OTTAWA —
A woman accused of spying for Russia says there’s nothing to the allegations because her actions ended up helping Canadian interests.
Elena Crenna is asking the Federal Court to overturn an immigration adjudicator’s decision to bar her from Canada over events more than two decades ago.
A hearing on the matter is slated for Wednesday in Ottawa.
The spy saga began in 1994 when Canadian David Crenna hired Elena Filatova — whom he would later marry — as an interpreter and public-relations representative on a humanitarian housing project in Tver, a small city northwest of Moscow.
The initiative involved training Russians to build wood-frame homes, part of an effort to shift the former Soviet Union to a market economy.
An agent from the FSB, a Russian security agency, contacted Filatova to ask questions about the project and David gave her permission to tell the agent anything he wanted to know in the interest of transparency. Elena and the agent met about seven times over a period of years.
In August 1994, David and Elena began a romantic relationship that ended when the housing project concluded in 1996. However, they reconnected in 2008 and were married four years later.
In the interim, Elena had moved to California to work as a nurse and she obtained U.S. citizenship in 2004.
Elena says she never possessed any secret information about the Tver project, nor did she covertly gather material for the Russian security agent.
She came to Canada in September 2013 to live with David, applying for permanent residence under his sponsorship.
Following admissibility hearings, immigration officials gave her approval to stay in 2018. But the federal government appealed.
In its ruling last June, the appeal division of the Immigration and Refugee Board found Elena had “engaged in acts of espionage contrary to Canada’s interests” and issued a deportation order against her.
Adjudicator Annie Lafleur wrote that some may consider Elena’s acts harmless given the socio-political context of post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s, and she was sympathetic to the couple. But she said there must be legal benchmarks “to preserve the integrity of the immigration system, guarantee Canada’s security and on a larger scale, protect Canada’s fundamental values.”
Elena, 58, has quietly left Canada to spend time with relatives in Philadelphia while the legal case plays out, David Crenna said in an interview.
The case has left the couple in disbelief, said Crenna, a former senior political aide and association executive who is now 75 and semi-retired.
“Sanity may prevail and I’m very hopeful that it will. But at the moment it’s conceivable that they could say, ‘Well, let’s grind these people into the ground.”‘
In a submission to the Federal Court filed late last month, the government dismisses Elena’s argument that her conversations with the Russian security agent were mundane and pedestrian, saying “the nature of the information is not relevant” when it comes to espionage.
The intelligence sought by the agent in the course of his work and relayed by Elena was “necessarily intended to be used in one way or another by the Russian state,” the submission says.
In her filing with the court, Elena contends the government has not satisfied the threshold in federal immigration law by showing her actions were “against Canada” or “contrary to Canada’s interests.”
Rather, she co-operated with the Russian FSB to ensure the housing project, supported by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and the World Bank, did not run into any difficulties.
The submission says David Crenna was responsible “for safeguarding the best interests” of the project and its Canadian personnel, and he therefore decided Elena should answer the Russian FSB’s questions “to assure them that the project was benign. And that is all that happened.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2020.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
