You state that this work is necessary and suggest it falls within the realms of the Federal Government, but you go on further to suggest that it should not fall to the Military nor Civilian Police Agencies.
Pray tell what the Government of the day is supposed to use to implement such remedies or actions you suggest.
I imagine it would be interesting to hear who or what your thoughts on this would be.
Cheers.
Good question,
Fast Eddy, and I do not have a specific answer.
Let me deal with principles.
I have said before, here in Army.ca, that I believe the use of deadly force ought to be the exclusive responsibility of the government. Therefore I believe this function must be performed by someone who answers to a government minister – the person who, at each election, answers to us.
I have already excluded members of the
traditional armed services: the military and the police because I believe that this type of task would be inimical to the values of those services.
That only leaves the
civil service.
I think nations can, indeed should have
secret services which, at the behest of the government-of-the-day, may (important word, ‘may’) undertake tasks which offend our everyday principles of law and order, etc.
Henry L. Stimson – one of the true giants of the 20th century – is unfairly remembered for his rather quaint remark (in 1917) to the effect that
“gentlemen don’t read one another’s mail.” While, arguably, true of gentlemen it is not,
must not be true of honourable nation-states. We do read one another’s mail, we search through one another’s desk drawers, we use bribery to steal information from foreign officials, we play of people’s weaknesses and peccadilloes in order to entice them to betray their country’s secrets. All good stuff, all part of the business of safeguarding our own country – defending the realm, which must, always, be the first duty of Her Majesty’s government.
Dealing with people, here in Canada, who are a threat to our security
may require similar clandestine and, certainly less than gentlemanly measures.
We already hire a very small number of rather exceptional civil servants to
read other’s mail and so on; we may need to hire a few more to do other work.
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