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T awrence opposes hold back of Taschereau report In speaking at the annual' meeting pf the Ontario Progressive Progressive Conservative Campus1 Campus 1 Association recently the- Hon. All^n Lawrence, M.P. Durhani-Northumberland stated that evidence still emerges too frequently that there are accomplices to subversion in the Western democracies and he asks if we in Canada are immune to all of this? He asks if our governments have been naive, or simply indifferent to possible subversion. Lawrence was speaking on the hold back of reports resulting from the Ivor Gouzenko case dating back to 1945 and the subsequent, Taschereau Commission report which Lawrence states sections are still being held back from public scrutiny even after some thirty-five years. Lawrence during his speech referred to the Watergate incident incident in the United States. "It is doubtful anything was more sensitive than the Watergate Tapes, which Caused the downfall of a President and shook the nation nation to its core. That was less than 10 years ago, yet you can go to the archives in Washington and hear those tapes played, if you're so included", included", he said. "I want to focus on one particular unusual â'nd disturbing disturbing secrecy matter at Ottawa which warrants greater public attention and understanding. As you may know, some of us have a special interest in the so-called Taschereau or Gouzenko papers, which have been locked away in the National Archivess, the Privÿ Council Office, RCMP Headquarters and elsewhere for the past 35 years.". Lawrence said, "We must go back to 1945, when Igor Gouzenko, then a 26 year old cipher clerk with the Soviet Embassy at Ottawa, suddenly defected to^ Canadian Authorities, bringing with him invaluable files and information information about i spy rings operating within Canada from the Embassy. His job as cipher clerk was not as innocuous as it ipay sound. It wgs Gbuzenko's responsibility to encode and decode all messages between the Embassy and .Moscow concerning a spy 1 • ring operated by Soviet military , intelligence." » ' "Fgr Jhose wh6 have grown up in the cfintafe of the colctwar, with its continuing cycle o£ East-Wést* power struggle^ it's rather difficult to perceive just -how devastating 'Gouzenko's relations were. In 1945 Canada and its allies had just emerged victorious from the horrors of World War II. There was agfeneral feeling of jphoriain tnedand. We had -proved, dur mettle, and most Canadians ■ just wanted' to forget jitiout the war and get • back to regular everyday living. living. Russian, of course, had been one of greatest allies, had suffered terribly from the Nazis, yet had played a major role in defeating them and in liberating parts of Europe, Now, suddenly the euphoria was shattered. Gouzenko's revelations showed that Russia ■ had designs upon us. They had spy networks which had seriously infiltrated our Canadian Government. They had collected a wide range of classified information about our military organization, top secret technical data on nuclear weapons, and even conveyed to Moscow a sample sample of some extremely secret atomic material. It was difficult difficult foç the government of the day to grasp the immediate-significance immediate-significance of these revelations: After some months, a royal commission was established under two members of the Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Robert Taschereau and Mr. Justice Roy If. Kellock. They sat literally night and day for some five months, and published a report in late June of 1946. • Lawrence said,"Even today today the findings of that royal commission seem devastating. Several Canadians, Canadians, some of them highly placed in positions of great confidence within the public- service and the armed forces, had willingly been betraying secret information to the Soviets. More astonishing, as a general rule these Cana dians hadn't • betrayed their country for money or. other personal favours. Their betrayal stemmed from personal personal ideological beliefs, which in many cases were acquired acquired during their student years. Several, including a member of Parliament, subsequently were brought to trial, convicted and served prison sentences. And there, by all appearances, the matter matter virtually ended. Gouzenko was given permanent permanent refuge here, though his periodic public statements still demonstrate he is not at all satisfied that the investigations investigations he instigated were anywhere near completed." Lawrence points out the commission said it was evident evident that several, not just one, Soviet spy rings were operating in Canada at that time. Because of the unique inside information provided by Gouzenko, it was possible to identify some, biit not all, of the Canadians in the spy ring whose communications were handled by him. And without more such inside information, information, it was not possible to identify any non-Russian members of any of the other Soviet spy rings. There were at least two other spy rings known to be in existence in Canada and operating from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa. One might reasonably expect expect there would have been a determined effort by government government to follow up where the Taschereau commission left off. It has pointed to the ex istence of other rings of subversives. It provided a list of names of a number of persons, persons, in government and elsewhere, who were at one time known members of secret communist cells. Their names were not made public, as there was no evidence produced produced of their implication in espionage networks. Who were these secret communists, communists, especially the ones in government? Are any of them still around today? Allegations are still being made that they are, or that some of them were in positions positions to pick their successors, who are still with us in government. , It's fair to assume some would have changed their ideological affiliations over the years. Certainly there were prominent Nor.th American Communists who became publicly disenchanted with Russia and communism during the latter years of Stalin's regime. Many of those named have long since died. Yet to anyone seriously concerned about the security of our country, the lack of serious follow-up on the work of the Taschereau commission commission must be a source Of continuing wonder. We have had two more Royal Commissions on' security matters since 1946. The first, under Maxwell MacKenzie, was appointed by Prime Minister Pearson in 1966, essentially to examine security methods and procedures. procedures. All its hearings were in camera. Interestingly, a • major recommendation of Orono Weekly Times, Wednesday, June 17, 1981-9 the MacKenzie, commission,- for the creation of an elitg civilian security service, quite separate from the RCMP, was never acted upon by Mr. Trudeau, either when he was Justice Minister or Prime Minister. More recently we have the royal commission under Mr. Justice D.C. McDonald, which was appointed by the Trudeau government in 1977 to examine certain activities of the RCMP, which led into a detailed study of the work of the force's security service. And speaking of secrecy, jt was only through the diligence of a newspaper reporter that we learned a few days ago that the. Prime Minister had testified briefly before this commission, in camera, last July. What he was asked and what he' replied,, he refuses to say. The Taschereau Commission's Commission's published report çon- tained only selected extracts from thousands of pages of testimony and collected documents. All the rest of (he transcripts, proceedings and documentation were locked away in the archives, the P.C.O., and at RCMP headquarters, headquarters, and there they remain remain to this day. That is another cause for wonder. Under the normal 30 year rule on thé secrecy of such government' material, they should, have been made public five years ago, but they weren't. Apparently at the 1 direction of the Privy Council clerk, Mr. Pitfield, they were locked away for another 10 years, not only with no given reason, but perhaps on no legal basis. " The Prime Minister now says publication of these papers might cause embarrassment or infringe upon the privacy of some persons named in the inquiry. Apparently, the potential for embarrassment of some civil servants of 35 years ago takes precedence over your right to know the facts about the security of your Own country. I should note that, because of our questions in Parliament, Parliament, the Privy Council Office Office -now is having the Taschereau papers reexamined reexamined to determine whether a full 10-year extension extension was warranted on their secrecy. This all may sound like a raking over of long-forgotten events, or an attempt to stir up something like Senator McCarthy's notorious communist communist witch hunts which plagued U.S. government during the 1950's. That is.not the case -at all. This is not simply a matter of trying to- find but who in our government government may or may not have been a communist sympathizer sympathizer 35 or more years ago. The concern runs much deeper. To understand it, you must remember that there are powerful forces in this world which have been working steadily for the past 60 years to subvert and undermine our Western democratic form of government and our» way of life. We all have lived in the cold war atmosphere so long, (continued page 10) A Dramatic Demonstration It's often assumed that people with mental or physical disabilities cannot participate in today's complex society. As a symbolic gesture in this International Year, we've done something out of the ordinary: we've produced a television commercial- just to set the record straight. Consider this. Of the 68 people involved in our production, 42 "are mentally or physically disabled: among them, the director, the camera- , man, the set designer and the carpenters, the electrician, the make-up ' artist, the sound engineer, the announcer, many of the musicians and the man who wrote the music, who was deaf-but-is better rerrielnbered for being Beethoven. -, * , ; ,lf you've seen the commercial, you've seen what happens when we wprk together. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a dramatic demonstration ; of a single simple point: disabled péôple'shoiild be 1 thought of for what they can do, rather than what 4 ,they can't. OurslogaSh, created by a man with a disability, sums it up and says it all: "label us able!' Ontarip Margaret Birch Provincial Secretary for Social Development William Davis Premier International Year of Disabled Persons 1981