Friday, June 02, 2000
Canadian funds back terrorism: CSIS chief
'If you tolerate these activities you can run into problems'
Stewart Bell, with a file from Andrew MacIntosh
National Post
Canada's most senior intelligence officer is warning that the country faces serious problems unless it cracks down on terrorist groups and their supporters who are openly organizing and raising funds here to finance political violence abroad.

Ward Elcock, the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said terrorist organizations such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are exploiting Canada's wealth to finance bloodshed around the world. "If you tolerate these activities, you can run into problems," he said.

The intelligence director is concerned that terrorist groups prey on immigrant communities and resort to organized crime to get money, and he fears the failure to curb them may anger foreign governments and prompt them to take matters into their own hands.


Fred Chartrand, The Canadian Press
Ward Elcock, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), said his agency is concentrating on terrorist fundraising.
"The reality is that, for governments in various places in the world, if they think that you're allowing terrorist activities to go on, they will do what they believe is necessary to deal with it, and we have no interest in that happening here.

"People think that the LTTE is or isn't a terrorist organization because they happen to like the goals or believe more in the goals, for any number of reasons.

"They can get themselves convinced that we should tolerate those activities and it's hard to explain to people that we don't make that distinction ... If you're engaging in advancing your political aims by violence, it doesn't matter what your cause is, it's the actions that are unacceptable," he said in a recent wide-ranging interview with the National Post.

In the House of Commons yesterday, the Liberals faced yet more questions about why two cabinet ministers, Paul Martin and Maria Minna, attended a $60-a-plate dinner last month for an organization that has been branded a front for the Tamil Tigers.

Lawrence MacAulay, the Solicitor-General, who oversees CSIS, said there is a "difference between legitimate gatherings and active support of terrorism. This country supports legitimate gatherings and that is exactly what has taken place."

But Monte Solberg, a Canadian Alliance MP, said a report published by CSIS called the organizers of the dinner, the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils, "one of the more active fronts for the Sri Lankan group, the Tamil Tigers," which assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian prime minister.

"FACT is a fundraising organization for the Tamil Tigers, that's well-established," Mr. Solberg said.

"Yet even though our own security agency has made that very clear, the Finance Minister and other ministers go to these sorts of events and put money into that organization."

Herb Gray, the Deputy Prime Minister, said the CSIS report was published by the intelligence agency, but not endorsed by it.

Asked by Ted White, another Alliance MP, if Mr. Martin had been instructed not to attend any further FACT events, Mr. Gray responded that it was a "foolish question."

In addition to the CSIS report, reports by the U.S. State Department and a renowned expert at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Israel have also identified FACT as a front for the Tigers, and, based on CSIS intelligence, the Immigration Department is currently trying to deport the group's former co-ordinator, alleging he was sent to Toronto to raise money for weapons.

The National Post has documented how Tamil Tigers supporters are raising funds in Canada through migrant smuggling, passport fraud, organized crime, front organizations and rallies at Toronto-area public schools featuring men in camouflage uniforms carrying mock assault rifles. They are also planning civil war celebrations this month at three venues, including the Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto.

Mr. Elcock said fundraising was "one of the things that we spend a fair amount of resources trying to identify, how they're doing it, a rough idea -- and it's only a rough idea in some cases -- of how much they actually succeed in collecting and where it's going and what it's being used for."

Terrorist fundraising "is continuing. It's long been a concern and will probably continue to be a concern for a long period of time," he said. "We're a well-off country and people come here and seek that money and contribute to causes at home for any number of reasons ... Fundraising is just simply part of what organizations that happen to be seeking to advance their objectives by violence are using."

He would not reveal the intelligence agency's estimates of how much money was being collected by various groups, but said the amounts were not important because terrorists can cause significant damage with only a few hundred dollars' worth of explosives or firearms.

Mr. Elcock warned that any groups that seek to advance their goals through violence -- no matter how just they consider their cause -- will find themselves targeted by CSIS agents.