Tories’ anti-terror travel ban a ploy
Until Sunday, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives had a sure grip on the anti-terrorist file by virtue of a policy to fight violent Islamist zealotry that is both tailored to the country’s military means and supported by most Canadians.
Given the cruelty and barbarism of ISIL that is on display daily, the opposition arguments against our modest contribution to the war effort in Iraq and Syria have had little political traction.
But then, as is its wont, the Conservative party took a posture that had appeared more-or-less reasonable, and torqued it for sensational effect into something entirely different, which will and should alarm principled conservatives and civil libertarians alike.
Should the Tories be reelected in October, the prime minister announced, they will make it a crime for Canadians to travel to as-yet undesignated “declared areas,” where terrorism is judged to be rife.
The stated objective is to dissuade homegrown, wannabe Islamist jihadists from travelling from, say, Montreal or Toronto, to, say, Aleppo, Syria, there to join ISIL and make war on the local population, Canada and her allies, and afterwards potentially return to this country to stage attacks like the one that terrorized Ottawa last Oct. 22.
All of which sounds sensible enough, at first blush.
The kicker: Once the fact of travel to a banned area has been established to the authorities’ satisfaction, the onus will be on the traveller to prove his or her business abroad was legitimate and inoffensive, according to criteria that have yet to be established, to be judged by security agencies as yet unnamed.
If the traveller will not or cannot offer such proof, they will be criminally prosecuted and levied with penalties as yet undefined. In other words, the fact of travel to a “declared area” alone will be enough to have the presumption of innocence overturned. Travellers will be deemed guilty until proven innocent.
“There are very few legitimate reasons to go to places like these,” Harper asserted at a campaign stop in Ottawa. “And those who go without such legitimate reasons will face the full force of the law.”
In an accompanying news release, the Conservatives sought to allay civil libertarian concerns, saying “there may be limited legitimate reasons that a Canadian may travel to declared areas such as providing humanitarian aid or professional journalism. Canadians who can demonstrate they have travelled to declared areas for defined legitimate purposes would not be prosecuted under the new legislation.”
Cue the alarm klaxons. There “may” be “limited” legitimate reasons? Who, pray, will decide what is legitimate?
According to what set of standards? Who will determine those standards? Who will decide whether a journalist is a “professional” or a garden-variety malcontent, hack and propagandist?
To whom will journalists, diplomats, academics and humanitarian workers — to name four categories of people who might have what most would consider “legitimate” reasons to travel to terrorism-stricken zones — be required to report upon their return? Will such reporting be public and transparent, or done in secret?
And what about cases in which a journalist, diplomat or other professional may have good reasons to not want to share information about their business with a government department or security agency?
Conservative partisans will argue such concerns are misplaced, because the list of exceptions to the new law would rule out prosecution of legitimate travellers such as foreign correspondents, aid workers, academics and the like.
A source familiar with the policy further stressed the regions to be banned would be severely limited, for example to areas currently controlled by the so-called Islamic State caliphate. “The question is, why would you go there?”
But it remains unclear whether an individual would be exempted who, for example, travelled to Syria to visit a dying family member. That’s to be determined in future, if and when the law is drafted.
This is, not to put too fine a point on it, reckless, dangerous and ill-judged. Why, given the debacle of the Maher Arar affair revealed by the public inquiry of the same name a decade ago, would Canadians even begin to believe federal bureaucrats and security officials can be trusted to fairly dispense justice in this way, likely behind closed doors due to “national security” concerns, in the absence of the presumption of innocence?
And where has the case been made that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, charged with ferreting out threats to this country overseas, is so inadequate that such an extreme measure could be warranted?
Delivered in the heat of a campaign, this proposal looks like nothing so much as a gambit to ignite protests from the opposition and media, which can then be used to assert that only the Conservatives care about keeping Canadians safe.
It is short-term electioneering and pandering, with the potential damage, obvious questions and evident pitfalls to be set aside and worried about another day.