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Colby Cosh: Supreme Court upholds Liberals’ right to protect embarrassing secrets

NSICOP is a red-carpet invitation to the deep state to over-classify everything as a state secret

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Last week the Supreme Court of Canada brought forth its ruling in Alford v. Canada, a case that represents a lone law professor’s quixotic attempt to defend the ancient inherited privileges of the Canadian Parliament. Lakehead University’s Ryan Alford was challenging the Liberals’ “NSICOP” system for parliamentary oversight of state secrets.

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The NSICOP law, passed in 2017, creates a “committee of parliamentarians” that is not a committee of Parliament, but a creature of the executive branch (specifically the Prime Minister’s Office). MPs and senators who join the committee surrender the historic absolute privilege of free speech in their chamber, and can be prosecuted and imprisoned for revealing official secrets — as defined by government agencies — therein.

Colby Cosh: Supreme Court upholds Liberals’ right to protect embarrassing secrets Back to video

Prof. Alford’s concern was that this is a rupture with fundamental aspects of the Constitution, a rupture so anomalous and serious that it amounts to an unconstitutional amendment created by ordinary statute. Moreover, in Alford’s view, it tilts the constitutional balance away from Parliament toward not only the ministry, but toward the courts themselves, who may find themselves sitting in judgment on acts of pure speech that for centuries were shielded by........

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