Parliament is back at work. With a solid majority, Ottawa is set to push through Prime Minister Stephen Harper's controversial bills on crime, immigration and copyright... and a dramatic agreement in secret.
The House of Commons and Senate are barely a week into their new year sittings, and already Canadians have seen uproars over surprise pension changes, a Senator's death penalty remarks, one MP comparing the Liberals to Hitler, and another MP's potty mouth.
But what can we expect to see in the coming months from our representatives? The Vancouver Observer scanned the files to bring you five critical laws we can expect to come into force this year.
1. The Federal Budget
Status: Not yet tabled. Anticipated in March.
We are living in the Global Age of Austerity. Despite some economists' warnings that harsh spending cuts akin to European cutbacks will harm Canada's economic recovery, business experts have already labeled the upcoming federal budget an “austerity budget.”
“What we are going to have is a budget that takes us on the road to prudent results in the medium and longer term,” said finance minister Jim Flaherty on a recent tour.
But, despite not yet being submitted to Parliament, the impending federal budget is almost certain to be one of the most dramatic in years. The Conservatives have already told government departments to cut five to ten per cent of their spending – amounting to $4 billion in cutbacks – but Treasury Board president Tony Clement has hinted at slashing $8 billion.
This will be the first Conservative majority budget – no longer is there a risk of the government toppling in a confidence motion, as happened under minority governments.
The government has promised not to touch pensions in their 2012 budget, despite much outcry around Prime Minister Harper's Swiss announcement of pension cuts, but that surprise move set the tone for dire predictions about job losses (60,000 job cuts, according to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives) and social service slashing.
But the government has also promised to eliminate its $31-billion deficit by 2015-16 – the only question is not if, but when.
In Europe, austerity measures have led to uprisings, rioting and general strikes in countries from Greece to England. How far will Canada's go? And how will Canadians react?
2. Bill C-10: Safe Streets and Communities Act
Status: Bill C-10 was quickly sent to the Senate for review, where it cleared its second reading and is currently before the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee.
This one's got many names – the media calls it the “omnibus crime bill,” its Parliamentary short name is the “Safe Streets and Communities Act,” and Bill C-10's official name would take up an entire paragraph – giving a hint of just how sweeping its changes will be:
“An Act to enact the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act and to amend the State Immunity Act, the Criminal Code, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and other Acts.”
This act has arguably raised more controversy than any other currently before parliament. Bill C-10 has come under fire from high quarters.
The draconian bill's sentencing increases and California-style mandatory minimum sentences (removing judges' discretion in drug cases) would undo decades of progress in Canada's correctional system, warned David Daubney, a former Conservative MP and just-retired from his long-time position as a senior Department of justice advisor.
“It was clear the government wasn’t interested in what the research said or in evidence that was quite convincingly set out,” Daubney told the Globe and Mail. “The policy is based on fear – fear of criminals and fear of people who are different.
“Overcrowding is already severe at both the federal and provincial levels. It’s going to get tougher, and prisons will be more violent places. We may go back to the era of riots in prisons. I’m afraid it is going to get worse before it gets any better.”
Last week, Nunavut was the latest province to criticize the act. Provinces have balked at what they say is the federal government off-loading prison costs onto provinces, who will have to stomach the dramatic increase in inmates as well as more time in courtrooms.
Justice minister Rob Nicholson promised to amend some portions of the act after it was criticized in the Senate – particularly after newspapers noticed that under the bill, sentences would become worse for drug-related offences than for pedophiles:
“Growing 201 pot plants in a rental unit would receive a longer mandatory sentence than someone who rapes a toddler or forces a five-year-old to have sex with an animal,” wrote Province columnist Ethan Baron – and only six plants would land one with double the sentence of someone who lured a child to watch pornography. Even Prime Minister Stephen Harper took notice and promised that sex offenders would get tougher sentences.
The government says that Bill C-10 will ensure justice for victims of crime and protect the public – despite statistics showing dropping crime rates across the country.
“Let's not talk about statistics,” public safety minister Vic Toews told a Senate committee. “Let's talk about danger... I want people to be safe.”
“I don't know if the statistics demonstrate that crime is down... If there's a danger to (the public), that danger needs to be addressed and this legislation addresses that.”
3. Bill C-4: Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act
Status: Bill C-4 is in its second reading before the House of Commons.
After 500 Tamils arrived on the shores of B.C. in the MV Sun Sea in 2010 – having fled a brutal civil war in Sri Lanka – the Conservative government ratcheted up their rhetoric around human smuggling and “queue-jumping” illegals.
It's been in the works for several years and through several Parliaments – but now the Conservatives have an unstoppable majority, they are sure to pass their immigration bill. Immigration, like crime, is one of the party's bread-and-butter issues and has particular appeal to their voter base.
Bill C-4 is ostensibly designed to target human traffickers – profiteering smugglers who capitalize off dangerously transporting human cargo.
But critics point to provisions in the law which impose indefinite detention for migrants arriving on Canada's shores, a policy torn from Australia's playbook. In the latter country, the government was forced to relocate its refugee detention centres outside its constitutional jurisdiction to the sovereign island nation of Nauru – where migrants protested by sewing their mouths shut behind barb-wire fences. Australia has more recently seen migrant detention protests on its own Christmas Island facility, which got worldwide attention.
Here's some of what's in the bill:
- Section 20: The Minister of Immigration may deem a migrant “irregular” if he or she is of the opinion that their arrival is profiting a criminal organization or terrorist group, or if the minister believes identifying the migrants or other investigations would take too long. The wording of the minister's “opinion” and “reasonable grounds to suspect” are particularly troubling to critics.
- Section 55: Once deemed “irregular,” immigration officers may arrest and detain the foreign national without warrant.
- Section 57: “Irregular” foreign nationals – unless they successfully qualify for refugee protection or are ordered released by the Minister of Immigration – are to be imprisoned indefinitely. The bill mandates an Immigration Division review of their detention no earlier than one year after their detention, and every six months afterwards.
Migrant justice organization No One Is Illegal (NOII) has slammed the bill for its detention clauses, and argues that outlawing human smuggling ignores the reasons migrants choose to pay for transport to safer countries.
“Many refugees have no choice but to use irregular means, including resorting to smugglers, to flee persecution,” NOII wrote in a statement. “Under the banner of combating human smuggling and deterring the arrival of boats such as the MV Sun Sea, this is a bill that blatantly criminalizes refugees and targets them for imprisonment and/or deportation.
“By today’s standards, Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad would have been considered a human smuggling operation.”
But immigration minister Jason Kenney responded with a National Post editorial, saying that critics have taken the bill out of context.
“Unfortunately, this bill has been widely misunderstood and even misrepresented by special interest groups, and by the opposition,” he wrote. “Taken out of context, 'detention' may sound harsh for the legitimate refugees who may be among the illegal arrivals.
“But we believe that humane and temporary detention, which will last up to a year or until a refugee’s claim can be verified, is the only reasonable and responsible approach to the broader problem of human smuggling... It also means the violent criminals and terrorists we know will be among the same group of arrivals will not be released into Canadian communities.”
However, The Vancouver Observer was unable to find minister Kenney's alleged one-year maximum detention clause in Bill C-4. In fact, Section 57's stipulations of 6-month reviews after the expiry of one year in detention suggest indefinite detention for asylum-seekers – as practiced in Australia – may, in fact, be on the books.
4. Bill C-11: Copyright Modernization Act
Status: Currently, Bill C-11 is in its second reading in the House of Commons.
This bill – officially titled An Act to amend the Copyright Act – lacks the high profile of the Conservatives' law-and-order and immigration agendas. But with recent worldwide website blackout protests against the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Bill C-11 has been called Canada's own SOPA. And it has some music, film and online content users extremely worried.
“The bill represents a key pillar in the government’s continued support of the digital economy,” federal industry minister Christian Paradis told The Hill Times. “It will provide a framework that is both forward-looking and flexible, and which gives creators and users the confidence they require to fully engage in the global digital economy.”
Essentially, Bill C-11 seeks to modernize Canada's copyright laws – expanding copyright protection into the digital and online realm.
But critics warn that this copyright bill panders to industry interests at the expense of freedom of information and expression – even allowing government to censor content and block access to websites deemed to “facilitate” piracy.
“Behind-the-scenes,” wrote law professor Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, in the Toronto Star, “the same lobby groups that promoted SOPA in the U.S. have been pushing for drastic changes to the Canadian bill would make it even more restrictive by limiting new consumer rights, expanding potential liability, and importing provisions similar to those found in SOPA.”
5. The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA)
Status: Being negotiated in secret with the European Union. Canada announced recently it has completed nine rounds of negotiations so far – and is set on completing the free trade agreement this year.
“Bilateral economic relations with the EU are very important to Canada, and this economic relationship is a high priority for the Government of Canada,” says the foreign affairs and international trade website. CETA, the government argues, is simply an extension of decades of trans-Atlantic trade.
But, though not widely known, this free trade bill has come under extensive fire – and even more when documents were leaked last week from the secret negotiations suggesting the government might be putting water privatization and other services on the bargaining table.
While technically CETA is not legislation before Parliament, it could have an extraordinary impact on our cities, provinces and country. Critics warn that the free trade deal would allow corporations to sue any level of government – even municipalities – and overturn their decisions if they harm business profits. Such powers would go even further than CETA's forebears, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
This is not a conspiracy theory. The Union of British Columbia Municipalities and 20 other governments across the country requested (unsuccessfully, so far) to be excluded from the treaty; Toronto city councillors presented a wooden Trojan horse to the city as a warning; Saskatoon city council has been debating opposition to the agreement.
The Council of Canadians – with more than 100,000 members – alleges that the agreement would bar municipalities or provinces from enacting 'buy local' laws, or requirements that companies employ a certain amount of local workers.
“Canadian municipalities are rapidly losing their ability to build local economies and set sustainable policies,” the group said in a statement. “The federal government is pursuing international trade deals that target municipal powers and services, without giving a real say to local governments.”
Others have warned that CETA will force Canada to loosen its drug patent laws to align them with more pro-business European standards which give pharmaceutical companies longer patents, and delay production of cheap generics.
“The immediate issue around CETA is we have to agree to align our pharmaceutical patents to the European ones – which are much more in favour of the transnational drug companies – and their patent regime,” the Council of Canadians' Maude Barlow told the Vancouver Observer in an ealier interview. “That would increase our drug prices by about $3 billion a year.
“CETA applies to not just the federal government but provincial and municipal governments. That immediately offsets any kind of cost-cutting you might want to do for health care.”
Most dramatically, unlike the above bills on Parliament's agenda, CETA will require no public debate, nor any discussion in the House of Commons. It will simply be presented to legislators, at some point, for ratification. Whether Canadians learn the truth about what is being negotiated is, as yet, unknown.