Stop delaying on terror law
Last week, the Trudeau government launched its promised public consultation on security issues. The government’s embrace of democratic engagement marks a refreshing break from the remote and secretive approach of the previous administration. But this most recent example looks disturbingly like a delay tactic.
The consultations were originally supposed to coincide with proposed revisions to the Tories’ badly flawed anti-terrorism law, formerly C-51. Despite supporting the bill while in opposition, the Liberals vowed to amend the legislation’s most egregiously overreaching (and likely unconstitutional) aspects once in office. But 10 months later, not one word of the law has been changed. And now the government says any revisions will be put off until the consultation is complete.
That’s bizarre. As the Star has argued before, C-51 clearly and in several ways infringes on Canadians’ civil rights; and there is no evidence it makes us any safer. What relevance could a public consultation possibly have to whether Trudeau ought to follow through on his promise to rewrite the legislation to comply with the charter?
That’s not to say the consultation on broader issues of security is unwelcome. Surely it is to the good that Canada’s security establishment be made less opaque to Canadians and that the will of voters be better reflected in policy. But it should not be used as yet another tactic to delay the morally necessary but politically difficult decisions ahead.
Every day the law remains unchanged holds the potential that the rights of Canadians will be violated. Among the amendments the Liberals promised during the last election campaign were tweaks to three provisions that legal scholars say violate the Constitution.
Specifically, the Liberals vowed that “all Canadian Security Intelligence Service warrants would respect the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” Under the current legislation, CSIS is permitted to violate rights when disrupting suspected terrorist activities, as long as a judge has provided a warrant to do so.
They also promised to protect free speech and the rights of protesters by amending overly vague language in the law that criminalizes “terrorism propaganda” and the “promoting” of terrorism.
And they said they would require CSIS to obtain a warrant before engaging “in the surveillance of Canadians.” As privacy commissioner Daniel Therrien warned last year, C-51 allows the agency to infringe on Canadians’ privacy rights in unprecedented ways, including through the warrantless tracking of domestic metadata, which has proved so controversial in the United States. (Notably, no mention of this last campaign promise was made in the government’s announcement last week or in the discussion paper released at the launch of the public consultation.)
These provisions seem plainly to breach the Constitution. Experts have said that they do and the government has implied it understands this. One would think there’s no time like the present to scrap such measures. So why the delay? Must the majority really be consulted before individual and minority rights are upheld?
The cynical explanation is that the government has no appetite to amend the legislation, that it is buying time and building its case to do little or nothing. It may be content to leave the matter to the courts. After all, toppling laws born of fear is always politically difficult and it is much easier to provide new powers to police or security agencies than it is to take them away. The fear of political fallout in the case of a tragic event can be paralyzing.
But while the political reasons for procrastinating may be compelling, the moral responsibility to act quickly really ought to prevail. Trudeau demonstrated during the campaign that he understands the profound dangers of at least some aspects of the law. Now is the time to address them. He needn’t ask Canadians’ permission to do what his campaign promised and the Constitution demands.
Justin Trudeau shouldn’t wait any longer to fix Canada’s flawed anti-terror law