Bill C-51 to allow peaceful protests
Tories make some changes to anti-terror law
Non-violent protesters, even those who break the law, won’t be targeted under the government’s powerful security bill, a parliamentary committee agreed Tuesday.
The move responds to a chorus of complaints from aboriginals, environmentalists and others. It was among a handful of government amendments to the proposed anti-terror legislation, Bill C-51, adopted by the House of Commons public security committee as part of its final clause-by-clause review of the sweeping bill.
But opposition attempts to introduce more than 26 amendments of their own were rebuffed by the Conservative majority.
What the opposition side called straightforward measures to better protect Canadians’ privacy and other rights, the government side called needless bureaucracy and red tape that would hobble the nation’s ability to respond quickly to evolving terrorist threats.
The Tories plan to parade C-51 — the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015 — in their upcoming election campaign and are rushing to enact it before Parliament’s June summer recess. A Senate committee this week began fast-tracking the legislation through the upper house. It meets again Thursday to begin hearing from independent experts.
Much of Tuesday’s Commons’ committee session dealt with the bill’s Security of Canada Information Sharing Act. It would allow 17 federal departments and agencies, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, RCMP and Department of Finance, to share potentially all information they may hold on Canadians and businesses. They could only do so if the information in it were relevant to a national security threat and did not violate the Privacy Act and other existing laws.
A proposed NDP amendment also would have required the departments to first ensure any information being transferred was first checked to ensure it was relevant, reliable and complete.
“The cautionary tale we have here is the story of Maher Arar, where information was not checked for relevance, reliability and sufficiency and ended up in the torture of a Canadian in another country,” said Randall Garrison, the NDP public safety critic.
The amendment went down to quick defeat.
“If we get over-bureaucratic with this, the intent of the act is lost,” Tory MP Diane Ablonczy declared earlier during debate on another unsuccessful NDP amendment. It would have required the 17 departments and agencies to consult with the federal privacy commissioner before exchanging and collating personal information.
“The intent of the act is that there should be a nimble and effective information-sharing regime so that as information (that could reveal potential dangers to national security) comes to the attention of different parts of government for our safety and protection,” said Ablonczy. “There’s a real and present danger to our country that we’re trying to address and so adding all of this red tape and these extra lawyers of bureaucracy makes no sense, it contravenes what we’re trying to do.”
But Liberal MP Wayne Easter, a former solicitor general and now the party’s public safety critic, brought up several previous concerns raised by Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien. One was to require written informationsharing agreements between the 17 departments and agencies.
“I find it rather strange that government is so resistant to officers of Parliament (Therrien) when they provide committees with advice that they don’t want to take.”