Supreme Court to decide on Tommy D

Photo: The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

Former NDP leader Tommy Douglas poses in Ottawa in this Oct. 19, 1983 file photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Schwarz

The Supreme Court of Canada is being asked to settle a seven-year battle to lift the shroud of secrecy over a decades-old intelligence dossier on socialist trailblazer Tommy Douglas.

Jim Bronskill, a reporter with The Canadian Press, is seeking leave to appeal the case to the country's highest court.

In essence, the top court is being asked to be the final arbiter on whether national security should trump the public's right to see historical documents.

In 2005, Bronskill applied under the Access to Information Act to see the intelligence file compiled by the now-defunct RCMP Security Service on Douglas, a former Saskatchewan premier, father of medicare and first federal NDP leader.

The government initially released just over 400, heavily censored pages from the 1,142-page file.

Bronskill won a Federal Court ruling last year ordering the government to release more documents, keeping in mind their historical value.

But that ruling was overturned in October by the Federal Court of Appeal.