Possible Manipulation of Political Affairs
When the Avro Arrow aerospace program was cancelled in 1959, many believed that the CIA was partly responsible, fearing Canadian intrustion into aerospace dominance.
In 1961, the CIA wrote an intelligence estimate titled "Trends in Canadian Foreign Policy" which suggested that the Conservative government of John Diefenbaker "might take Canada in a divergent direction" and seek "a more independent foreign policy" and suggested that a return of the Liberal Party might "soften the Canadian resistance to the storage of nuclear weapons on Canadian soil". In 1967, Prime Minister Lester Pearson announced he would investigate the allegations of the CIA helping him oust Diefenbaker.
In 1982, Canadian Member of Parliament Svend Robinson accused the CIA of infiltrating the RCMP and funnelling political contributions to favoured politicians in provincial elections from 1970-76. The information seemed to arise from John H. Meier, an aide to Howard Hughes, but a secret investigation turned up no evidence of such a conspiracy. The RCMP allegations dated back to 1977, when it was shown that they were "linked" closely to the CIA.
Read more about this topic: CIA Activities In Canada
Famous quotes containing the words manipulation, political and/or affairs:
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it.... The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A man with your experience in affairs must have seen cause to appreciate the futility of opposition to the moral sentiment. However feeble the sufferer and however great the oppressor, it is in the nature of things that the blow should recoil upon the aggressor. For God is in the sentiment, and it cannot be withstood.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)