Tory MPs not sorry for attack on security bill critics
Conservative MPs ignored opposition demands Friday to apologize to some of Canada’s leading environmentalists, civil liberty advocates and Muslims for remarks that appeared to insinuate critics were national security threats because they spoke out against the government’s security legislation.
Tory members on the Commons public safety committee launched strident questioning of three groups testifying this week against Bill C-51, which would radically change Canada’s national security laws to combat terrorism and other security threats.
The harsh remarks led the head of a group representing some of Canada’s Muslims to accuse veteran Conservative MP Diane Ablonczy of engaging in “McCarthyesque” tactics, a reference to U.S. Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s practice in the 1950s of tarring political opponents with unfair and unfounded accusations of communist links.
On Friday, NDP MP Megan Leslie rose in the House and called on Ablonczy — without success — to apologize for her “disgraceful behaviour.”
The us-versus-them tone of this week’s confrontations also evoked a 2012 statement by then-Public Safety minister Vic Toews, who stood in the House and challenged critics of the government’s proposed Internet snooping legislation with this line: “You can stand with us, or with the child pornographers.”
A hint of how the government might handle some of its Bill C-51 critics at committee first came from Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney Tuesday. Leading testimony before the committee, he spoke out against members of the opposition and “so-called experts” who oppose the bill.
The “so-called” experts to which he referred include: former prime ministers, retired Supreme Court justices, eminent former politicians, national security legal academics and constitutional scholars.
The hardcore verbal assault began Thursday with a question from committee Tory MP Rick Norlock to Carmen Cheung, senior counsel for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. The group opposes the bill, including provisions to lower the legal threshold for police to make preventive arrests — without charge — and hold individuals for up to seven days on the belief their detention will prevent a terrorist activity.
Norlock, a former OPP officer, explained there are safeguards to help prevent abuse of the proposed statute.
“Is there any degree of checks and balances that would satisfy you?” he asked Cheung. “Are you simply fundamentally opposed to taking terrorists off the street?”
Next to drop the gloves was Conservative MP LaVar Payne. Addressing Joanne Kerr, executivedirector of Greenpeace Canada, on the bill’s measures for greater sharing of Canadians’ personal information between government departments, he said: “The purpose of the act is sharing for national security threats, so it makes me wonder if your organization is a national security threat?
“I see your organization is protesting pipelines, forestry projects, but I didn’t hear anything to indicate to me that you were planning to bomb any of Canadian infrastructure or sabotage electrical grids, so I wonder if you consider yourself to be a national security threat and if you understand the definition, that it won’t apply to you as long as you don’t commit any of these terrorist activities?”
Payne’s remarks ran down the committee’s allotted question-and-response time, leaving Kerr no opportunity to respond.
Later Thursday, Albonczy turned to witness Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), and asked him to explain “continuing allegations” about his group and the “operating relationship between a Hamas front group and your organization.”
“I think it is fair to give you an opportunity to address these troubling allegations,” she said. “Because in order to work together, there needs to be a satisfaction that, you know, this can’t be a halfhearted battle against terrorism and where do you stand in light of these allegations?”
The council already is proceeding with a defamation lawsuit against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his former spokesman, Jason MacDonald. It claims MacDonald made false statements that the council has ties to Hamas.
Gardee fired back at Ablonczy: “The NCCM has condemned violent terrorism and extremism in all forms regardless of the purpose, for whatever reason. The premise of your question is false and entirely based on innuendo and misinformation. These are precisely the types of slanderous statements that have resulted in litigation that is currently ongoing. The NCCM is confident that the courts will provide the necessary clarity on these points to ensure that they are never repeated again.
“McCarthyesque-type questions protected by parliamentary privilege are unbecoming of this committee.”