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4 -- PORT PERRY STAR -- Wednesday, Feb. 15, 1978 AT E0. A RATE RPA NE HS A SR re SANT ARES TA Beers Aig ANG ot 5) : RE A Editorial Comment | p=: onl ~~ od "WELL, How ARE WE DONG on our DIET P Russian Spies The Canadian government last week took the almost unprecedented step of ordering the expulsion of 13 Soviet diplomats, whose real purpose in this country was espionage. In terms of International diplomacy, the expul- "sions are a drastic move. As more evidence became available to the public, it was evident that this matter is a serious one, and must be treated with the utmost concern by the federal government in Ottawa, and all the citizens of this country. ° The gathering of intelligence information of course, is nothing new in the international system. Most nations are engaged in this kind of activitiy in some form or another. But the apparent magnitude of the Russian operation in Canada raises some very fundamental questions about Soviet behaviour in the international community, and about our relations with that country. First of all there is the size of the spy ring: 13 out of a Soviet embassy personnel strength of about 60, which means that at very least nearly 25 per cent of the diplomats in this country were concentrating their efforts on activities other than those normally carried out by diplomats. Also, the expelled Russians were not junior diplomats or clerks, but included the first and second secretary at the embassy. They are high-ranking professionals, and the operations obviously had a high priority in the Soviet government structure in Moscow. : 2 Second, there is the nature of the operation itself: an attemp to infiltrate the counter-espionage branch of the RCMP by paying some $30,000 (and a promise of more) to a senior police officer. by John B. McClelland SANDERSON Derek Sanderson is attempting a comeback in professional hockey with the Detroit Red Wings. At age 31, he is no longer the brash young Turk who in the late 60's captured the spotlight, and the imaginations of professional hockey fans. In fact, in the short space of less than a decade, he has seen his life go from the heights where he had the world by the tail, to the absolute dregs, where he was reportedly gulping a bottle and a half of booze every day, and was hooked on barbiturates at the same time. I admired Sanderson. He was the fi ofession- al hockey player to "do things his way". With flair, panche and an abrasive outspoken attitude, he served notice that he was no patsy for the team owners, who until then had demanded that their players all look alike, think alike, and speak only when spoken to. At that time, I think Sanderson was good for hockey and professional sport in general. _ Today, however, I hope he doesn't make the grade' with the Red Wings. There are a couple of reasons why I say this, and it is not that I don't want to see Sanderson pick up the pieces of his life and get himself back into the mainstream. But let's face facts. If a 31-year-old with all kinds of health problems, a booze and pill habit (supposedly overcome) and never an all-star even at the peak of his playing days, can make it back into the premier- hockey league in the world, then the Detroit Wings are in trouble, the NHL is in trouble, hockey fans who are demanding a quality product for their dollars are also in trouble. In short, he probably isn't good enough. While not in the least criticizing Sanderson for - attempting to come back or for trying to get his head together, one must really wonder what is going on within the Detroit organization. Are they going to put Sanderson in uniform for his hockey ability, or are they hoping that his past reputation on and off the ice will help attract the curious into the games at the Olympia? If the latter is the reason, hockey loses, the Red Wings lose, and Sanderson himself will lose (again). If he can make the grade on ability, fine, but it will be a sad day for hockey if he makes it for the wrong reasons. Time will tell. THE MAIL Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau once exclaimed that the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation. Thank goodness for that. Well, nobody really knows of course, whether the BO ~ChatterBox- a state is snooping around the bedrooms of the nation, but one thing is for sure, it will soon have the legal right to snoop through the mail of private citizens. A bill presently before the Parliament would give any police force in Canada the power to do just that, . Like wire-tap laws, which allow police to listen in on private telephone conversations, there are argu- ments in favour of being able to open the mails: national security, drugs, etc., not to mention that the RCMP was forced to admit recently that it has been opening the mails illegally for more than 40 years. Canada is a democracy, a system where certain individual rights (such as privacy) are supposed to be safe-guarded and protected, sometimes at a fairly high cost. But these are tough times for democracies with crime and random acts of violence and terrorism on the increase. Police and security forces say that in order to protect our fewer and fewer individual rights, they need more and more powers. And of course, they say that nobody's rights will be abused if they are not engaged in any kind of legal or clandestine activity. They are probably right. I quite frankly could care less personally if somebody looked through my mail. They wouldn't find anything except a lot of bills and the odd letter from my relatives and family. And I suspect that 99.9 per cent of all Canadians are pretty much in the same position. But that, however, is not the point. What we are seeing is a gradual erosion of personal freedom, of rights and privileges supposedly as sacred as the very democracy we say we cherish so much. We are seeing the erosion of democracy itself, because the sum is only as strong as its parts, and each little chip out of the pillars weakens the whole structure. } I'm not an alarmist who believes we'll wake up tomorrow to the sounds of jack boots in the streets where the police has-as much power as in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia. . But who knows? Wire taps yesterday, the mails today, what is coming next? How many more little chips in the pillars before the words "democratic system" have about as much meaning as feudalism or. the Holy Roman Empire? Like all things, political systems change, some more rapidly than others. Democracies as we know them only came into existance rather recently. I suspect we have seen the peak, and my grandchildren may very well see their complete disappearance. This leads to the very obvious question of how serious a threat did this pose to our national security. That the threat was a serious one can be answered two ways. First of all, by the priority the Russians placed on infiltrating by using so many senior diplomats, and second by the quick action taken by the Canadian government. Expelling one or two foreign diplomats is considered serious, and governments often attempt to minimize the threat to normal relations by taking the action quietly and without a lot of public know- ledge. - Obviously Canada feels that the expulsions themselves are less of a threat to normal relations that the spy ring was to our internal security. The size of the Soviet operation raises another question. What exactly were they after? Canada, a middle power in the international system, and on supposedly does not have state secrets as important as say, the Americans, or the Israelis, who face a military threat to their security. Was the Russian operation merely a routine one by their standards, or were they paying special attention to infiltrating the RCMP? If so, why? These expulsions will no doubt put Canada-Soviet relations into a deep freeze for some time to come. Already our external affairs minister has cancelled a trip to Russia scheduled for next month. The Soviets may retaliate by asking 13 Canadian diplomats in " Moscow to get out of the country, and if this happens Canada has already served notice that it will match these moves, person for person. And of course, the diplomatic furor is not going to help the trade relations between the two countries. Aside from the short term implications for Canada-Soviet relations, the incident illustrates another more disturbing factor. And this is that, despite the posturing on the part of Soviet leaders, despite their statements of peaceful co-existence, despite the reduction in the threat of nuclear war, and despite the good-will generated by such things as cultural and sport exchanges and "'hockey diplo- macy", Russian behaviour in the international system is anything but harmonious or conducive to the improvement of relations between nations. In fact, the Soviets seem to be saying one thing and doing exactly the opposite. Recent reports indicate that Russia is actively supporting one side in the Africian struggle between Ethiopia and Somalia. The Cubans, who are really nothing more than proxies for the Russians, are engaged in active military operations in several Africian countries, the most notable being Angola. The Soviets are taking a hard line in the recent peace initiatives in the Middle East between Egypt and Israel, and are backing and arming the Arab 3rstes and the P.L.O. who refuse to negotiate with srael. : And despite the Helsinki agreements signed in the a a 2 EEE Continued on page 5 friendly relations with almost all other nations Co R