The Canadian government rushed its new anti-terror bill through parliament this past week. Bill C-51 allows the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to intervene in any activity it deems to undermine the security of Canadians.
The new bill will better "protect Canadians," according to Justice Minister Peter Mackay. What MacKay can't clearly articulate is what the bill will protect Canada from: when pressed by a CBC reporter how the federal government defines terrorism (MacKay had recently said a Halifax mass-shooting plot wasn't terrorism because it wasn't "culturally motivated"), he simply shot back: "look it up."
Critics, however, argue that the extended powers are ripe for abuse.
The proposed legislation even prompted American civil rights activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader to draw comparisons between the Harper government and the actions of the Bush regime following 9/11.
Nevertheless, the Canadian public overwhelmingly supports these extended measures to combat terrorism. In a recent Angus Reid poll, 82 percent of Canadians supported the new bill while a significant minority—36 percent—believed it does not go far enough.
A strong caveat here is that 69 percent of respondents also felt that more oversight should be coupled with increased power granted to the state security apparatus.
Indeed, this public view was supported by recommendations from the inquiry investigating the heinous detention of Maher Arar back in 2006.
Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, those recommendations were not adopted. In fact, in 2012 the federal government eliminated a key CSIS watchdog as an austerity measure.
This past week, four former prime ministers and 18 others—including among them former Supreme Court justices and previous ministers of justice and public safety—penned an open letter to the government expressing apprehension over the new bill and the need to balance security with oversight and checks in the system.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Union echoes these concerns. "New laws and new powers don’t necessarily guarantee security,” the organization said in a statement.
Meanwhile, while there is no evidence that these measures will confer greater public safety, experience abroad indicates that individual rights and freedoms are at risk when more power is handed to the state.
Concerns about civil liberties aside, there is little doubt that Canadians—like our neighbours to the south and our allies in Europe—are afraid. Polls indicate as much. And, as our American counterparts have shown time and again since 9/11, a fearful populace is a malleable one. It is this fear that appears to drive support for legislation which directly challenges the freedoms we so cherish.
From where does this fear arise?
Certainly these are troubled times. But the trepidation of 'bad people' doing terrible things to 'us' is not entirely a genuine one. Nevertheless, elsewhere there is plenty of fodder for fear.
Climate change, nuclear arsenals located throughout the world, an increasing scarcity of arable land and clean water—none of these are existential. They are unfolding as we speak and are clear threats to the survival of the species. And our government—like many others—is doing precious little about them.
In other words, the proportionality of a threat does not appear to correlate with the response. At least when political interests are involved.
Politicians here, just as in America and Europe, are intent on fomenting fear designed specifically to extend government powers through legislation which curtails freedoms that people in our societies fought hard to win.
While perhaps different in magnitude, the Canadian strategy is similar in kind to those adopted during the McCarthy era of the cold war or in the Patriot Act of post-9/11 America.
Just listen to Stephen Harper.
"A great evil has been descending over our world, an evil that has been growing more and more powerful: violent jihadism... one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced." So said our Prime Minister of late.
Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Steven Blaney was more specific in introducing the bill. "The international jihadist movement has declared war on Canada and our allies."
Blaney's statement is, of course, open for some debate since—last I checked—we were the ones dropping bombs on faraway countries, while none have come our way.
However, if we accept that we are at war—against 'evil' no less—then the unjustifiable, not to mention the unnecessary, becomes justifiable (and apparently necessary).
But we should all be wary. History tells us that once we give up hard-won rights, such rights are very difficult to get back.
And it would be naive to think that the state does not have its own agenda in all of this. Under this new bill, protests against pipelines may well be fair game. Protests against trade agreements. In other words, activities that make democracy strong. Unlike this bill, which only serves to erode democratic principles.
The ongoing leaks by US whistleblower Edward Snowden show just how far the US government was willing to go once given the green light. When the Snowden story and the abuses by the National Security Agency were surfacing back in 2013, US President Obama famously reassured Americans that "nobody is listening to your phone calls" or reading private emails.
As we all now know, Obama was lying. The NSA was indeed mining data of American citizens.
Then there is the oft-quoted argument—heard ad nauseam here in Canada and to the south—which follows the line that if you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about.
But tell that to Maher Arar, who spent a year in a black hole in Syria after US and Canadian governments colluded to hand him over to Syrian authorities, presumably to extract information from him.
He was repeatedly tortured before finally being released. He never committed a crime.