Mounties Brace For Bark From A New Watchdog

O'Connor is now trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle. Along with restoring public confidence, Ontario's associate chief justice needs to find a structure strong enough to hold horsemen with a rogue history of breaking free of their political reins. Irony of ironies, the model now under O'Connor's microscope is the one created the last time the RCMP was caught hiding abuse of power from its political masters. After yet another inquiry, the federal government created the civilian Canadian Security Intelligence Service along with an external, independent review committee with the power to open files and the duty to report its findings to Parliament. Originally slow to reach speed, and occasionally imperfect, the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) is nevertheless the most convincing compromise yet between defending national interests and protecting individual privacy. It not only works, it would have rendered unnecessary the lengthy, costly O'Connor inquiry if only CSIS had been suspected of fingering Arar as an Islamic extremist to the U.S. http://tinyurl.com/uywxh [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on November 10, 2006]

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