Anti-Terror Fallout

posted on March 09, 2007 | in Category Bill C-36 | PermaLink

Original author: Unsigned Editorial
Source: Embassy- Canada's Foreign Policy Newsweekly
URL: [link]
Date: March 7th, 2007

Usually sunsets evoke peaceful responses from those who observe them. But last week, when the sun set on the provisions of Canada's anti-terror act that had allowed police to arrest Canadians without charge, compelling them to testify, the effect was anything but peaceful.

Weighing in from the U.S. was Republican Congressman James Sensenbrenner, one of the authors of the American version of the anti-terror act: The Patriot Act. The congressman told CBC's Kathleen Petty that his law, which has so far withstood court challenges, exists as a credit to non-partisan behavior on the part of the Republicans and Democrats who made it law and allow it to stand.The congressman worries that in Canada, our anti-terror law is now subject to "partisan" activity: "I am sorry to hear it is not above politics."

Mr. Sensenbrenner appears to misunderstand a few details about how things work in Canada.

The first is that Canada's anti-terror act has, from its inception, been the subject of partisan debate. As Tom Korski pointed out in Monday's Hill Times, then-opposition leader Stephen Harper and other prominent Conservatives were all critical of what they said was the bill's "arbitrary, unchecked powers to target and victimize a large number of Canadians." That was when Jean Chrétien government first proposed it in the confusing, fear-soaked days following 9/11.

The other detail is one of understanding. Partisan debate, indeed any kind of serious debate over a law that overturns the ancient right of habeas corpus, is, Mr. Sensenbrenner should realize, a good thing–not just politics.

Unfortunately, the congressman doesn't see things this way. In fact, he would like to guilt-trip Canadian law-makers into believing that our own pro-freedom decision puts us at risk in our dealings with Washington: "This could hurt public safety on both sides of the border."

Hopefully, few in Ottawa will take this kind of cross-border posturing too seriously. Immediately after 9/11 it seemed like a plausible argument. Today, after Iraq and Guantanamo, it is wearing thin.

Terrorism, when it can be thwarted, is stopped by good, competent police and intelligence work. The suspension of civil liberties often has the opposite effect, encouraging sloppy, ineffective policing. Any tin-pot dictatorship or borderline democracy can shore up its incompetent police and security services by suspending basic rights and freedoms. But strong democracies, by nature of their freedoms, protect their citizens by challenging their police to substitute brains for brawn.

The last shoe to drop over the loss of the terror clauses came from the foot of RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass who reportedly complained that the loss of the clause that permitted forced investigative hearings would undermine further investigation of the 21-year-old Air India bombing. Given the way the RCMP and CSIS handled the case in the first place, it's hard to swallow the idea that a few arbitrary powers would now make the difference after two decades of blundering. The Ottawa Sun's Greg Weston called it "rather rich" that the Mounties have had three years of Supreme Court-okayed investigative hearings on the books, but "had not put a single potential witness through the process by the time the provision died last week."

Deputy Commissioner Bass might want to watch a few episodes of the television series Cold Case to discover other methods for reopening the file. In the meantime, he may do a better service to the families of the Air India victims by publicly opening the RCMP files to former Justice John Major, who is requesting them for his review of the case.

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