{"id":399,"date":"2000-02-19T14:51:53","date_gmt":"2000-02-19T19:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/?p=399"},"modified":"2015-02-23T01:12:46","modified_gmt":"2015-02-23T06:12:46","slug":"other-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/other-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Other voices against Bill C-51"},"content":{"rendered":"

New laws “won’t keep Canadians safer”<\/h2>\n

New laws and new powers don\u2019t\u00a0necessarily guarantee security.\u00a0But new\u00a0laws that violate constitutional\u00a0rights are a prescription for mistakes,<\/strong>\u00a0and mistakes won\u2019t keep Canadians\u00a0safer. \u00a0Sukanya Pillay, Executive\u00a0Director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“A secret police force”<\/h2>\n

Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u00a0never tires of telling Canadians\u00a0that we are at war with the Islamic\u00a0State. Under the cloud of fear\u00a0produced by his repeated hyperbole\u00a0about the scope and nature of\u00a0the threat, he now wants to turn\u00a0our domestic spy agency into\u00a0something that looks disturbingly\u00a0like a secret police force. \u00a0Canadians should not be willing\u00a0to accept such an obvious threat\u00a0to their basic liberties. \u00a0<\/strong>Editorial, The Globe and Mail, Feb. 1st 2015\u00a0<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“The entire Charter may be set aside”<\/h2>\n

[I]n the world of search and seizure, judicial warrants are designed to prevent – not authorize – Charter violations. That is because the Charter privacy protection is qualified \u2013 the Charter protects against \u201cunreasonable\u201d searches and seizures and a search under a warrant is prima facie proper. Other Charter rights are dramatically different. There is (and never has been) a concept of \u201creasonable\u201d cruel and unusual punishment, for instance. \u00a0In the result, the new provision places judges in a radical new universe.<\/strong> Their task is no longer to define the limit of privacy protections and to prevent the violation of reasonable expectations of privacy, but rather possibly to authorize violations of Charter rights. This is an astonishing rupture with foundational expectations about both the rule of law and the role of the judiciary<\/strong>. In our constitutional system, it is for Parliament to prescribe by law limits on Charter rights and for the courts to protect those rights and to determine if limits on those rights are reasonable. Parliament should not avoid democratic responsibility by writing anyone — even judges — a more or less blank cheque to authorize violations of Charter rights.<\/p>\n

We are baffled why the government would construct a regime that even hints that the entire Charter may be set aside through judicial warrants. Indeed, when we first confronted the bill, we were reluctant to read it literally. However, the government\u2019s own backgrounder clearly anticipates that it means what the bill says: \u201cCSIS would need a court warrant whenever proposed threat disruption measures contravene Charter rights or would otherwise be contrary to Canadian law<\/strong>.\u201d \u00a0Law professors\u00a0Craig Forcese and Kent Roach, Feb. 12, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How does \u201cjihadism\u201d match up with state terrorism?<\/h2>\n

How does \u201cjihadism\u201d match up with the lives of tens of millions of innocent civilians<\/strong>, destroyed since 1900 by state terrorism\u2014west and east, north and south\u2014or the continuing efforts seeking to seize or occupy territory? \u00a0Ralph Nader, Open Letter to Stephen Harper<\/em><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“We already have anti-terror laws”<\/h2>\n

We already have anti-terror laws. Terrorism, treason, sedition, espionage, proliferating of nuclear and biological weapons and other offences repeated in C-51 are already illegal. The police already have expanded powers in relation to terrorism. RCMP have powers to disrupt terrorist plots. […]\u00a0Those suspected of terrorism already have a second set of Kafa-esque laws to allow their detention through security certificates. Oversight of the operations of CSIS was reduced in the 2012 omnibus bill C38. Put simply, Canada has already significantly intruded on Charter rights to give the RCMP, CSIS and Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) broader powers and less over-sight.<\/strong> Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know that CSEC has been gathering millions of internet communications every day from Canadians \u2013 even though CSEC\u2019s mandate was supposed to apply only to foreign activities. \u00a0Green Party leader, Elizabeth May<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Serious problems”<\/h2>\n

The NDP has identified several serious problems in C-51, including that the bill will give broad new powers to CSIS without enhancing oversight, that it includes provisions that could impact legitimate dissent, and that the government has not produced any plan to counter radicalization in Canadian communities.\u00a0\u201cThis legislation is sweeping, dangerously vague, and likely ineffective.<\/strong> The Conservatives have played politics and intimidated the Liberals into giving them a blank cheque to pass any law, even one like C-51 that goes too far,\u201d added Mr. Mulcair. \u00a0\u00a0NDP posistion statement, Feb. 18th 2015<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Stop Bill C-51 campaign site.<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New laws “won’t keep Canadians safer” New laws and new powers don\u2019t\u00a0necessarily guarantee security.\u00a0But new\u00a0laws that violate constitutional\u00a0rights are a prescription for mistakes,\u00a0and mistakes won\u2019t keep Canadians\u00a0safer. \u00a0Sukanya Pillay, Executive\u00a0Director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association “A secret police force” Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u00a0never tires of telling Canadians\u00a0that we are at war with the Islamic\u00a0State….<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c-51-campaign-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":462,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions\/462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communist-party.ca\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}