The Combating Terrorism Act vs Justin Trudeau

On Thursday, three days after the Boston Marathon bombings, the Cons still had scheduled an opposition day for Monday - a day on which the opposition parties set the day's agenda. But then on Friday, an hour after learning that Justin Trudeau would spend it introducing his Backbenchers' Spring motion, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan suddenly announced that opp day was cancelled due to the vital national importance of debating the Combating Terrorism Act on Monday instead ... because of the Boston Marathon bombing.
Sure, whatever.

Notable that the S-7 Combating Terrorism Act would have passed already in its previous incarnations as Bill C-17 and C-19 if Steve hadn't prorogued Parliament. On September 22, 2010 the entire Liberal Party but one voted along with the Cons to pass C-17. Then on October 23 2012, the entire Liberal Party save 5 voted in favour of S-7.

Dear Libs : and this is why you can't be taken seriously as a credible opposition to Steve or a partner in any coalition against Steve. Prior to the last election, you expected to be given a pass for voting along with Steve hundreds of times owing to the fact you couldn't afford to bring down the government because you weren't ready to have an election. You don't have that excuse any longer. Really looking forward to hearing your cautious mousy noises against innocent citizens being incarcerated without trial before you all vote along with Steve once again, just so no one can call you soft on terrorism :

Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia said that the Liberals will be supporting Bill S-7 and noted that many of the original measures were first introduced by the Chretien government in 2001.

S-7. Let's suppose you know someone, perhaps your landlord or a colleague at work, that the government suspects may one day in the future commit an act of terrorism. You can be detained for up to 3 days without charge while being questioned. You don't get to hear, let alone challenge, any evidence given against you or your colleague, even if it's tortured out of someone you've never heard of in Syria, and you can be held without trial for a year if you don't co-operate.

Sure, you're a model citizen but are you sure you don't know any of these suspected terrorists for instance? ...

Building Resilience Against Terrorism : Canada’s Counter-terrorism Strategy
Public Safety Canada 2012 , introduced by Vic Toews :

"...domestic extremism that is “based on grievances – real or perceived – revolving around the promotion of various causes such as animal rights, white supremacy, environmentalism and anti-capitalism."

which is merely a rehash of the language in :
2010 G8 Summit - Integrated Security Unit Joint Intelligence Group 
but minus the reference to "First nations' resource-based grievances" :
1a The Terrorist Threat
     1b The Public Order Threat

"The 2010 G8 summit in Huntsville ... will likely be subject to actions taken by criminal extremists motivated by a variety of radical ideologies. These ideologies may include variants of anarchism, anarcho-syndicalism, nihilism, socialism and/or communism. These ideologies may also include notions of racial supremacy and white power ... 

"The important commonality is that these ideologies ... place these individuals and/or organizations at odds with the status quo and the current distribution of power in society. 

In addition to these generally held tenets, a variety of grievances exist: These grievances are based upon notions/expectations regarding the environment, animal rights, First nations'(sic) resource-based grievances, gender/racial equality, and distribution of wealth etc."

 The G8/G20 - in which thousands of people got locked up for days for no reason whatsoever.

So who wants to see the G8/G20 pilot project experiment in "terrorism" law enforcement expanded into law right across Canada? 

The Cons have had this version of the terrorism bill lying around for months, just waiting for a day when they needed to change the channel, and today is that day - they've decided to have the third reading on embedding preventative arrest and secret trials in law for no other reason than to change the channel on Justin Trudeau. 
.
10:45 Update : 
After watching the proceedings for an hour and a half now, I must apologize for writing re the Libs:

Really looking forward to hearing your cautious mousy noises against innocent citizens being incarcerated without trial before you all vote along with Steve once again, just so no one can call you soft on terrorism.

I take it back - they are not even bothering to do that much. 
Aside from the two Lib MPs questioning the timing of bringing this bill forward now to offset Trudeau's backbencher freedom motion, the only debate going on is among NDP MPs regarding provisions of the act. After opening remarks from Con Public Safety parlsec Candice Bergen, the Cons have not responded once. 

2pm Update : So "Operation Smooth", carried out by Homeland Security, FBI, and Canadian law enforcement, thwarted the Trainspotter Two without the benefit of the Combating Terrorism Act. Huh.
.
Wednesday April 24 2013 Update : S-7 passes into law.

Libs and Cons - 183 Yes     vs      NDP, Bloc and Green - 93 No

Feb 2 2014 Update : C-44 - An Act to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other Acts   Passed
Libs and Cons - 174 Yes       vs        NDP, Green - 81No
.

Inside the Public Safety Committee : G20 preventative arrests

At the Public Safety Committee yesterday, Toronto Chief Bill Blair lobbed the following statement about "preventive detention" into the proceedings [just before the 4 minute mark]:

"I think you are all familiar with images of members of that group who were smashing windows, burning cars, looting stores, and generally causing a great deal of mayhem through vandalism and violence in the city of Toronto. We began to take the steps necessary to contain that threat and over the course of that weekend, the criminal conspiracy to commit criminal acts did not end on Saturday afternoon and it did not end when they left Yonge St. It continued. We were gathering intelligence and information from within the crowd and we had other sources of information that made it very clear to us that the criminal intent of the people involved in those criminal acts continued throughout the weekend. Our ability to continue to police lawful peaceful protest was quite frankly compromised by the actions of those who instead undertook the actions of a mob and engaged in criminal acts, and it was necessary, and decisions were made by our operational commanders and by our major [inaudible] commanders that it was necessary to disperse those crowds, and if the crowds refused to disperse, in order to prevent a breach of the peace, to take persons into preventive detention and that did take place over the course of the weekend."

Testimony on one such preventative detention was given by biochemistry student Kevin Gagnon, arrested with around 70 others at gunpoint off the floor of the U0fT gymnasium floor at 4am and held for over 60 hours before being released without charge on the stipulation he leave Toronto within 24 hours.

Don Davies, NDP : "70 out of 70 people had their charges dropped. ....Who made the decision to burst into that gymnasium and arrest 70 sleeping students?"

Blair : "The investigators who were investigating that case and I must tell you it's a very complicated case involving a great deal of evidence which I'm not going to be able to disclose and discuss with you here today."

Davies : "Can we have the names of the investigators who made that decision?"
Blair : "I don't have them here with me today."
Davies : "Could you undertake to provide that to the committee?
Blair : Yes.

Side note : Davies asked about police officers covering up or removing their name badges and Blair responded that it was against his rules so the "approximately 90 officers" who were identified as going badgeless will probably face disciplinary action in the form of loss of one day's pay.

Ok, back to 'preventive detention'.

Roger Gaudet, Bloc : "I saw the pictures. How come you didn't arrest these people who were masked? You entered into a university gym and you arrested people who were sleeping at 4am. This wasn't Halloween; this was June and yet they were masked. How come you didn't arrest them? They were all together - it would have been easy to surround them and then you'd be finished for the whole weekend. Instead you let them be and you arrested poor students in the university in a gym. Show me the logic in that."

Blair : "This was a crowd of several thousand and for the police to penetrate that crowd in an effort to apprehend those individuals ...First of all they had not yet begun to riot tumultuously as they did the following day and so unfortunately there needs to be ..."

Gaudet : "But those people were masked. This wasn't a masquerade. You know what you had to do. You should have arrested them right away but no, the police went into a school the next morning in a university. This is a farce."

Blair : The decision was made not to try to penetrate this crowd because it would have created a more dangerous situation, and in fact an operational decision was made by investigators that a safer place to apprehend people who they believed were involved in criminal activity was in the school gymnasium away from this crowd. That that was a safer thing to do. Our responsibility is to maintain the rule of law and protect the public but also to do our job in such a way which does not compromise public safety and a decision was made not to try to penetrate this crowd to remove this group but to rather do it in a more safe environment, which is why the arrests were made in a school gymnasium in the very early hours of the morning as opposed to out on the street where a riot might have ensued."

Insert joke here about the drunk looking for his car keys under the streetlight because there's more light there.

Maria Mourani, Bloc : "You stated that you made a choice to conduct the arrests in the gymnasium so you're starting from the premise ... they presumed that there were Black Blocs in the gymnasium?"

Blair : "The police had reason to believe that the people they were arresting were involved in criminal activity and there was a number of different investigations .. evidence had been gathered ..."

Mourani : "You had evidence. You say you had evidence. So why is it that the people in the gymnasium all had their charges dropped? Maybe one or two still have charges outstanding because they refuse to plead guilty..."

Blair : I don't have the details ... I can only offer you my understanding of the explanation I have received as to why those charges were dropped and it was because the police did not have the appropriate warrant for the apprehension of those individuals. But that does not negate the fact that they had evidence to make an arrest."

Mourani : "What you're saying is that they had no warrant to have some one hundred people arrested in a gymnasium ... they ended up in a detention centre where their individual rights were violated... there was no warrant for that arrest that was conducted in that gymnasium? That's what I understood just now."

Blair : "The circumstances of that arrest required what is known as a Feeney warrant and the police did not have the appropriate warrant to make those arrests. The Crown also..."

Mourani : "No warrant and they proceeded with those arrests. This is fantastic."

Blair : "The Crown also commented that the officers had reasonable and probable grounds to make that arrest but it was a technical problem with the way in which the arrest was done and that is why the charges were dropped. That's my understanding."

Here's my understanding.
If police knowingly arrest people illegally with the wrong warrant, they are safely assured that those arrests will never make it to court where gross violations of civil liberties like "preventive detention" can be aired and challenged.

And let's not forget the Canadian grand-daddy of legalizing preventive detention, the Combating Terrorism Act, has already passed second reading in the House and is well on the road to never being challenged by this committee.

Public Safety Committee Liberal MPs Andrew Kania and Mark Holland, as already noted by Kady and blogged by Boris, completely avoided any questioning of Blair yesterday as to violations of civil liberties. Not word one. Kady :

"This, by the way, is what happens when the Liberals are terrified to be targeted by Conservative Party InfoAlerteBots accusing them of being insufficiently supportive of police: not a single question about civil liberties or the treatment of the summit detainees, but long, meandering lines of questioning on logistical decisions and, if they can manage it, fake lakes.".

Yeah, well the Libs voted for the Combating Terrorism Act last month too.

Update : Also see Pogge : Preventative detention.
.
Update #2 : Chief Blair explained more about preventative detention towards the end of the meeting when Kania asked why so many arrests at G20, none at G8:

"People were apprehended and detained under that [breach of the peace] legislation [of the criminal code] without intention of bringing them up on criminal charges because there is no charge under breach of the peace. It is simply a preventative detention to maintain the public peace."

.

Combating Terrorism Act passes 2nd reading

On the same day the nation was preoccupied with the national Con/Lib competition for votes to kill/preserve the long gun registry, the Libs and Cons got together to slip the Combating Terrorism Act through second reading in the House - 220 votes to 84 in a classic Con/Lib vs NDP/Bloc split -just ten minutes before the long gun vote.

The Libs and Cons may disagree on whether it is either useful or an egregious invasion of privacy and civil liberties that Canadians should have to spend a few minutes registering a long gun online, but when it comes to locking Canadians up for 12 months without a warrant or compelling them to appear before a court based on some anonymous tip, they're both just fine with that.

The right to remain silent, the right not to be jailed without charge, the right to know what the charges are against you - pfft!

In reintroducing Bill C-17 for the third time on Monday - to reinstate provisions from the Anti-terrorism Act of 2001 - Justice Minister Rob Nicholson emphasized a fabulous new feature:

"The key here is that the person required to attend an investigative hearing is treated as a witness, not someone who is accused of a crime."

True, as long as your definition of "witness" includes being arrested if you don't comply and being detained for 72 hours if you do.

But what if you are also suspected of being likely to commit a terrorist crime some time in the future. Well, then :

"a judge can order the person's detention for up to 12 months."

But no worries. A brand new civil rights safety provision in this regurgitated version of 9/11 law stipulates that every 12 months the Attorney General and the Public Safety Minister - that would be Nicholson himself and Vic lock-'em-up Toews respectively - must "provide their opinions, supported by reasons, as to whether the operations of these provisions should be extended."

Liberal critic for Public Safety & National Security Mark Holland made some noises about balancing national security with individual liberty and how :

"the government has completely ignored most of the key recommendations that came from Justice O'Connor [re Maher Arar], which were supported by Justice Iacobucci and were repeated by the RCMP Public Complaints Commissioner Paul Kennedy"

but then two days later, he voted for it along with the rest of the Libs.

There were hours and hours of speeches in the House this Monday and Tuesday :

Lib Marlene Jennings said right off the bat on Monday that the Libs would be voting for C-17 to proceed to committee.

NDP Joe Comartin noted "there is no crime related to terrorism not already included in the Criminal Code."

Bloc Maria Mourani : Arar. CSIS supports info gained via torture. Why would we give them even more secret powers?

NDP Wayne Marston worried we were regressing to pre Magna Carta sensibilities.

Con Colin Carrie accused "the coalition" of being "soft on terror".

Bloc Serge Ménard noted that under the War Measures Act "almost all candidates who ran against Mayor Drapeau [in the Montreal elections] were incarcerated. A law which goes so far as to incarcerate political opponents has already been used once in our history," he said.

NDP Don Davies brought up the "preventative arrest of 1,100 Canadians arrested at G20 for simply walking in the street" and asked why a government so against turning people into criminals for refusing to answer the long form census was at the same time happy to lock people up for refusing to answer questions based merely on suspicions?

Lib Derek Lee said Canadians already don't have the legal right to remain silent. (he's wrong about that.)

NDP Bill Siksay noted that security certificates were intended to expedite deportation of non-citizens yet they have been used instead to jail people for up to eight years without a trial. Slippery slope.


As I said - hours and hours of debate.
But then NDP Libby Davies wondered why there were hundreds of pages in newspapers across the country dealing with the gun registry but not one mention of the debate on the Combating Terrorism Act.

Good question, Libby.
The papers were full of the return of the House and Slagging Period, in which C-17 was not mentioned, yet whenever the Cons and Libs get together to pass something really draconian, like the Canada Colombia FTA or this Bill C-17, suddenly the media loses all interest.

Here's another question. After much initial fanfare about how important this bill is in the fight against 'terrists', and with the Libs onside since June 2009, the Cons have allowed it to languish in limbo for the last 15 months. Now it's the first government order to be put before the House this week. Why is that?
.

Combating Terrorism Act 2010, redux, redo

Your government announced today it needs more powers to combat terrorism.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson : "These provisions are necessary to protect our country from the threat of terrorism."
A redo of the panicky now defunct Anti-terrorism Act of 2001, the new Combating Terrorism Act includes preventive arrest and forcing people to testify at secret hearings about terrorist acts that might happen in the future, and if you don't like it you can go to jail for up to a year with a judge's option to extend.

There are more safeguards included this time round - you can have a lawyer! at any time! - which will only allow the Libs to go along with it so as not to be painted as soft on terrorism. Mark Holland, Liberal critic for Public Safety and National Security, already looking to cave.

The argument in favour of anti-terrorism legislation is that criminal law only deals with crimes already committed. What to do about people who feel that crimes perpetrated by the state against their people require a response like blowing things up?

The argument against it is ... well, let's look at how they're doing with the laws they've already got.

The federal government case against Ottawa terror suspect Mohamed Harkat appears to have suffered a significant blow Wednesday when a document was introduced in court showing that Abu Zubaydah, once considered a master terrorist and 9/11 mastermind, actually had nothing to do with the attacks.

Even more surprising, the document, which quotes U.S court filings declassified last week, shows that Zubaydah, once believed to be one of the top leaders in al-Qaeda, was not even a member of the terrorist group.

The unfortunate Abu Zubaydah got waterboarded 83 times in the US, coughed up Harkat's name, and the Canadian government obligingly held Harkat for 3 1/2 years.
A clue about the reliability of Abu Zubaydah's "testimony" might have been found in his confession to terrorist acts committed after his imprisonment, but sadly, no, it wasn't.

Abdelrazik? "Closely associated" with the same hapless Abu Zubaydah.
Result? Abdelrazik was tortured, then exiled in Sudan for six years. Still on the UN's 1267 terror list, and the Canadian government has frozen his bank account and he can't work.
Help him get off that list? Blow me, said Minister of Public Security Peter Van Loan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon.

Maher Arar - the first inkling for many of us that something had gone terribly wrong.
Adil Charkaoui - in custody 21 months, now free.
Hassan Almrei - in custody for 8 years, now free.
Mahmoud Jaballah - in custody for 6 years, now free.
Mohammad Mahjoub - in custody for 7 years, freed, requested return to jail in 2009 to protest bail conditions worse than jail.
Benamar Benatta - rendered to US for 5 years
Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, Muayyed Nureddin

And then there's the ever-expanded definition of what constitutes terrorism.
According to Jason Kenney's "infandous" Mr. Velshi, George Galloway's proposed visit to Canada last year to give a speech entitled "Resisting war from Gaza to Kandahar" was sufficient for him to brand a sitting British MP on tour in the US "a terrorist supporter".

Nothing about these vile clowns inspires any confidence in their wanting to accrue more secretive powers to their already abused arsenal of abominations.
.