Tag Archives: C51

Tyee: Six Things Protesters Need to Know about Bill C-51

By Alyssa Stryker and Carmen Cheung | The Tyee

At over 60 pages, Bill C-51 — the Anti-Terrorism Act — is a heavy read. The bill proposes a myriad of radical changes to Canadian law and to Canada’s national security apparatus, many of which seriously jeopardize the rights and freedoms of Canadians while promising little improvement to public safety.

Canada’s privacy commissioner, ex-CSIS officials, former prime ministers and international whistleblower Edward Snowden have all raised alarm about the bill’s impacts on Canadians’ freedom and privacy. Lawyers at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association have gone over the bill paragraph by paragraph, and we’ve outlined the parts of this document that concern us most.

1. Bill C-51 drastically expands the definition of ‘security.’
When you think of being secure, you likely think of being safe from physical danger. But Bill C-51 defines security as not only safeguarding public safety, but also preventing interference with various aspects of public life or “the economic or financial stability of Canada.” With this definition, a separatist demonstration in Quebec that fails to get a proper permit, a peaceful logging blockade by First Nations, or environmentalists obstructing a pipeline route could all be seen as threats to national security.

2. It gives the government too much discretion to pick and choose which individuals and groups to target for further scrutiny.
Bill C-51 gives the government the ability to designate an extraordinarily broad range of activities as potential security threats. The government claims it will use good judgment when deciding which individuals and groups constitute true threats. Whether or not a group is deemed a national security threat may hinge on whether their cause is politically popular or in line with the views of the government. Continue reading

rabble: Bill C-51 wants you to stop protesting in support of Palestinians

By Paul Weiberg, rabble.ca

One of the less discussed questions of the Harper government’s anti-terror bill, Bill C-51, is whether Palestinian rights advocates and advocates of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) will be targeted by CSIS agents armed with new powers to target and disrupt, courtesy of a judicial warrant.

Admittedly, the legislation and its intended objects are vague, except that what constitutes “terrorism,” seems to be broadening beyond wanton acts of violence.

So, we need to be on guard when Public Safety minister Steven Blaney, the author of Bill-C-51, also talks about “zero tolerance” for promoters of the international BDS campaign against Israel.

What does that exactly mean? We know that Harper and his Conservatives have cozied up so close to Israeli government and policy that there appears to be little daylight between them at the moment. Continue reading

Tyee: Privacy Commissioner Slams Bill C-51

By Jeremy J. Nuttall, TheTyee.ca

Canada’s privacy commissioner says the country’s proposed anti-terror legislation is excessive and provides no judicial recourse for those who are victims of improper use of parts of the legislation by authorities.

Daniel Therrien’s submission to the House of Commons public safety committee regarding Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act, was made public Friday morning. In it, Therrien said the bill is not clear on a number of points, particularly in relation to activities that “undermine” the security of Canada.

Therrien said the bill does not strike a balance between security and safety which is something Canadians “want and expect” from such legislation.

“I have repeatedly heard that Canadians understand the need to share their information with the government, but that they have concerns about how this information is going to be used,” he writes in his conclusion. “They are particularly concerned with the issue of government surveillance.

“Bill C-51 does nothing to assuage those fears.”

Concern that Bill C-51 would give the go ahead for law enforcement to harass legitimate protesters has been at the forefront of the controversy over the legislation. Continue reading

Voices: Case Study of Bill C-51: Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015


Voices/Voix Case study

What Happened
Since the fall of 2014, the Harper government has introduced two significant bills to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and other national security related legislation, identified as Bill C-51 and Bill C-44. At the time of writing, Bill C-44 has been passed by the House of Commons and is awaiting approval by the Senate while Bill C-51 (introduced in Parliament in January 2015) is entering its second reading in the House. The amendments proposed, especially through Bill C-51, represent the most sweeping changes to the powers of CSIS since its inception in 1984 and create far-reaching, vague and controversial changes to anti-terrorism legislation that potentially criminalize now lawful activity, create new vaguely defined speech crimes, and increase the scope for CSIS to engage in secret judicially-approved counter-terrorism actions in Canada as well as in foreign countries.

Background
In 1984, CSIS was created as a response to the McDonald Commission, which recommended a separation between national security policing and intelligence functions. National security intelligence would be limited to information gathering, and CSIS’ performance of its duties and functions would be subject to the review of the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC). Unlawful disruption tactics, including barn burnings, property destruction, break-ins, thefts, and abusive investigation techniques by the RCMP were strongly condemned. In the aftermath of the McDonald Commission Report, the government created CSIS as a legally more constrained, domestic, civilian intelligence collection service. Indeed, later in that decade, an important reform removed the controversial area of “subversion” from the RCMP’s mandate. Continue reading

SFSC: Harper’s Anti-Terrorism Act isn’t about Terrorism: it’s a Torture Act

By Michael Keefer, SFSC Member

The Harper government’s Bill C-51, or Anti-Terrorism Act, has been in the public domain for over a month. Long enough for us to know that it subverts basic principles of constitutional law, assaults rights of free speech and free assembly, and is viciously anti-democratic.

An unprecedented torrent of criticism has been directed against this bill as the government rushes it through Parliament. This has included stern or at least sceptical editorials in all the major newspapers; an open letter, signed by four former Prime Ministers and five former Supreme Court judges, denouncing the bill for exposing Canadians to major violations of their rights; and another letter, signed by a hundred Canadian law professors, explaining the dangers it poses to justice and legality.

As its critics have shown, the bill isn’t really about terrorism: it’s about smearing other activities by association―and then suppressing them in ways that would formerly have been flagrantly illegal. The bill targets, among others, people who defend the treaty rights of First Nations, people who oppose tar sands, fracking, and bitumen-carrying pipelines as threats to health and the environment, and people who urge that international law be peacefully applied to ending Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories. (Members of this latter group include significant numbers of Canadian Jews.)

But the Anti-Terrorism Act is more mortally dangerous to Canadian democracy than even these indications would suggest. A central section of the act empowers CSIS agents to obtain judicial warrants―on mere suspicion, with no requirement for supporting evidence―that will allow them to supplement other disruptive actions against purported enemies of Harperland with acts that directly violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and other Canadian laws.
The only constraints placed on this legalized law-breaking are that CSIS agents shall not “(a) cause, intentionally or by criminal negligence, death or bodily harm to an individual; (b) wilfully attempt in any manner to obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice; or (c) violate the sexual integrity of an individual.”

The second of these prohibitions―occurring in the midst of a bill that seeks systematically to obstruct citizens in the exercise of their rights, pervert justice, and defeat democracy―might tempt one to believe that there is a satirist at work within the Department of Justice. (Note, however, that CSIS agents can obstruct, pervert and defeat to their hearts’ content, so long as they do so haphazardly, rather than “wilfully.”)
But the first and third clauses amount to an authorization of torture. Continue reading

Embassy: Anti-terrorism and war-mongering. Canadians don’t seem to understand the political manipulation underway

The futility of war

Leaders see the invasion of another country as an easy short-term policy. Canadians don’t seem to understand the political manipulation underway.

Gar Pardy, Embassy Magazine

It is to be regretted that historian Barbara Tuchman is no longer with us. If she was, there is some certainty she would add the “war on terror” and its offshoots to her catalogue of political follies she intelligently identified in her book The March of Folly.

The book has been described as “meditation on the historical recurrence of governments pursuing policies evidently contrary to their own interests.” As Western powers stumble around the battlefields of the Middle East and Central Asia, there is overwhelming evidence supporting the conclusion that today’s policies are contrary to their own interests.

Since the start of our third millennium, the back-to-back wars against so-called terrorism are really wars against ourselves. Bill C-51, the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act, is but the latest misdirected attempt by the government to fight a war it wants it to be, not the one we read about each morning. Continue reading

CCPA: Bill C-51: A Legal Primer

Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Overly broad and unnecessary anti-terrorism reforms could criminalize free speech
By Clayton Ruby and Nader R. Hasan

Six Muslim young adults stand in front of a mosque late at night in heated discussion in some foreign language. They may be debating the merits of a new Drake album. They may be talking about video games, or sports, or girls, or advocating the overthrow of the Harper government. Who knows? There is no evidence one way or the other. Just stereotypes. But the new standard for arrest and detention—reason to suspect that they may commit an act—is so low that an officer may be inclined to arrest and detain them in order to investigate further. And now, officers will no longer need to ask themselves whether the arrest is necessary. They could act on mere suspicion that an arrest is likely to prevent any terrorist activity. Yesterday, the Muslim men were freely exercising constitutional rights to freedom of expression and assembly. Today they are arrestable.

Overview: The Anti-Terrorism Act

Bill C-51,the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015, would expand the powers of Canada’s spy agency, allow Canadians to be arrested on mere suspicion of future criminal activity, allow the Minister of Public Safety to add Canadians to a “no-fly list” with illusory rights of judicial review, and, perhaps most alarmingly, create a new speech-related criminal offence of “promoting” or “advocating” terrorism. These proposed laws are misguided, and many of them are likely also unconstitutional. The bill ought to be rejected as a whole. Repair is impossible. Continue reading

The Walrus: Bill C-51: the Good, the Bad . . . and the Truly Ugly

Two eminent legal scholars detail exactly what we should welcome—and what should fear—in the government’s new anti-terror legislation
By Craig Forcese and Kent Roach
The Walrus, February 13, 2015
Bill C-51, the Harper government’s recently proposed “Anti-terrorism Act,” restructures our national security laws so extensively that it will take years before we understand the law’s full effect. There is good in the act, but there also is bad, and even truly ugly. The details are difficult for non-experts to navigate. That is why we are providing Walrus readers with this summary. Continue reading