Harper government should fix flawed anti-terror bill or scrap it
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Feb 18 2015. Editorial
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has overreached massively with his Anti-Terrorism Act 2015, giving the country’s security services far more power than they reasonably need to combat terror. With debate on Bill C-51 kicking off in Parliament on Wednesday, he has failed utterly to justify the need for such a draconian piece of legislation and the threat to civil rights that it poses.
The Conservative government should rewrite the bill from scratch or scrap it entirely.
New Democratic Party Leader Tom Mulcair is right to oppose the bill for being both vague and dangerous. As he told Parliament, “Canadians don’t have to choose between security and their rights.” Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau would do well to adopt the same attitude rather than support legislation that is so fatally flawed, while proposing a few amendments including stronger parliamentary oversight over the security services and a mandatory review of the law after three years.
No one denies that Canada faces terror threats. Not after being targeted by Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. And Canadians have been rattled by attacks on Parliament Hill and in Quebec. There’s popular support for giving the security services broad new powers, and Harper has the majority to force his measures into law.
But as the Star wrote when Bill C-51 was introduced, it “goes very far” by criminalizing words and thoughts, enabling a surveillance state and impinging on basic freedoms. Far from being the “sound, reasonable, well-balanced” law that Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney described in the Commons, it is a coarse affront to civil rights. While it is far from clear that the bill would noticeably bolster public safety, it most assuredly would sap our freedom.
Constitutional and legal experts who have pored over the fine print raise serious concerns:
– The bill, as drafted, is dangerously vague and subjective. It criminalizes speech, making it illegal to “advocate or promote” terrorism “in general,” even when there’s no intention of committing a violent act. What does that mean? It’s already illegal to facilitate terrorist activity or to instruct the carrying out of such activities. Could cheering on rebels in a foreign conflict now be seen as promoting terror? This casts a chill on freedom of speech. The courts will struggle with it for years.
– The bill expands the powers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service without providing the necessary oversight or indeed more resources. The watchdog Security Intelligence Review Committee that reports to Parliament on CSIS operates under an outdated mandate and is underfunded and understaffed. And while CSIS and other services spend $1 billion a year protecting us from terrorism, cyber attacks, crime and other threats, experts warn that these resources are spread thin.
– The bill gives CSIS, a shadowy agency, new power to “take measures” at home and abroad to disrupt activities that it believes threaten Canada’s security, in addition to its role collecting intelligence. Yet the bill offers scant guidance on what those measures might be, and no public process to ensure that CSIS doesn’t overstep or trample citizens’ rights.
– The bill greatly expands the definition of threats to national security to include undermining Canada’s diplomatic relations, territorial integrity, economic stability or critical infrastructure. Could that be invoked by CSIS to target critics of Ottawa’s foreign policy, First Nations, sovereigntists, environmentalists or others? It’s potentially a wide net.
– As security experts Craig Forcese and Kent Roach have written in these pages, the bill also “radically authorizes” CSIS and other agencies to share information on people who engage in protests and other activities that may be deemed unlawful, but which don’t necessarily have anything to do with terrorism. That, too, is a worry.
-The bill lowers the threshold for holding people in preventive custody. Security officials need only show reason to believe that a terrorist activity “may” occur; until now they had to believe a crime “will” occur. With all due respect to the vigilance of the judges who issue warrants in such cases, that is a dangerously subjective basis.
– Finally, as the Star has written before, the Harper government refuses to create a robust, all-party mechanism that would let Parliament scrutinize CSIS, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the military and other security services. The United States, Britain, France and other allies all have stronger oversight.
This partial list of C-51’s flaws should cause anyone who cares about civil rights to be concerned. It confirms that the problems are such that the bill can’t be saved by a light reworking in committee. This deeply misguided legislation needs a thorough rethink and rewrite. Failing that, it should be withdrawn.
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