To the editor,
Regardless of Monika Hudecova’s personal opinion of Prime Minister Harper’s leadership style (“Harper continues his dictatorial ways, Friday May 22”), one would hope that you would think twice before printing letters containing such glaring factual errors as Hudecova’s brazen assertion that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service was somehow recently “founded” by Stephen Harper.
Anyone who had taken the time to fact-check, or had taken Socials 10 in High School should realize that the Canadian security intelligence branch which became CSIS had its roots in 1864, before Confederation, when Sir John A. Macdonald put together the first Dominion Police Force.
Responsibility for Security and Intelligence gathering then passed to the RCMP before a special commission in 1977 deemed that the branch needed to be independent of the Mounties.
CSIS, created officially by an Act of Parliament in 1984, just celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2014. Stephen Harper was 25 years young and still contemplating what he might do after university in 1984.
Ms. Hudecova’s alarmist tone should be tempered with the facts of history.
Connor Murdock, socials studies teacher,
Kelowna
