‘McCarthyesque’ attacks from Tories criticized
OTTAWA 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 these people 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 2012statement 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 current 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 Joanna 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 tobomb any of Canadian in frastructure or sabotage electrical grids, so I wonder if you consider yourself to be a national security threat?”
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.”
Gardee fired back: “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 ...
“McCarthyesque-type questions protected by parliamentary privilege are unbecoming of this committee.”