There's an old problem Canada's new foreign-interference law won't fix

To understand Canada's failure to criminally prosecute foreign collusion, an old news report from Washington offers a useful starting point.

In 1981, a Canadian correspondent made an observation: when it came to using security intelligence in policing, Canada and the U.S. were diverging onto opposite paths.

The Americans were ramping up, while Canadians were dialling down. The legacy of that era lingers to this day in an ongoing Ottawa scandal. And it's unclear how much will change under a soon-to-be-enacted law.

Some Canadians might have been startled by a report earlier this month that politicians wittingly, and unwittingly, collaborated with foreign governments, getting campaign help and even receiving foreign donations.

The shocked did not include one intelligence veteran in Canada who worked closely with multiple U.S. agencies and has seen the night-and-day difference in how police in each country use surveillance.  

"It wasn't a surprise to us," said Scott McGregor, a military and police intelligence official who recently co-authored a book on Chinese interference in Canada. "This information has been around for a number of years."

WATCH | Some MPs helping foreign actors meddle in Canadian politics, report says:

After the bombshell parliamentary report, the RCMP issued a lengthy statement that announced it was investigating. But in the next breath, it acknowledged serious roadblocks to investigating.

For starters, police get limited access to intelligence. The Mounties confirmed they'd been unaware of some details in that report.

There's a striking example on Page 29: An Indian proxy allegedly claimed to have repeatedly transferred funds from India to Canadian politicians at all levels of government in exchange for political favours, like promoting certain issues in Parliament. Canada's security-intelligence service had this information and did not share it with the RCMP, said the report.

The report and the Mounties both cited other obstacles. Even if police had seen the intelligence, using it in a trial is another, more complicated, story.

The foreign-interference legislation that just passed Parliament, Bill C-70, doesn't solve this problem. Two former heads of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service agree on that point. 

While parts of the legislation might prove useful, Ward Elcock and Richard Fadden both told CBC News, attempts to prosecute will keep bumping into unresolved constitutional challenges.

"That can be a killer [for criminal cases]," Elcock said.