Lawyers, Advocate Urge Ottawa to Review Relationship with CIA

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Canadian civil-liberties advocates and human-rights lawyers have stressed that Ottawa should review its policies on intelligence-sharing with the United States after a damning report revealed that CIA detainees were abused during interrogations. According to The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report issued on Tuesday, the Central Intelligence Agency used brutal interrogation techniques that violated U.S. laws and treaty obligations, while also failing to yield valuable information.

Ottawa lawyer, Paul Champ, pointed out that “I don’t think that anyone in the intelligence community in the world, at least in democratic countries, can wake up tomorrow and tell themselves that their relationship with the CIA and the United States can remain the same.” Mr. Champ stated that “until and unless the United States shows that there’s going to be real accountability for these criminal acts, I think our relationship with the CIA has to be very closely monitored and reviewed at all times.” Mr. Champ is known for helping authorities remove the name of Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik from a United Nations terrorist blacklist several years ago. He stressed that the original listing was result of flawed information.

In his remarks, Mr. Champ urged that Ottawa should think twice before co-operating with the CIA in the future, adding that it should also not rely on information from the agency. He alleged that “if we think that information that came from the CIA may have been derived from torture, then I say unequivocally we can’t be relying on it, we can’t have that information in our intelligence banks.”