CSIS to substantially 'augment' security for Vancouver Olympics

VANCOUVER — The Canadian Security Intelligence Service will "augment" its B.C. resources substantially during the 2010 Olympics, B.C. office operations manager Alan Budde said Wednesday.

CSIS employs about 2,600 people across Canada and in foreign offices and, while Budde wouldn't say how many of those employees would have a presence in Vancouver or Whistler during the Olympics, he said the Winter Games are one of six CSIS priorities as determined by the federal cabinet.

Speaking at a session of the Emergency Preparedness Conference in Vancouver, Budde said the domestic intelligence agency gathers information with six major priorities in mind: terrorism and extremism, the Afghan mission, foreign espionage interference, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international security and prosperity of Canada, and the Vancouver 2010 Games.

Budde said CSIS does not have a mandate to gather evidence for criminal convictions and noted disclosure of the information it does gather has been ongoing.

"If there are ever instances where public safety is an issue, that information does get through to the necessary recipients," he said. "We also deal with a number of corporate entities. So if RBC, a corporate sponsor of the Olympic Games, was to be a target of attack, we would ensure the information not only went to the responsible law enforcement agency, but that it got through to their corporate security officers as well."

The intelligence agency's basic Olympic duties will include processing accreditations, producing threat assessments and giving advice to the federal government.

But Budde said ordinary Canadians need to do their part, too, and be vigilant about reporting suspicious behaviour.

"There's often a reluctance in Canada to [report when] you see a neighbour doing something suspicious . . . In the U.S., because of the nature of some of the incidents that have affected them, they are much more prone to volunteer that information without being prompted."

Budde assured the audience CSIS cannot investigate lawful protest or dissent, unless those activities are carried out with specific threats to national security. "So if you don't want the Olympics to be here and you intend to carry a placard, we won't be bothering you."

Meanwhile, the RCMP officer in charge of planning exercises for the Integrated Security Unit (ISU), said he wished he'd had two more years to plan.

Const. Dale Benfeld, a career military officer drafted into the RCMP in 2007 to handle the three major Olympic security exercises, dubbed "bronze," "silver" and "gold," said he believes the ISU and its emergency management partners are ready for the Games. But in a panel discussion with two other partners who helped plan the exercises, Benfeld said he could have used more time. "I still believe I was two years too late," he said. "When I arrived I was given nothing but to make it happen, and that's what we did."

Benfeld said later he wasn't being critical of the RCMP, but he felt the planning process was compressed because of time and money.

"Realizing there is a lot of work to be done, we had the opportunity if we had started earlier to really integrate in a smooth transition as opposed to forcing the issues," he said. "[In] the time we had we achieved the goals that we wanted to, but it could have been done a lot more smoothly if we had a bit more time to put the whole program in place."

Benfeld said financial pressures felt by municipal and provincial partners forced the exercise planners to cut the "gold" exercise earlier this month from a 24-hour operation to 12 hours a day. While the military could mount round-the-clock exercises because its staff aren't paid overtime, the ISU wanted to keep the exercise in "lock-step" with its other government partners, he said.

Since 2007 the ISU and Integrated Public Safety — the emergency services coordinator for the Olympics — have conducted at least 114 different exercises in addition to the three major umbrella exercises in an effort to make sure every division, partner or government is prepared. Heather Lyle, manager of IPS, said one of the major lessons was having a common language among the more than 150 groups.

She described the first major exercise, bronze, as "white noise" as the ISP, ISU and Vancouver Organizing Committee each sought to make sure its own issues were heard. By the last exercise, Nov. 2-6, all of the partners were working well together.

"Gold was a come-prepared party," Steve Macdonald, a federal government adviser to the ISU, told the group. "Everybody was supposed to know how to dance."

bconstantineau@vancouversun.com

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