Final vote in Commons keeps terror bill on Tories’ timetable
Conservative and Liberal MPs joined forces Wednesday to vote in favour of the dramatic, disputed overhaul of Canada’s national security laws. Bill C-51 now moves to the Senate for an expected expeditious passage into law.
The 183-96 Commons’ third reading vote was anti-climactic. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau had pledged support from the outset for what he saw as a flawed piece of lawmaking. The opposition NDP and Green Party denounced it in its entirety.
Attempts at amending the bill were largely unsuccessful: four mostly minor changes were agreed to in the Commons.
A Senate committee studying the legislation is unlikely to recommend further formal amendments. Upper House changes would require sending the bill back to the Commons for reapproval, delaying the government’s plan to get the bill through Parliament by the start of the summer recess.
However, the committee is expected to make written “observations” about ways to improve the bill. If the full Senate accepts these, the government must respond in writing to each within 180 days.
One key observation is expected to call for a way to formally monitor a new power in the bill allowing federal spies to seek judicial warrants to knowingly break the law or breach the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to disrupt suspected threats to national security.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper packaged the incendiary bill around October’s terror attacks in Ottawa and Quebec and is expected to merchandise one of his government’s defining pieces of legislation on the fall federal election trail.
The omnibus bill expands the mandate and power of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), criminalizes promoting and advocating terrorism, and requires airlines to help stop extremists from flying to overseas battle zones.
It also allows more than 100 departments and federal agencies to share Canadians’ personal information more easily and makes it simpler for police to arrest and detain individuals without charge as suspected national security threats, among other measures.
Even some of the bill’s critics agree that CSIS, the RCMP and other state security agencies have legitimate needs for updated powers to combat quickly-evolving threats from terrorists and other dangers to national security.
But the bill’s many critics believe it overreaches in two key regards.
One is CSIS’s expanded mandate to take “reasonable and proportional” measures to actively disrupt suspected threats to national security at their inchoate “pre-criminal” stage — before the RCMP would typically mount a criminal investigation. The other is the broader sharing of Canadians’ personal information.
The bill also under reaches in crucial regards, opponents say.
There is no expanded independent, civilian oversight of the newly empowered state security apparatus, which is increasingly intertwined. There is no provision for existing federal watchdogs to share operational information or conduct joint investigations. And attempts to impose three-year sunset clauses on some of the more contentious provisions were rejected by the Conservative majority.
CSIS was created in 1984, replacing the disgraced and disbanded RCMP Security Service after revelations of “dirty tricks” against left-wing radicals and Quebec separatists during the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a result, CSIS’s prime mandate has been limited to the collection, analysis and reporting of security intelligence to government.
The additional “threat reduction” mandate under C-51 will put it on an operational footing much closer to that of the old RCMP Security Service. While that worries many people, government security officials argue that CSIS is a mature, responsible outfit that can be trusted not to abuse the new power.
The same power will allow CSIS to seek secret federal court warrants to break the law in exceptional circumstances. Government officials argue it is no different from laws that already allow police to obtain court warrants to destroy property, enter private buildings and wiretap phones — all illegal activities without a warrant.
What is different, however, is that those police actions, if they lead to a criminal prosecution, are examined in open court.
What’s more, the charter protects against “unreasonable” searches and seizures and “arbitrary” detention unless a judge pre-authorizes breaching those rights.
“These pre-authorizations prevent a breach of these rights because it is the pre-authorization that makes the search ‘reasonable’ or the detention ‘non-arbitrary,’ ” writes Craig Forcese, an expert on national security law at the University of Ottawa and one of C-51’s most ardent critics.