Daily Archives: March 2, 2015

democracy, Politics

Tory Law Forces Canadians to Choose Between Liberty and Security: Mulcair

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Bill C-51 won’t prevent terrorism, NDP leader says.

ThomasMulcairCentreBlock_610px.jpg
Thomas Mulcair, pictured at Parliament Hill’s Centre Block, says Prime Minister Harper is ‘vilifying Muslims.’ Photo: Cole Burston.

By Jeremy J. Nuttall, reposted from The Tyee, Mar 2, 2015

“You should come and see this,” says federal New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair before starting a brisk walk from the doors of the parliamentary library to the NDP caucus room.

Rays of light from the setting sun hit the windows of the House of Commons, casting a yellow glow on the grey walls of the corridor where just months ago, a young man thought to have mental health issues was shot and killed by security as he fired at them.

Bullet damage from that day can still be seen on the walls. Mulcair arrives at the door to the NDP caucus room and partly closes it and points to a bullet hole, then pulls back the door to show where the shot was stopped.

“That went through, it got stopped by a piece of metal,” he told The Tyee, revealing a black mark on the inner door that blocked the bullet.

“We sit right on stage, there,” he said gesturing at the NDP caucus room as he described the shooting. During meetings, Mulcair said, speakers stand behind a podium on a small stage while MPs listen from chairs. When gunfire erupted, MPs dove to the ground.

“It was a very brave guard who put his body against that door while we were on the floor,” Mulcair said.

Mulcair was reflecting on the surreal moments of Oct. 22 when Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, armed with a rifle, ran into Parliament Hill’s Centre Block through the front door, firing shots. Minutes earlier, Zehaf-Bibeau shot and killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo as he stood guard at the nearby National War Memorial.

Inside Centre Block, police and guards cornered Zehaf-Bibeau at the end of the Hall of Honour, firing at the gunman and killing him after he took his position at the library doors.

The attack came two days after Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was killed when Martin Couture-Rouleau in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., ran him over with a car.

Troubled men

Both Zehaf-Bibeau and Couture-Rouleau are thought to have been self-radicalized jihadists who also suffered from mental illnesses.

As he recalled the events, Mulcair spoke about the dramatic impact the shootings appeared to have had on the Conservatives’ security agenda in the ensuing months.

Mulcair said there’s not enough proof to determine if the two gunmen were really dyed-in-the-wool terrorists — or just troubled men.

“The prime minister called it a terrorist act immediately as did Mr. Trudeau, but I’m still saying that we have yet to have it proven to us that it was,” Mulcair said.

Nonetheless, since the attacks, the threat of terrorism has been at the forefront of Canadian politics and burst into furious debate with the introduction of Bill C-51, the Anti-Terrorism Act, which the Conservative party tabled Jan. 30.

Mulcair said the bill doesn’t provide anything for terrorism prevention. Rather, he said it is more about the Conservatives campaigning on the fear surrounding terrorism.

“The government hasn’t made any case that a single element of this law isn’t already caught by existing legislation,” he said.

‘Bogus choice’

Meanwhile, Bill C-51 passed second reading Feb. 23 and is now in committee.

The NDP has said it won’t support the bill, and Mulcair said Bill C-51 offers a “bogus choice” in asking Canadians to choose between liberty and security rather than have both.

Whether or not the public is hearing that message is debatable, if polls are any indication.

Mulcair said the bill doesn’t provide proper oversight of authorities and allows them to meddle with domestic activism or movements the government may view as a threat to policy.

He noted that Harper introduced Bill C-51 in a campaign-style setting in Richmond Hill, Ont., outside Toronto.

“They made this announcement hundreds of kilometres away from Parliament in a purely campaign-style atmosphere, so it was quite clear that they were going to be campaigning on this,” Mulcair said.

“The prime minister, when I’ve asked him half a dozen times why this is needed, he can’t provide a single example.”

The New Democrats have argued that the legislation provides no method to fight radicalization and threatens the rights of those legitimately protesting in Canada, such as environmentalists and First Nations.

Mulcair said the broad nature of the document — which is more than 60 pages — gives authorities the opportunity to label legitimate dissent as a threat, permitting them to “disrupt” such activities.

But the bill does not explicitly define the word “disrupt,” Mulcair noted.

Positive polls

Yet polls show the bill is popular among Canadians, with national support as high as 82 per cent in a recent online poll conducted by Angus Reid.

Judging from those polls, one could deduce the New Democrats are fighting a losing battle by opposing Bill C-51, but Mulcair said he thinks the polls are skewed.

“If you ask people if they want to make sure their homes are safer, obviously the answer is going to be yes,” he said. “But if you ask people whether or not they think that their privacy, their freedom, their liberty, their rights are important, your number will be that high again. So it depends on how you’re asking the question.”

The Angus Reid poll also asked those who participated if they would consider themselves familiar with the legislation. Twenty per cent admitted they hadn’t read a news story about it. Another 36 per cent said they had “scanned the headlines” about it.

Meanwhile, he said recent Tory moves to challenge a court ruling that permitted a Mississauga, Ont., woman to wear a niqab during a citizenship ceremony is “pandering to Islamaphobia” in a bid to get support for Harper and the bill.

After announcing their intention to challenge the federal court ruling, the Conservatives placed a notice on the party’s website citing their opposition to the wearing of a niqab during a citizenship ceremony.

The niqab is a type of Islamic head covering that some Muslim women wear in public. It covers a woman’s face, save for her eyes. Harper has said that wearing a niqab during a citizenship ceremony is “offensive” and “not the way we do things here.”

As the interview nears an end, Mulcair, now seated back in his office, said he’s alarmed by how aggressively the prime minister has pursed the niqab issue.

“I’ve been shocked by Stephen Harper’s behaviour,” he said. “He’s taken advantage of a situation and he’s vilifying Muslims.

“I would be equally offended if these attacks were directed against any religion, but it seems that it’s almost become commonplace to vilify and attack and scapegoat Muslims, but in particular Muslim women.”

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climate science, democracy, Politics

Ontario families fighting massive legal bill from wind-farm companies

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A wind farm in operation on a farm in Southwestern Ontario, July, 2012. (Randall Moore/The Globe and Mail)

By Colin Perkel, The Canadian Press, reposted from the Globe and Mail, Mar 1, 2015

A demand that four Ontario families pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal costs to billion-dollar companies is a thinly disguised warning to anyone pondering a challenge to industrial wind farms in Ontario, the families say.

In asking the courts to set the legal bill aside, the citizens say the award would cripple them financially and undermine access to justice, even in important public-interest cases.

Court documents show the companies – K2 Wind, Armow, and St. Columban – are seeking $340,000 in costs from the Drennans, Ryans, Dixons and Kroeplins, who lost their bid to scuttle three wind-farm projects.

The families, who worry wind turbines near their homes could harm their health, had challenged the constitutionality of Ontario’s approvals process before Divisional Court. They are now hoping the province’s top court will hear the case, potentially adding more litigation costs.

Shawn Drennan said his $240,000 bill was excessive given that he was only looking to protect his rights.

“We will have to go to the bank and beg and ask if we can borrow more money to pay their costs and it will be a significant burden on my wife and I,” Shawn Drennan told The Canadian Press. “My wife already works two jobs.”

Lawyer Julian Falconer, who represents the families, called the wind companies “blood-sucking, intimidating bullies.”

“It’s not just a bar to justice, it’s actually a terror tactic,” Falconer said in an interview.

“This is not about money. The idea is to send a message: ‘We will wipe you out if you challenge us.’”

The companies say the high-stakes court challenge forced them to deploy considerable legal resources to defend projects they say are safe.

“While the appellants were entitled to bring their litigation, their decision to do so had significant consequences,” St. Columban argues in its court filing.

“There must be an appreciation of the real disruption, and real cost, suffered by the adverse party.”

Generally speaking and as a matter of fairness, the losing side in civil proceedings has to pay the legal bills incurred by the winning side.

K2, which is putting up 140 turbines, some of which are about 750 metres from the Drennans’ home near Goderich, Ont., says the families knew the risks of losing.

In addition, the failed bid to halt construction pending outcome of their court battle was unnecessary and should “never have been brought,” K2 says in its submissions.

The families argue they raised an important and novel constitutional issue that is squarely in the public interest given the reasonable prospect of serious harm to the health of citizens. They also say they did not stand to benefit financially.

The companies reject that argument. They maintain the families were indeed fighting a personal battle, do have the means to pay, and say the case was in fact contrary to the public interest because the challenge delayed government-approved green-energy projects.

For the families, it’s become a case of “lose your home to save your home,” they say.

“By simply exercising their right to access to the courts, the appellant families now face the disheartening prospect of financial ruin,” their submission states.

“When, as in this particular case, the consequence of that access becomes crippling financial loss, ‘access to justice’ becomes a meaningless platitude.” SOURCE

 

 

 

democracy, Politics, Remediation and Restitution, Sustainability

Former Treasury Secretary Rubin says U.S. underestimates the cost of climate risks

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Failing to scrutinize and plan for the risks climate change presents — even the “tail risks,” which describe the edges farthest from the center of a bell curve and denote the catastrophic events least likely to occur — would be irresponsible, Rubin said.

 

By Benjamin Hulac, E&E reporter, reposted from eenews.net, Feb 28, 2015

Robert Rubin, a former U.S. Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said yesterday that climate change is particularly pernicious because it affects so many distinct economic sectors, from budgetary planning and labor relations to agriculture production.

“I believe, as all of you do, that climate change is the existential threat of our time,” Rubin said, addressing the Climate Leadership Conference in Arlington, Va. “The scientific community has long been unanimous.”

Yet on Capitol Hill, and across American households, climate discussions reflect a sharply partisan and divided landscape.

Congressional Republicans have lambasted the proposed emission cuts from U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan as a “war on coal.” Democrats have come under fire for proposing solutions that some think are too expensive.

Meanwhile, a January poll by The New York Times, Stanford University and Resources for the Future found two-thirds of Americans were more likely to back a presidential candidate who pledged to combat climate change, though almost half (47 percent) of Republicans said policies to rein in emissions would hurt the economy.

However, the economic costs related to climate change have become a common talking point among many economists, financial leaders and government departments that make billion-dollar decisions regularly.

Both Lawrence Summers, who led the Treasury Department from 1999 to 2001, and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — a Republican nominated to the post by President George W. Bush — have publicly called for putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions.

Conservative thinkers, too, such as Gary Becker and Greg Mankiw, who advised George W. Bush and later Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have endorsed carbon fees.

In June 2012, under Secretary Timothy Geithner’s watch, the Treasury Department released a climate change adaptation plan, and the department’s current secretary, Jacob Lew, said at the Brookings Institution in September that delaying climate action would increase the cost of future climate policies by about 40 percent with each passing decade.

“The longer we wait, the greater the cost,” Rubin added. “It seems to me that most Americans have yet to internalize the magnitude or urgency of this problem.”

Shifting climate to the front burner

It is often said that economics varies from other intellectual analysis, since it cannot be practiced in a vacuum — economic situations cannot be replicated and the risks vary from one economy to the next.

However, failing to scrutinize and plan for the risks climate change presents — even the “tail risks,” which describe the edges farthest from the center of a bell curve and denote the catastrophic events least likely to occur — would be irresponsible, Rubin said.

Rubin, who spent decades working in financial and investment banking roles before his tenure at Treasury, is part of the Risky Business Project, an organization focused on examining climate change through a business-minded lens and quantifying the risks rising greenhouse emissions pose to private enterprise in particular. The project — founded by Paulson, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager turned environmental advocate — will release a new report at the end of the month focused on California, said Kate Gordon, the organization’s director.

“The really frightening issue, in my view, were the low-odds cases,” said Rubin, referencing the worst-possible climate scenario according to the data generated from Risky Business Project reports. “I came to the conclusion that these probabilities weren’t really that low.”

He first learned about global warming on a walk through the West Wing with former Vice President Al Gore, who, Rubin recounted, argued that policymakers and government leaders could not afford to underestimate the costs of climate change. Despite his talk with Gore, Rubin said, climate change faded from his thoughts as it has for most of the public. “I put the issue on my back burner and went about my business,” he said.

Then, four years ago, Tom Steyer, a former hedge fund manager and founder of the NextGen Climate political action committee, rattled him on the issue. “I soon became deeply alarmed,” Rubin said.

An ‘inadequate and misleading’ way to measure GDP?

The federal government should repeal subsidies of established energy companies and financially support non-fossil-fuel energy industries, and should revisit how it assesses gross domestic product, the standard benchmark used to measure a nation’s economic health, he said.

GDP in its current form, according to Rubin, is “inadequate and misleading” because it omits negative externalities — phenomena that occur when market forces, like consumer demand and government regulation, make a good or service less expensive to the buyer than the cost incurred by society.

Investors and savers alike should have a clearer view into the companies in which they have put their money, Rubin told the audience. Public companies should be required to disclose their “stranded asset” risks — losses that could happen if an oil company, for example, cannot reach its petroleum reserves for any reason — as well as any risks due to climate change and government regulation, he said.

Climate change should be treated as any other business liability, Rubin said, adding that allowing limited and opaque information from the private sector about the total costs of climate change triggers poor economic choices.

“The reality is that bad data leads to bad decisions,” he said.

Since 1933, the Securities and Exchange Commission has required companies that issue securities to disclose “material information” — facts about the firm that could affect firms’ stocks — to the public.

In February 2010, SEC issued guidance to public companies “on certain existing disclosure rules that may require a company to disclose the impact that business or legal developments related to climate change may have on its business.”

The guidance covers “a company’s risk factors, business description, legal proceedings, and management discussion and analysis,” according to a statement from the agency.

Asked what role central banks and governments’ other financial regulators should play in addressing climate change, Rubin cited the SEC law from the 1930s.

“Well, I think climate change risk is material information,” he said. “I think it would be highly useful for the regulators to do that.”

Central banks make long-term projections and risk assessments, Rubin noted, saying “it would be interesting if they tried to apply themselves” to climate change. “That would be a logical thing to do,” he said.

Soon the Risky Business Project, Gordon said, will make a push for firms to disclose their climate risks.

“Doing nothing is radical risk-taking,” Rubin added, quoting a favorite phrase of Paulson’s. SOURCE

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Why a Cutback in Oil Production Is Sorely Needed

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Perhaps the most important thing you need to understand about the coming oil production cutbacks is where they are going to come from, namely Canada and the United States.

By Jeffrey Rubin, reposted from the Huffington Post, Feb 28, 2015

How deep is the hole the oil industry is currently stuck inside? To figure that out, you only need to look as far back as last week, which saw another two trainloads full of oil derail and storage numbers that put U.S. crude stocks at record highs

Every new pipeline leak or train derailment puts the environmental risk of moving ever greater amounts of oil into even sharper relief. At the same time, storage tanks that are bursting at the seams say everything you need to know about the troubled economic returns currently plaguing the energy business.

Despite a falling rig count, U.S. oil production is now running at more than 9 million barrels a day, its highest level since the early 1970s. In Canada, where companies are also slashing spending plans, total output this year is still slated to increase by hundreds of thousands of barrels a day.

Not long ago, hearing about those types of production gains would be music to the ears of investors. Today, the tune is decidedly more bearish. Increased crude production from shale plays and Alberta’s oil sands is only compounding the problems of an already glutted world oil market.

By most estimates, producers are pumping around 2 million barrels a day more than is needed to meet global demand. According to a recent analysis by Bloomberg, more oil is now being held in U.S. storage tanks than at any point during the last eighty years. The refusal of high cost marginal suppliers to put the brakes on production growth, let alone actually shut-in any output, suggests that oil prices, already cut in half since last year, could have even further to fall.

The dismal outlook for North American producers is once again being reflected in the price differential between benchmark U.S. crude and world oil prices. The spread between West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude, which was narrowing, is now beginning to open back up. The gap is particularly challenging for Canada’s oil sands producers, who can charge even less for every barrel of hard-to-refine bitumen

The more output that oil sands producers manage to churn out these days, the less their bitumen is worth. It’s clearly not a business model the market finds too attractive. The cool reception to a $1.5 billion share offering just announced by Cenovus is hardly bullish for the prospects of future financings. The way falling commodity prices are putting a hurt on balance sheets that’s grim news for the other companies that will surely need to tap the public markets before this current downturn shows any signs of turning around.

Further production growth also means more hundred-car tanker trains will be rolling through suburban neighbourhoods across the continent. With each one comes a growing risk of derailment, as well as the accompanying explosions like those that happened last week in northern Ontario and West Virginia.

Among the more disturbing aspects of those accidents is the involvement of new-and-improved tanker cars that are scheduled to replace the aging DOT-111 models. While Ottawa has just announced new regulations to make rail operators more accountable for spills by raising minimum insurance levels and requiring the bulking up of a compensation fund, such initiatives still won’t do anything to prevent more derailments from occurring. Indeed, rail shipments of crude, which have already quadrupled in Canada in the last few years, are expected to more than triple to 700,000 barrels a day by the end of 2016.

Instead of loading more surplus oil onto rail cars to be hauled to already over-stuffed storage tanks, both investors and communities across North America would be better off seeing the industry cut back on production. For companies that have already sunk a lot of money into drilling programs, however, cutting production will put their cash flow position into an ugly place. Although they may realize that less production would be good for everyone in the long run, getting out of their own way is proving tough to do. For the industry as a whole that will only serve to draw out the time before prices start to firm up. For the rest of us it means more oil trains will continue to roll through our back yards.

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democracy, Fascism/Corporatism, Politics

Conrad Black: Alarm bells must ring in response to the government’s new anti-terror bill

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The government has to be given some licence to fight terror. But it is hard to be overly sanguine about the people who wrote the disgraceful omnibus crime bill.
The government has to be given some licence to fight terror. But it is hard to be overly sanguine about the people who wrote the disgraceful omnibus crime bill. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

 

By Conrad Black, reposted from the National Post, Feb 28, 2015

Bill C-51, the federal government’s Anti-Terrorism Act, 2015, is the principal official response to the increasing threat of terrorism, a phenomenon that infamously prorupted into the central block of Parliament on Oct. 22, after the murder of a soldier ceremonially guarding the grave of the unknown soldier at the war memorial in Ottawa.

The purpose of the measure is given as assurance that the people of Canada “live free from threats to their lives and their security,” as “there is no more fundamental role for a government than protecting its country and its people.” To this end, government departments and agencies are authorized and instructed to share information that could frustrate or reveal attempts “to undermine” or “threaten the security of Canada;” the Minister of Public Security and Emergency Preparedness compiles a list of people who he or she “has reasonable grounds to suspect will attempt to threaten transport security” or commit or facilitate a “terrorism offense” in Canada or elsewhere.

This sounds fairly innocuous by the standards of legislation conferring enhanced arbitrary powers on law enforcement officials, but, as is usual and to some extent unavoidable, many of the elaborations of enhanced official powers are very broadly outlined. Reading through the text of this and related bills, the principal areas of impact are lowering the threshold for arrest, criminalizing the promotion of terrorism, conferring powers of disruption on CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service), giving the power to remove designated terrorist material from the Internet, permitting court proceedings to be sealed while they are in progress for protection of investigative techniques, evidence, and personnel, expanding the government’s ability to stop people from leaving the country, and granting unspecified and scarcely limited powers of arbitrary, warrantless, detention.

It becomes quite troubling with the provisions that “every person who, by communicating statements, knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general — while knowing that any of those offences will be committed or being reckless as to whether any of those offences may be committed…is liable to imprisonment of not more than five years;” and that anyone responsible for “any writing, sign, visible representation or audio recording that advocates or promotes… or counsels the commission of a terrorist offence” may have material seized, internet excerpts deleted, and be subject to detention, indictment and imprisonment, though the authority of the attorney general is required for such proceedings.

Even more worrisome is the provision that a person may be detained in custody without warrant if a peace officer “believes on reasonable grounds that a terrorist activity may be carried out,” or that such arrest and detention “is likely to prevent the carrying out of the terrorist activity,” pending ratification of the action by a provincial court. Most Canadians would not be too much disturbed by the requirement that such a suspect be “prohibited from possessing any firearm (or) crossbow,” or be confined to a geographic area temporarily.

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But alarm bells really must ring at “If there are reasonable grounds to believe that a particular activity constitutes a threat to the security of Canada, the service (CSIS) may take measures in or outside Canada, to reduce the threat.” These are unspecified, and must be “reasonable and proportional,” but they are unlimited except by the admonition not to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or any other law, unless “authorized to take them under a warrant,” but there are no further guidelines on the issuance of warrants. It is not altogether comforting to read that the authorities are forbidden to “cause intentionally or by criminal negligence, death or bodily harm,” or “wilfully (to) attempt in any manner to obstruct, pervert, or defeat the course of justice; or violate the sexual integrity of an individual.”

Those representing the Public Security and Emergency Preparedness minister may decide whether a warrant is necessary for any of these initiatives, in Canada or in any other country: “Without regard to any other law, including that of any foreign state, a judge may, in a warrant… authorize the measures specified in it to be taken outside Canada.” Obviously, no foreign jurisdiction would accept that a Canadian authority has any standing to approve such an intrusion, and it is fervently to be hoped that no one in the federal government imagines that it would be a good thing to exchange empowerments for the execution of such warrants with other countries, provoking a regime of reciprocal extra-legal, official outrages across international frontiers.

All of these steps create problems on the civil liberties front. As presented, Bill C-51 makes a Swiss cheese out of due process, and the three national political parties have approached the problem from distinctly different angles. The government have swaddled themselves in Stephen Harper’s default-toga of protecting the public, aspersing civil liberties concerns, and uttering tired pieties that “the law enforcement agencies are on our side,” presumably referring to their objectives rather than their political preferences. It is easy to be cynical about this and resignedly conclude that Vic Toews and Julian Fantino ride again (itself a terrorizing thought, and thought-terror is assumedly covered in the vast sweep of this bill). The government is responsible for preventing terrorist outrages from happening and it has to be given some licence to protect the country and everyone in it. But it is hard to be overly sanguine about the medieval antics of the government that took the giant leap backwards that was the omnibus crime bill. Nor is it reassuring that Mr. Harper, as is his frequent custom, is imposing a shortened debate on Parliament.

 

The New Democrats and their leader, Thomas Mulcair, deserve credit for tackling this sloppily worded measure head on

The Liberals have accepted the bill but claim to seek a clearer and heavier oversight than is now provided. This has been much mocked as toadying to reactionary opinion, but again, it is an attempt to reconcile the conflicting goals — though the unofficial opposition is no more specific about increased oversight than the government is about the many open-ended powers it wants to give the whole range of law enforcement agencies. The New Democrats and their leader, Thomas Mulcair, deserve credit for tackling this sloppily worded measure head on. He and his colleagues have said that the failure to give more precision to “disrupt” and many other new official rights is careless, that anyone protesting even the construction of a pipeline could be a target for some of these actions, and that there is insufficient focus on “deradicalization,” but that the NDP could support a bill adequately clarified.

We have ample proof, from the McDonald Commission’s 1981 report and elsewhere, that the law enforcement agencies in this country, as in others, are capable of outrageous and unfathomably stupid abuses, and anyone who has had anything to do with any arm of the law knows it (although most people in these occupations are reasonably dedicated and honest). Definitions have to be tightened; oversight has to be stringent and prompt and answerable to parliament, and we should be careful of too much reciprocity with foreign governments. Only 10 or 12 other countries have as much respect for human liberties as Canada does and must retain; the United States, with its 99.5% conviction rate and stacked rules — a criminal justice system that is just a conveyer-belt to its bloated and corrupt prison industry — is not one of them. If we go to sleep in Canada, we will wake up in an unrecognizable despotism, like Argentina, Turkey, or Louisiana. SOURCE

 

Open letter to Parliament: Amend C-51 or kill it

Dear Members of Parliament,

Please accept this collective open letter as an expression of the signatories’ deep concern that Bill C-51 (which the government is calling the Anti-terrorism Act, 2015) is a dangerous piece of legislation in terms of its potential impacts on the rule of law, on constitutionally and internationally protected rights, and on the health of Canada’s democracy.

Beyond that, we note with concern that knowledgeable analysts have made cogent arguments not only that Bill C-51 may turn out to be ineffective in countering terrorism by virtue of what is omitted from the bill, but also that Bill C-51 could actually be counter-productive in that it could easily get in the way of effective policing, intelligence-gathering and prosecutorial activity.

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democracy, Fascism/Corporatism, Politics, Preventing Ecocide

Why experts say Bill C-51 will spawn spy scandals

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Parliament Hill in Ottawa
Why experts say Bill C-51 will spawn spy scandals Parliament Hill in Ottawa Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 29, 2013. (THE CANADIAN PRESS / Sean Kilpatrick)

By Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press, reposted from CTVNews, Feb 27, 2015

OTTAWA — The Conservative government’s anti-terrorism bill will lead to spy scandals due to weak scrutiny of Canadian intelligence agencies, says a new legal analysis.

Canada’s real-time oversight of spy agencies is “imperfect” and its after-the-fact review of security activities is perhaps “close to broken,” say law professors Craig Forcese and Kent Roach.

In a paper published Friday, they say the “poorly constructed” and “inherently flawed” anti-terrorism bill introduced last month will only make things worse because it expands spying and information-sharing powers.

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These measures are “irresponsible without a redoubled investment in our tattered accountability system,” the authors conclude in their fifth paper looking at different aspects of the bill.

The University of Ottawa’s Forcese, and Roach, who teaches at the University of Toronto, were assisted by student Leah Sherriff.

In an open letter to MPs Friday urging them to reject the legislation, more than 100 Canadian academics express gratitude to the “highly respected” professors for helping inform public debate.

The Conservatives brought in the bill — which would significantly expand the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s mandate — following the daylight murders of two Canadian soldiers last October.

The bill would give CSIS the ability to disrupt terror plots, make it easier to limit the movements of a suspect, expand no-fly list powers, crack down on terrorist propaganda, and remove barriers to sharing security-related information.

The House of Commons public safety committee plans to hear more than 50 witnesses on the bill beginning next month.

Opposition MPs have repeatedly criticized the government for boosting security powers in the legislation but not giving watchdogs more bite.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee, which keeps an eye on CSIS, lacks the proper resources for the job, they say. In addition, the Liberals and NDP want a full-fledged committee of parliamentarians to review intelligence activities.

The Conservatives insist accountability will be improved through the need for judicial warrants to exercise new CSIS powers.

The paper points out that the only circumstance in which the bill clearly requires a court-approved warrant is when CSIS will contravene the Charter of Rights and Freedoms or other Canadian law.

“As with its existing surveillance powers, a substantial amount of CSIS activity that falls short of the warrant ‘trigger’ will never be pre-authorized by a judge,” it says, adding this is especially true when it comes to international operations, where Canadian law generally doesn’t apply.

In addition, warrants will be issued in a secret, private proceeding in which only the government side is represented, the authors say.

They advocate expanding the review committee to encompass all of the government’s national security activities — not just those of CSIS — since investigations often involve multiple intelligence agencies.

Forcese and Roach also call for a parliamentary committee that can see secret material to complement the review committee — pointing to Australia as an example where two such bodies work effectively together.

Otherwise, Canada faces the prospect of “often avertible security scandals that simply diminish the credibility of the services and suck time and resources out of keeping us safe.”

In their letter to MPs, scores of academics call the bill a “dangerous piece of legislation” that would subvert the normal role of judges by asking them to approve tactics that would otherwise be illegal.

The letter was signed by prominent law professors Amir Attaran, Jasminka Kalajdzic, Kathleen Mahoney and Wesley Pue. It was also endorsed by academics Reg Whitaker and Steve Hewitt, both of whom have written extensively on Canadian intelligence activities. SOURCE

 

 

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Canadian anti-terror bill opens door for human rights abuses, law scholars argue

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Legal analysis citing threat to democracy is latest criticism of proposed C-51 law being pushed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative party

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, addresses members of parliament on Thursday. Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters

By John Barber, reposted from The Guardian, Feb 27, 2015

More than 100 Canadian law professors have warned the prime minister, Stephen Harper, that a sweeping new anti-terror law introduced by his Conservative government is a “dangerous piece of legislation” that threatens to undermine the rule of law, human rights and democracy itself.

Although one poll showed that four out of five Canadians supported the proposed law shortly after it was tabled last month, criticisms that originated with scattered human-rights groups have since been amplified by a growing chorus of the nation’s leading jurists, academics, editorial-writers and opinion-makers.

“Protecting human rights and protecting public safety are complementary objectives, but experience has shown that serious human rights abuses can occur in the name of maintaining national security,” the former prime ministers and supreme court jurists wrote. “Given the secrecy around national security activities, abuses can go undetected and without remedy. This results not only in devastating personal consequences for the individuals, but a profoundly negative impact on Canada’s reputation as a rights-respecting nation.”

The law professors present a close legal analysis of the proposed law, concluding with a sharp criticism of the government’s attempt to speed it through parliament.

“It is sadly ironic that democratic debate is being curtailed on a bill that vastly expands the scope of covert state activity when that activity will be subject to poor or even non-existent democratic oversight or review,” the experts wrote.

Amid growing criticism and a filibuster in parliament, the Conservatives reluctantly agreed late in the week to extend the previously abbreviated schedule for committee hearings on the bill, impeding what had hitherto been its fast track into law.

The move raised hope among opponents that the Harper government will ultimately be forced to accept amendments to curtail the sweeping new police and spy powers contained in the bill.

Drafted in response to two attacks by lone terrorists this year, including one thatended with a hail of bullets in the corridor of the House of Commons in Ottawa, Bill C-51 significantly loosens current restrictions on police and spies seeking to disrupt terrorist activity. But critics claim that it also opens the way for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) to target legitimate dissent, making criminals of environmentalists, native people and other protesters hostile to the government.

Previously, the prime minister has derided the criticisms as “ridiculous” and critics as members of a conspiracy-addled “black helicopter fleet”. But the latest fusillade from some of the country’s leading legal scholars is the most forceful attack so far levelled against the increasingly controversial new bill.

‘Neither extremists, nor dismissive of threats’

In a letter running more than 4,000 words and covering “some (and only some)” of the terror bill’s alleged defects, the professors warn that the new law would not only do little to fight terrorism, it could actually set back the cause.

“In this respect,” they wrote, “we wish it to be clear that we are neither ‘extremists’ (as the Prime Minister has recently labelled the Official Opposition for its resistance to Bill C-51) nor dismissive of the real threats to Canadians’ security that government and Parliament have a duty to protect.

“Rather, we believe that terrorism must be countered in ways that are fully consistent with core values (that include liberty, non-discrimination, and the rule of law), that are evidence-based, and that are likely to be effective.”

The growing resistance to the new measures has eclipsed the popular approval that greeted the bill when the prime minister introduced it in January, vowing revenge against “violent jihadists” who “want to harm us because they hate our society and the values it represents”.

The bill was widely seen as a political masterstroke that wrong-footed opposition parties while simultaneously boosting the Conservative cause in French-speaking Quebec, where the proposed measures have proven especially popular.

The strategy worked to muffle Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party, which has agreed to support the bill while pressing for amendments to increase civilian oversight of the soon-to-be unfettered spies.

But Thomas Mulclair, leader of the leftist New Democratic Party and a former Quebec cabinet minister, made the riskier decision to oppose the bill outright.

Given the Harper government’s majority in the House of Commons, some version of the controversial new bill is likely to become law this spring – just in time to become a major issue for a federal election scheduled for October at the latest. SOURCE