Canada’s intelligence agency, CSIS, officially took over the RCMP’s Security Service on this date in 1984. Crafting CSIS had been one of the final acts of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s government before the 15th PM left office that June. While the RCMP Security Service had had some important “wins” in the Cold War years, it had also been controversial, particular in the 1970s as it battled Quebec sovereigntists and separatists. The service had conducted certain illegal activities and a Royal Commission, established in 1977 and led by Judge David McDonald had recommended that a new security agency be created with better oversight mechanisms than had previously existed.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.