Canadians who fight for Islamic State could be locked up for life without parole upon their return to Canada.
Michael Den Tandt
Say what the critics might, as strategies go, it doesn’t lack for dash.
You’d have to reach back to 1988, and the great free-trade election, to find a gamble of similar moment on a single issue in our politics. For with their pending throw-away-the-key law, the federal Conservatives have bet the farm, tractor, livestock and kitchen sink on the assumption that Canadians are anxious to smite evildoers, ranging from garden-variety serial killers to homegrown jihadi terrorists, and that the populist loathing of miscreants will supersede all else ahead of the federal election scheduled for October.
Canadians who go abroad to fight for Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, could be locked up for life without parole upon their return to Canada, under the pending tough-on-crime law unveiled by Prime Minister Stephen Harper Wednesday, the Prime Minister’s Office confirmed. “The highest responsibility of any government is to help keep Canadians safe and our country secure,” PMO spokesman Stephen Lecce wrote in an email. “Under our government’s new legislation, High Treason would carry a life sentence without parole.”
A PMO source confirmed that any Canadians who travel overseas to fight with Islamic State could be guilty of high treason under the existing definition in the Criminal Code of Canada — and thus, imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives, if convicted and sentenced under the new law.
What this amounts to, on the heels of Bill C-51, the Conservatives’ new anti-terrorism legislation, is a doubling-down on public security as the issue, to a degree not seen before from this government. It marks a significant rightward shift for a party that, before now, had tended to tinker around the margins of hang-’em-high conservatism, with such measures as mandatory minimum sentences, without ever quite leaping in with both feet.
Here’s what’s politically crafty about it: The Conservatives know beyond doubt, because of internal polling, public polling and their informal network of listening posts in ridings across Canada, that popular sentiment is with them across the breadth of this issue, from Islamic State to Clifford Olson. And here’s what’s politically dangerous: Canada is a preternaturally safe place to live in 2015, even by its own internal historical standard. Should the Tories push too hard, bray too loudly, they risk being discredited as fear mongers. It’s a subtle line to toe, for a group not overly given to subtlety.
Here’s the relevant data on throwing away the key: Nearly two-thirds of Canadians, 63 per cent, told pollster Angus Reid in March of 2013 that they favoured a return to the death penalty for murder. Thirty per cent were opposed. Among those who’d voted Conservative in 2011 nearly 80 per cent said they supported bringing back capital punishment, abolished in Canada in 1976.
Were a poll to break out the most vicious class of murderer — serial sex killers — public opinion favouring the death penalty would move to virtual unanimity.
Conclusion: Permanent incarceration, especially for murders involving sexual assault or in which the victims are children, will be well received. It doesn’t matter politically that the existing dangerous offender designation already has this effect. And never mind that rates of violent crime in Canada are at their lowest level in 40 years. The symbolism is the point. And the same, of course, applies to the campaign against Islamist extremism.
Canada has not suffered a masscasualty terrorist attack since the Air India bombing in 1985 — thank God. But Islamic State beheading videos and the murders of Canadian soldiers Cpl. Nathan Cirillo and Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent last October, as well as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau’s attack on Parliament, have changed public sentiment. More than 80 per cent of adult Canadians surveyed by Angus Reid recently said they support Bill C-51, with just 17 per cent against. The release of the Zehaf-Bibeau video Friday, expected to confirm he was motivated by Islamism, will reinforce this trend.
The tactical purpose of linking new crime-fighting legislation with the war against Islamic State and homegrown terrorism is simple: It stands to connect all opposition to any of these measures, in a way the Conservatives figure will win them votes. Journalists, civil libertarians, indeed any pencil-neck or egghead who questions any aspect of any of these measures, can henceforth be branded soft on crime, soft on terror, soft on miscreants generally. And only the Conservatives, in these “dark and dangerous times,” can keep you and your children safe.
Will Canadians buy it, and vote accordingly? Much depends on whether the NDP and Liberals topple into the trap laid for them, or duck, by ignoring the safe-streets law, to be unveiled in more detail next week. But ducking, as the Liberals have found with their support for Bill C-51, brings complications too; the accusation that one is jettisoning principle for tactical advantage. It’s a tricky place for the opposition to be, and no less so for all that the PMO’s intent is so very, very obvious.
Harper, in year 10, is throwing haymakers, betting on a knockout blow. It’s a far cry from the resignation many had expected, not so long ago.
A shift for a party that had tended to tinker around the margins of hang-’em-high conservatism.