The federal government claims in court documents that a suspected Russian spy has operated in Canada and abroad for more than a decade.

"He assumed an identity in Canada -- Paul William Hampel," CTV's Jed Kahane told CTV Newsnet on Tuesday, who viewed documents filed by Ottawa with the Federal Court of Canada.

An Ontario birth certificate has Hampel born on Dec. 11, 1965 in Toronto, "but there are no records of any birth or death of anyone by that name on that date. So it does not appear from what's here that he did not assume the identity of a dead person, but that he is actually alleged to have created a false identity," he said.

The federal government alleges in documents filed with the Federal Court of Canada that Hampel, arrested at Montreal's Dorval Airport last week, is a danger to national security.

However, there is nothing in the documents to indicate what Hampel is alleged to have spied on, he said.

Former Canadian Security and Intelligence Service director Reid Morden said Canada holds secret information in many areas, from high tech industrial design to military hardware.

Other countries want that information and CSIS is busy tracking them, he said.

"They continue to keep an eye on well over a hundred individual coming from as many as 30 different foreign intelligence services," Morden said. "So it's still a significant threat, even though it looks like a throwback to the Cold War."

Hampel has been issued three Canadian passports since 1995, the last in 2002. He has claimed to be a lifeguard in Toronto and a travel consultant in Montreal.

Some of the items Hampel possessed at the time of his arrest include:

• The fraudulent Ontario birth certificate in a travel pouch under his shirt
• A Canadian passport
• $7,800 in five different currencies
• Several bank and credit cards
• Index cards with detailed notes about Canadian history
• Three cellphones
• Five SIMM cards, used for when a cellphone user changes countries; several were password-protected
• Two digital cameras
• A shortwave radio

"We don't know anything about where he was living or where he was going," Kahane said.

Hampel is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday morning, but his lawyer Stephane Handfield has said he'll ask for an adjournment, he said.

"They only managed to meet with their client on Sunday ... and they'll ask the court to give them, say, another week to look over these documents, get their ducks lined up in order to represent them."

Right now, however, the lawyers aren't saying if their client plans to fight deportation from Canada, Kahane said.

With a report from CTV's Jed Kahane