Stephen Harper’s efforts to frame environmentalists as radicals who deserve to be investigated by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service took three years to come to fruition.

It’s often claimed that Harper’s vendetta against environmental groups springs from his unconditional support for the oil industry. While that is more or less evident, it’s also necessary to consider the dominant influences — from his evangelical Christianity and his neoliberal ideology — on his tactics.

It was in early January 2012 that the Harper government first attacked opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver released an open letter accusing “radical” environmentalists and “jet-setting celebrities” of blocking efforts to open access to Asian markets for Canadian oil.

“These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda,” Oliver, a former investment banker who raised money for oil companies, wrote. “They seek to exploit any loophole they can find, stacking public hearings with bodies to ensure that delays kill good projects.”

What’s God Got to Do With It?

A week earlier, to welcome in the 2012 American election year, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum gave a New Year’s Eve speech in Ottumwa, Iowa, in the run-up to the Iowa caucuses. By rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, Santorum warned, President Obama was “pandering to radical environmentalists who don’t want energy production, who don’t want us to burn more carbon.”

It may have been coincidental that the Harper government and the Santorum candidacy raised the spectre of radical environmentalism at the same time, but there are interesting connections.

Santorum’s remarks went viral later in February when, at a campaign stop in Ohio, he accused Obama of believing in “some phony ideal, some phony theology. Not a theology based on the Bible.”

A theology based on the Bible, Santorum explained at his Ohio stop, would be “about the belief that man is — should be — in charge of the Earth and have dominion over it and be good stewards of it.” But the “radical environmentalist” believes that “man is here to serve the Earth, as opposed to husband its resources and be good stewards of the Earth. And I think that is a phony ideal.”

For evangelical Christians like Santorum, it’s a simple proposition: Resisting bitumen extraction and transport is a denial of God’s law. Santorum is up front with his conservative religious beliefs; Harper keeps his views to himself, although the influence of evangelicals and social conservatives in his government was detailed in Marci McDonald’s The Armageddon Factor.

Since 2003, Harper has been a member of Ottawa’s East Gate Alliance Church, which is affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The statement of faith of this church declares that “The Old and New Testaments, inerrant as originally given, were verbally inspired by God and are a complete revelation of His will for the salvation of people. They constitute the divine and only rule of Christian faith and practice.”

That puts bitumen extraction and transport under the direct authority of God, even in Canada. It should be noted that several other Christian denominations believe their faith mandates them to care for the earth. Pope Francis is even holding his own climate change summit.

In the U.S., God is tacked on to just about every political speech; in Canada, politicians rarely conjure the divine. But in Canada Harper has remained notably taciturn about his beliefs.

As McDonald observed, Harper was aware of “the risks of mixing faith and politics: he had watched creationist sentiments sink the leadership career of his Canadian Alliance rival Stockwell Day.”

But there are also the numbers to consider.

In the U.S., more than 30 per cent of the population is evangelical; in Canada the figure is 10 to 12 per cent. Santorum has a lot to gain, but Harper risks alienating a large majority of Canadians if he uses Santorum’s messaging techniques.

Nonetheless, McDonald notes, Harper covertly courted the religious right to his political advantage, using social-conservative policies to broaden the appeal of his party.

Faith in the Free Market

Attacking environmentalists who defy God’s law is one useful approach. Attacking environmentalists who interfere with the market is another.

Here Harper follows the lead, not of the Bible, but of Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian economist who founded neoliberalism after the Second World War.

The neoliberal view of environmentalism is typified by former Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus. In a 2008 speech Klaus said he considered “environmentalism and its current strongest version — climate alarmism — to be … the most effective and … dangerous vehicle for advocating, drafting and implementing large-scale government intervention and for an unprecedented suppression of human freedom.”

The dispute was “not about temperature or CO2,” he insisted, but instead was “another variant of the old, well-known debate: freedom and free markets versus dirigisme [state control], political control and regulation…”

It was the same old logically twisted story: self- “anointed” alarmists are here to “restrict freedom and stop human prosperity” under the guise of protecting the planet.

Efforts to control global warming go to the heart of Hayek’s critique of central planning. In The Road to Serfdom, he wrote planning “would make the very men who are most anxious to plan society the most dangerous if they were allowed to do so … From the saintly and single-minded idealist to the fanatic is often but a step.” The planner and coordinator, Hayek opined, was little more than an “omniscient dictator.”

Stephen Harper, the Hayek-influenced economist, was certainly on board with this analysis. He was leader of the Canadian Alliance in October 2002, when the Chrétien government was preparing to ask Parliament to ratify the Kyoto Accord. Harper wrote a letter to Alliance members requesting funds to stop ratification.

“Kyoto is essentially a socialist scheme to suck money out of wealth-producing nations,” Harper wrote. “I’m talking about the ‘battle of Kyoto’ — our campaign to block the job-killing, economy-destroying Kyoto Accord.”

The current use of the term “radical environmentalist,” with its appeal to both evangelicals and neoliberals, comes from a decade-old Frank Luntz briefing memo for the Republican Party, “The environment: A cleaner, safer, healthier America.”

“’Environmentalist’ can have the connotation of extremist to many Americans,” he wrote.

Luntz, a long-time Republican pollster and strategist, specializes is using language to evoke feeling. In a 2003 interview on PBS’s Frontline, he said: “My job is to look for the words that trigger the emotion. Words alone can be found in a dictionary or a telephone book, but words with emotion can change destiny, can change life as we know it.”

Luntz travelled to Ottawa in the spring of 2006 to help Preston Manning promote his new project, the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, which was intended to advance conservative ideas and politicians. His connection to Manning went back to the 1993 federal election, when Luntz was the Reform Party’s official election pollster and strategic adviser.

With Luntz’s help, the Progressive Conservatives under Kim Campbell were annihilated — Luntz watched the election results from Manning’s suite — and Reform emerged as the party of the right. Thirteen years later, along with helping Manning, Luntz met with Harper for a photo-op session and to provide advice for Harper’s new minority government.

Luntz was impressed with Harper, who he called “a genuine intellectual, brilliant in his understanding of issues.”

In 2006 at a conference of conservative politicians, academics, journalists and think tank functionaries, Luntz advised the audience to tap into national symbols like hockey. “If there is some way to link hockey to what you all do, I would try to do it.” Before long, Harper was writing a book about hockey.

And he was making good use of Luntz’s radical environmentalist frame.

As in his other framing exercises, Harper’s message came from multiple sources inside and outside government. In Parliament, Fort McMurray-Athabasca Conservative MP Brian Jean called for legislation that would block foreign funding of the “radical” Canadian environmental movement. In Washington, D.C., Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird told an interviewer “there’s a great deal of frustration … that the future prosperity of our country could lie in the hands of some radical environmentalists and special interests.”

Outside government, Marco Navarro-Genie, research director at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a regional neoliberal think tank, claimed that the “real aim [of] … radical environmentalists is eventually to stop production of all hydrocarbons.”

Did it work?

Later in the year, the Montreal Economic Institute, another regional neoliberal think tank, released a survey suggesting that a majority of Canadians — 52 per cent — think “several environmental lobbies are too radical,” compared with 27 per cent who disagree with this statement. The survey also found that 72 per cent of Canadians are in favour of developing the bitumen deposits, “while maintaining a continuous effort to limit the environmental impact.”

Send in the Auditors and the Spies

Harper must have been emboldened by the success of this campaign for him to take the next step. In 2012, Harper allocated $13.4 million to the CRA to undertake audits of the political activities and foreign funding of charities. At least 52 audits were done, almost all on organizations critical of Harper’s policies. 

Read DeSmog Canada’s in-depth series on Canada’s charitable sector: Charities and Non-Profits: A Force for a Better World

And that wasn’t the end of it, as surveillance moved up the food chain from CRA to CSIS and the RCMP. Even before the Harper government tabled Bill C-51, The Anti-Terrorism Act, in the House of Commons in January 2015, CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, was making recommendations to federal officials about how to deal with protests expected after the Harper government gave conditional approval to Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline in June 2014.

CSIS provided senior government officials with a federal risk forecast for the 2014 “spring/summer protest and demonstration season” compiled by the government operations centre, which tracks and analyzes such activity.

An RCMP intelligence assessment obtained by Greenpeace Canada and first published on DeSmog Canada highlighted a disturbing narrative about what the police force viewed as “violent anti-petroleum extremists.”

Vivian Krause, the North Vancouver researcher who created the conspiracy theory that U.S. foundations were funding Canadian environmental groups to prevent the expansion of oilsands production, was the single most important source for the RCMP report. Her work was given ten pages in the 44-page report, while global warming denier Patrick Moore was one of the most cited sources.

Some intelligence assessment.

But that didn’t seem to matter. What started out as a Frank Luntz talking point had become reality.

The radical environmentalist frame could count on a strong base of support from evangelicals and neoliberals. Constant repetition and government action by the CRA and then CSIS and the RCMP made it newsworthy. And what the media report must be real.

That’s how Stephen Harper makes his world.

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When I asked the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) whether it has files on me or DeSmog Canada, I got a response that's been used as a non-answer by government spokespeople and celebrity publicists for 40-plus years: We can "neither confirm nor deny" the records exist.

The intelligence body doesn't have to disclose such information because it's exempt from Canada’s Access to Information legislation since it relates to “the detecting, preventing or suppressing subversive or hostile activities.”

Hmph. Some part of me was expecting them to simply say "no." While non-denial denial responses like this are pretty par for the course when dealing with intelligence services — the phrase was first conjured up during a clandestine CIA submarine operation in the 1970s — it's disconcerting in light of the federal government’s proposed anti-terrorism bill C-51, which would increase the powers of CSIS and its role in government-sponsored spying.

As others have pointed out, bill C-51 will allow dangerously strong measures to be taken against even perceived terror threats or individuals that pose a threat to Canada’s critical infrastructure, such as pipelines, or the nation’s financial security.

The language in bill C-51 has been roundly criticized for being so broad that it endangers the democratic rights of Canadian citizens and their ability to engage in legitimate dissent. Under the new legislation, CSIS could foreseeably monitor the activities of ordinary Canadians participating in community organizing, climate activism, blockades, strikes or pipeline protests.

As a recently leaked RCMP intelligence report highlights, environmental and First Nation groups are already targeted for surveillance in Canada and are being characterized (some say hyperbolically) as “violent anti-petroleum extremists.”

As an editor at a news outlet that routinely reports on energy and environment issues directly related to "critical infrastructure," I thought it sensible to submit two requests to CSIS through the Access to Information and Privacy Act to see if any records came back.

For the record, I have no particular reason to think CSIS is monitoring either me or DeSmog Canada. To be sure, they have no legitimate reason to. But I find the inability to know whether we've been swept up in the spy agency's wide net concerning, as many other Canadians likely would.

Unfortunately, when it comes to CSIS, Canadians can expect very little transparency, a cause for additional concern when you recall Harper eliminated the position of the CSIS watchdog in 2012. The only overview of CSIS is handled by the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), a body comprised of part-time appointees with limited resources that assess CSIS operations after-the-fact.

DeSmog Canada's CSIS Privacy Request for Editor Carol Linnitt by DeSmog Canada

DeSmog Canada's CSIS Access to Information Request by DeSmog Canada

I reached out to Vincent Gogolek, executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA), to see what he makes of these responses from CSIS.

"It certainly looks like the way the law is being interpreted there really aren't any 'citizens above suspicion,’” Gogolek said. “Or at least CSIS apparently won't confirm or deny” if such citizens exist.

Gogolek said it’s fair CSIS wouldn’t want to release information relevant to an ongoing investigation through the Access to Information process, but added, “likewise they shouldn't use this as a blanket excuse to refuse to release information."

Access to Information Act Gutted Under Harper 

Reg Whitaker, distinguished research professor emeritus at York University and adjunct professor of political science at the University of Victoria, is a national security expert who has written several books on the topic including The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance is Becoming a Reality.

Whitaker said when it comes to transparency, the Harper government has successfully gutted the Access to Information and Privacy Act over the last several years.

“Their idea is: you let out as little as possible, you make it as difficult and you make it as expensive as you can to make it difficult to use the Act in the first place,” Whitaker said.

“That’s not necessarily related to CSIS or the RCMP or surveillance of ongoing movements,” he conceded. “There’s just a general tendency that they are trying to stop up the flow of information about what they’re doing generally across the board.”

But when it comes to CSIS, Whitaker said, “there’s this extra sensitivity, obviously.”

As the Harper government looks to expand the power of CSIS under the name of “counter-terrorism,” Whitaker said, “we know they are focusing on activist groups and certainly anti-pipeline groups, or more generally groups focused on resource issues and mega projects that have the highest priority in this government.”

“They will always claim that they’re only focusing on the potential for violence, therefore it falls into the category of terrorism. But there’s no way they can carry on the surveillance of potential violent activity of these groups without spying on these groups.”

“They are doing it and they’re very sensitive about trying to make sure there is as little information getting out there as possible,” he said.

But information still has a way of getting to the public, Whitaker added, such as the leaked RCMP intelligence report first published on DeSmog Canada.

Whitaker acknowledges there is no way to know if myself or DeSmog Canada is being monitored by CSIS.

“I don’t know if in your case that what’s happened with your request signifies you’re a target,” he said. “It could well be that you’re not. But they’re going to give you the same answer whether you had been a target that sought their files, or someone who wasn’t but thought they might be.”

RCMP and CSIS Risk Losing Social Licence

And that’s a problem, Whitaker said, arguing the outcome of a surveillance campaign like this will be growing social mistrust.

“The implications are not going to be good for social licence,” he said. “It’s a pretty fuzzy concept, but it’s a phrase that is used a lot these days.”

Whitaker said it is clear pipeline proponents Enbridge and Kinder Morgan have lost their social licence with individuals worried about the environment, First Nations and “generally the population of British Columbia feeling they’re having these juggernauts rammed down their throats.”

In much the same way, the RCMP and CSIS risk the social licence they require to adequately address real security threats.

“With CSIS and the RCMP in fighting terrorism, it’s very important, I think, that they — and in their more lucid moments they’d agree, I’m sure — that they have social licence.”

But with the looming implications of Bill C-51 both CSIS and the RCMP put their social licence at risk.

“What they’re in danger of doing now as bill C-51 goes through and their powers get greatly expanded and the definition of what they’re looking at is being expanded so broadly, well beyond terrorism in fact…they are going to seriously lose that social licence with a much larger proportion of the Canadian population.”

The loss of public support is something “they ought to be very worried about,” Whitaker said, adding it’s unclear “how much they are being pushed by the present government to focus on the quote-unquote anti-petroleum movement, etc. and how much is coming from within CSIS and the RCMP.”

“But certainly pressure has been coming from government.”

Image Credit: Emory Allen via Flickr

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WARNING: Military Spooks Probably Know You Are Reading This

You could be in Canada's secret surveillance database. All it takes is a phone call, text message or email to someone in another country. And every time you visit a website your location, your browsing history and other metadata can be collected by the little-known Communications Security Establishment Canada.

All of this is illegal according to BC Civil Liberties Association which filed a lawsuit in BC Supreme Court Tuesday.

“Unaccountable and unchecked government surveillance presents a grave threat to democratic freedoms,” says Joseph Arvay, Q.C., lawyer for the BC Civil Liberties Association.

"We are deeply concerned that CSEC (Communications Security Establishment Canada) is gaining secret, illegal access to the private communications of ordinary Canadians," said Arvay.

CSEC, which will soon be housed the most expensive government building ever constructed (almost $1.2 billion), is Canada's $350 million-a-year counterpart to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

In recent months the NSA has received much media attention after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked secret NSA documents. Those documents revealed the extensive surveillance the NSA undertakes including tracking the calls of almost every American citizen and spying on a vast but unknown number of Americans’ international calls, text messages, and emails.

Turns out CSEC also spies on Canadian citizens but unlike the NSA no court or committee  oversees its operations. Canada's other big spy agency, the $500-million-a-year Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has its activities monitored by an independent  committee.

CSEC is a military spy agency and has no such overview. The Minister of National Defence calls all the shots and issues directives in secret.

However a Nov 21, 2011 directive that became public revealed that then Minister Peter Mackay approved the collection and analysis of metadata. This is information that is automatically produced each and every time a Canadian uses a mobile phone or accesses the internet. [See Guardian's Guide to Metadata]

"Metadata information can reveal the most intimate details of Canadians’ personal lives, including relationships, and political and personal beliefs," said David Martin, lawyer for the BCCLA.

Canadians should be able to use the internet "without the government snooping on our personal information and monitoring our behaviour online," Martin said in a Vancouver press conference Tuesday.

The spy agency is allowed to capture the communications of Canadians at home and abroad if the collection relates to obtaining “foreign intelligence.” CSEC shares this information with foreign intelligence entities in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.

Arvay says CSEC's domestic spying infringes on Canadians rights of freedom of expression.

"Canadians are going to censor themselves fearing their communications will be intercepted," he said.

It's "unbelievable there is no judicial oversight of CSEC" said Caily DiPuma, Counsel for the BCCLA.

"Canadians have a right to privacy. We have no idea what CSEC is doing with their information or how they are interpreting laws," DiPuma said.

No one knows have many Canadians are caught up in the CSEC net said OpenMedia.ca Executive Director Steve Anderson.

OpenMedia fought a successful battle against Bill C30 – the online spying bill. "I was shocked to learn that CSEC is monitoring Canadians online and we're picking up the tab," Anderson said.

"We can’t even tell when we’ve been victimized by it. We strongly support the BCCLA’s court challenge," he said.

OpenMedia has launched a new online sign-up pledge against "out-of-control spying on Canadians.”

Incredibly, CSEC is just the tip of the domestic spying spear for Canadians involved in labour and social justice, indigenous issues, environmental or other organizations the Harper government has labeled as a "threat" to Canada's business interests.

The RCMP, CSIS and others involved in "security intelligence" have been monitoring Canadians involved in various non-governmental organizations such as environmental groups said Jeffrey Monaghan of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Protests and opposition to Canada's resource-based economy, especially oil and gas production, are now viewed as threats to national security, Monaghan said.

Based on security documents just released under freedom of information laws, CSIS has likely created a wide-ranging surveillance net in partnership with the private sector he said.

One Feb 2011 document reads: "…the private sector is ideally suited to provide the Service (CSIS) with unsolicited, but potentially valuable street-level information."

Later the document notes that the private sector can violate Canada's privacy laws "for reasons of law enforcement, national security, defense of Canada, conduct of international affairs…"

Part II will look at the role of the private sector, including energy companies, in working with law enforcement to spy on and punish individuals and organizations involved in legal, democratic activities. 

Image Credit: CSEC Common Criteria icon

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Last month’s PRISM revelations are a disconcerting reminder that even here in Canada, paranoid fantasies about mass government surveillance are more than a work of fiction.

“Security and police agencies have been increasingly conflating terrorism and extremism with peaceful citizens exercising their democratic rights to organise petitions, protest and question government policies,” said Dr. Jeffery Monaghan of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen's University. “Canada is at very low risk from foreign terrorists but like the U.S. it has built a large security apparatus following 9/11. The resources and costs are wildly out of proportion to the risk.”

“[Domestic issue-based] extremism,” maintains Canada’s Counter-terrorism Strategy, “tends to be based on grievances—real or perceived—revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism.”

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