New laws “won’t keep Canadians safer”
New laws and new powers don’t necessarily guarantee security. But new laws that violate constitutional rights are a prescription for mistakes, and mistakes won’t keep Canadians safer. Sukanya Pillay, Executive Director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association
“A secret police force”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force. Canadians should not be willing to accept such an obvious threat to their basic liberties. Editorial, The Globe and Mail, Feb. 1st 2015
“The entire Charter may be set aside”
[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 – the Charter protects against “unreasonable” 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 “reasonable” cruel and unusual punishment, for instance. In the result, the new provision places judges in a radical new universe. 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. 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.
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’s own backgrounder clearly anticipates that it means what the bill says: “CSIS would need a court warrant whenever proposed threat disruption measures contravene Charter rights or would otherwise be contrary to Canadian law.” Law professors Craig Forcese and Kent Roach, Feb. 12, 2015
How does “jihadism” match up with state terrorism?
How does “jihadism” match up with the lives of tens of millions of innocent civilians, destroyed since 1900 by state terrorism—west and east, north and south—or the continuing efforts seeking to seize or occupy territory? Ralph Nader, Open Letter to Stephen Harper
“We already have anti-terror laws”
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. […] Those 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. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know that CSEC has been gathering millions of internet communications every day from Canadians – even though CSEC’s mandate was supposed to apply only to foreign activities. Green Party leader, Elizabeth May
“Serious problems”
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. “This legislation is sweeping, dangerously vague, and likely ineffective. 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,” added Mr. Mulcair. NDP posistion statement, Feb. 18th 2015