Security Intelligence Review Committee and Canadian Security Intelligence Service

legal experts: But the Conservatives have now shown themselves willing to make amends with a judiciary with whom it has often been warring, as long as that judiciary can be used to circumvent parliamentary and civilian oversight of an anti-terror bill, according to Guelph Mercury. As the Security and Intelligence Review Committee is found wanting by the opposition, legal experts and former and current members of the understaffed and under-resourced committee, the government has begun inflating the importance of judicial overview, which is needed to green light expanded powers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service to disrupt terror plots. Judicial activism has become code for a government that still likes to style itself as outsiders thwarted by the elites, even if it is in its 10th year in power, even if most of the so-called "elites" are Stephen Harper appointees. It will be up to judges to allow any action by the spy agency that could be deemed potentially unconstitutional or illegal. They have been adamant in rejecting calls from former prime ministers, former Supreme Court justices and former Security and Intelligence Review Committee members for independent, robust oversight of the new spy powers. "We as a government are not interested in politicians doing that oversight," says Harper. "We obviously believe that judges are best equipped to provide the oversight in advance of actions taken here through the requirement for warrants," says his House leader, Peter Van Loan. Conservatives have arrived at this point of the new love for the judiciary by default. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.