If the government can say why Lennikov is “detrimental,” why is it deporting him?
The public safety minister adopted as his reasons a ministerial briefing note by Stephen Rigby, the head of the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). These say that Lennikov’s “account of his KGB service does not provide satisfactory evidence that his presence in Canada is not detrimental to the national interest.” Rigby does not say, though, why the evidence is not satisfactory or why Lennikov is detrimental. Instead, he confirms that Lennikov has done no spying here and has a clean record, both in Canada and in Japan, where he lived after leaving Russia. The briefing note also makes factual errors that tend to discredit Lennikov. For example, it accuses Lennikov of “failing to express any understanding or remorse for the espionage the KGB conducted.” In fact, Lennikov has denounced the KGB both publicly and in his application for residency. In a statutory declaration to the government in March 2005, for example, he said that, in the KGB, “I was exposed to the cynicism, arrogance, lac
