aware of what is going on within extreme right wing racist
and Neo-Nazi groups. Canadians should never again repeat the
mistakes of the past by underestimating the potential for harm
embodied in hate-driven organizations.
1. A Fifth Estate producer said: "the implication that we just
accepted their (white supremacists') statements is false - we did
everything humanly possible ... but we don't want to make any
further comment on anything that will affect the outcome of the
report.."
2. Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police (McDonald Commission). Second report -
Volume 1, Freedom and Security Under the Law, August 1981, page 270.
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
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Report to the Solicitor General of Canada
Security Intelligence Review Committee
December 9, 1994
XIII. Findings and Conclusions
13.1 Source in the Heritage Front
13.2 Leadership of the Heritage Front
13.3 Recruiting and Funding
13.4 The Harassment Campaign
13.5 Infiltrating the Reform Party
13.6 The Reform Party and a Foreign Government
13.7 Maguire and Metzger
13.8 Spying on the CBC
13.9 Spying on the Postal Workers/Union
13.10 The Media and the Heritage Front Affair
13.11 Ministerial Direction - CSIS and Policies Concerning
13.12 Overview