Justice for all?

This editorial ran in the Amherst News:

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service are in agreement: There are hundreds of people with strong links to Canada who are suspected of travelling overseas to engage in terrorist activity, most in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). And now, scores of them are back in Canada following the collapse of that terror state.

The odds are reasonable that there are veterans of terrorism living in Atlantic Canada.

Some troubling issues come to mind. Are the returnees determined to carry on the fight from Canada? Or are they disenchanted and want only to resume ordinary lives?

And there is a more perplexing question. Legislation passed in 2013 to combat terrorism allows authorities to arrest and prosecute Canadians who plan to join a foreign terrorist group or fight for a foreign power.

Yet when Canadians who left and fought abroad for terror groups come home, the strongest repercussion they face is increased RCMP surveillance. It doesn’t make sense. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hopeful most returnees can be rehabilitated and reintegrated back into peaceful Canadian society. Canadians might more quickly agree with Goodale’s analysis that the chances of turning around someone who has actively engaged in terrorist activities in a war zone are “pretty remote.”

Certainly, those who pose a threat should be charged.