Of the many hats that Bob Rae has worn over his long and storied careers in Canadian politics, one of them was as a member of the Security and Intelligence Review Committee for a period of five years. Remember, this is the body that the government claims is providing oversight to CSIS, and that they’re “robust,” “doing a good job,” and “are the envy of the world.” No, seriously – they have said all of those things. Rae, meanwhile, notes that SIRC has limited resources for the size of the job they have, but more than that, they haven’t been paid attention to by the government itself. In other words, no matter what their reports say, and how scathing they are, the government’s response is pretty much to pat them on the head, say thanks, and ignore them. Issues like the limited mandate and compartmentalisation of what they’re supposed to be reviewing makes their jobs almost impossible to get a proper picture. The Privacy Commissioner has pointed out that the silos make their own job difficult to do because they can’t see what’s going on either. And then there are security agencies like CBSA – which gained a lost of powers post-9/11 – who have no independent oversight at all. But hey, any oversight is just “needless red tape” – also a phrase this government has used – and would somehow detract from trying to fight terrorists. All of this just adds to the fact that giving CSIS new powers without any additional oversight sounds like a more alarming proposition all the time.

Good reads:

• Jen Gerson interviews Stockwell Day about the Supreme Court decision on Friday, and he demonstrates zero awareness of what happened. Activist court? Where six of the nine who heard the decision were Harper appointees? Writing laws? No, telling Parliament to write a better law.
• Fisheries and Oceans held a Dragon’s Den-style event to pitch ideas to senior managers, and other departments have followed suit.
• Ruh-roh! The Canadian Forces somehow lost three very expensive GPS-guided artillery shells while closing up the base in Afghanistan.
• Here’s an interesting look at restorative justice, which the government is trying to support more of in their Victims of Crime bill.
• Oh dear – it seems that CRA’s call centre has been giving bad tax advice up to 25 percent of the time.
• John Geddes writes about the Canadian flag as an example of mid-century modern Canadian design, and how that came about in its creation.

Odds and ends:

The NDP are trying to spin the repayment for their satellite offices as a “fine,” which it most assuredly is not.

Someone with access to DND computers has been vandalizing Rehtaeh Parsons’ Wikipedia page.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making a stopover in Ottawa this evening to meet with Harper before she heads back to meeting with Putin to try and resolve the Ukraine situation.