Anti-terror talk lifts Harper’s odds in Quebec

On Tuesday, the RCMP announced they had stopped 10 alleged jihadists from flying out of Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau airport.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went to Montreal to re-announce increased funding for the RCMP’s anti-terrorism unit.

The campaign to re-elect Canada’s Conservative government is in full swing.

This is not to suggest that the Mounties are actively promoting the Conservatives. There is no evidence of that.

But don’t be surprised if more well-publicized terrorist plots are uncovered in the months leading up to the scheduled October vote.

And don’t be surprised if Harper and his ministers make political hay from them.

In this case, the arrest of the Mon- treal 10 led the newscasts for understandable reasons.

Even before this incident, at least seven other youths left Montreal to join Islamic State militants in Syria.

Two other young Montrealers have been charged with trying to leave Canada to join a banned group, as well as other terrorism offences.

What was odd about the latest arrests, however, is that no charges were laid. Police seized passports from the 10. But so far they haven’t charged them with trying to leave the country to join a terrorist group — or, indeed, with anything. They simply let them go. Which means, presumably, that the Mounties don’t think these particular alleged jihadists are very dangerous.

That didn’t stop Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney from praising the RCMP for its vigilance and saying that the “international jihadist movement” has declared war on Canada.

Nor did it prevent Harper from holding a press conference near Trudeau airport at which he opined that Canada is a great country and chided anyone who would become a “violent jihadist” or join any group advocating terrorism.

For Harper’s Conservatives, playing the terror card is crucial — particularly in Quebec. The latest CROP poll shows the Conservatives attracting only 15 per cent of the vote in that province. But other polls have suggested that Quebecers strongly support Harper’s tough anti-terrorism stance.

The more that terrorism can be made top-of-mind, the better the Conservatives will do.

As my Star colleague, Allan Woods, has reported, it is not clear why so many high-profile terror arrests have been made in Montreal.

Perhaps there are more aspiring jihadists in that city.

Or perhaps the Mounties are more aggressive in their pursuit of terrorism there.

Whatever the reason, the result should benefit the Tories politically.

This isn’t the first time that RCMP criminal investigations have had political implications.

In 1999, the Mounties, accompanied by a television crew, raided the home of British Columbia’s thenNDP premier Glen Clark. Clark was charged with breach of trust and accepting a benefit. His political career was destroyed. The New Democrats were trounced in the next election.

Three years later, Clark was acquitted of all charges.

A month before the 2006 federal election, the RCMP announced they were undertaking a criminal investigation of then federal finance minister Ralph Goodale over the leak of confidential tax information about so-called income trusts.

That scandal eventually turned out to be less than it seemed. Goodale and his aides were eventually vindicated, although a senior bureaucrat was charged and convicted.

But the income-trust affair did help sink Paul Martin’s Liberal government, allowing Harper to become prime minister.

An independent investigation into the Mounties’ handling of the affair found that the force had broken no rules because there were none to break.

No party is completely spared the fallout from RCMP investigations. The force’s decision to charge former Conservative senator Mike Duffy for alleged acceptance of a bribe from a former top aide to Harper, Nigel Wright, has done the prime minister no good. But the puzzling decision not to charge Wright for offering that alleged bribe promises to mitigate any political damage to the Conservatives.

On the terrorism front, I expect we will hear of more would-be jihadists thwarted over the next six months.

Some of them might even face arrest. Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.