Why Canada's anti-terror bill is unnecessary and dangerous

http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/op-ed/comment-why-anti-terror-bill-is-unnecessary-and-dangerous-1.1774500

by cryptoz • 11 years ago

97 30 11 years ago

engendered8• 11 years ago

Canada operates as an adversarial parliamentary system, and this editorial is by a member of the official opposition. It has very little in solid critiques, but instead weighs to emotions.

This is a political submission, and there is astonishingly little chance it will yield any commentary of merit. Instead there will be some railing about Harper, trite claims about the terrorists winning, and various bits of partisan dogma.

hnnewguy3• 11 years ago

It has very little in solid critiques

"The government has failed to make the case for the new powers it seeks."

"The government has failed to give a single example of how the amendments it seeks in Bill C-51 would be used."

"The government has refused calls for more oversight of our national-security apparatus"

"It would provide new powers that are frightening to many people."

"We will have had only three days to debate this important bill."

Good enough for me.

goalieca• 11 years ago

More importantly, the onus is on the government to make a case why they would need more powers. The current government has not justified why they need these. They've plainly said that "canadians are on our side, no need to debate more than 3 or 4 days". That is total BS.

engendered8• 11 years ago

You have extraordinarily low standards, then. The opposition finding that the ruling party has "failed to make the case" for even remote contentious legislation is the history of every single piece of legislation ever. It is what the opposition does.

A critique by a legal expert would be interesting. A standard "I'm the opposition and I oppose this" is just banal partisan rhetoric. It is worthless, beyond people going "rah rah! Down with Stephen Harper".

As to the period of debate, firstly almost no one commenting on C-51 actually even knows what it entails, but the thing is that it's a surprisingly light piece of legislation. While this ridiculously claims that it's an "omnibus" bill, it's actually a very light piece of legislation. The NDP wants to debate this to essentially grandstand. And that's fine -- that's what they're there to do -- but this isn't debate in any manner of "get to the bottom of it and we'll finalize the perfect copy".

http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Lan...

ape4• 11 years ago

Canada operates as an adversarial parliamentary system

Like nearly every democracy. A member of the ruling party isn't going to write a critique.

ska3• 11 years ago

I'm not really a fan of this op-ed either, but the very least, the article/speech at least makes a much more solid argument than you have here. Basically you've made an unsubstantiated claim to write it off, and then prognosticated that there is little chance useful will come of it.

How, exactly, does such an approach raise the level of discourse here in ways the original article doesn't?

engendered8• 11 years ago

Basically you've made an unsubstantiated claim to write it off

What, exactly, is "unsubstantiated"? Do you doubt how Canadian Parliament works? Do you doubt that he's a member of the opposition? Do you doubt that all of his claims are vague to the point of meaninglessness?

It is throwing some fetid meat on the table and saying "make a meal". There is zero possibility of it leading to valid conversation. It is just another partisan post that would invariably lead to those tiring comments by people saying the trite "Sorry for Stephen Harper" nonsense.

aboutus• 11 years ago

In Canada, environmentalists are being labeled as a "growing threat to security" and face increased surveillance (and worse) under the government’s new terrorism legislation[1].

Basically, if you get in the way of big business in Canada, you're in danger of being labeled a terrorist.

[1] http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/anti-petroleum-mo...

engendered8• 11 years ago

This is exactly the sort of ill-informed, partisan nonsense that such a submission is guaranteed to draw out.

This Globe and Mail article conflates an RCMP position statement on emergent threats (and anti-oil groups are a legitimate law and security threat, some of which are given substantial foreign funding, including hilariously by the Saudi government) with CSIS and then somehow tries to draw it into C-51.

CSIS doesn't care if you protest oil. If you plan on sabotaging oil pipelines, though, yes, law enforcement does and should care.

afterburner2• 11 years ago

Surely it's not hard to imagine an intelligence analyst linking oil protests to an increased likelihood of sabotaging pipelines. Since surveillance agencies are seeking to grab more power than they should have, are we to expect restraint in how they choose targets as well?

pyre2• 11 years ago

The problem is that if you are part of an activist group that has "members" who are extreme enough to commit criminal acts, law enforcement does not discriminate. Once a couple of members commit criminal acts, the entire group is guilty by association. We see this with race and religion, why would it be any difference with ideologies?

For example, if you go to enough Animal Rights protests, I've heard that you start to get a "profile" in law enforcement databases (at least in the US). Just look at how "AgGag" laws are passed specifically to "protect" specific industries from activists that want to film what goes on behind closed doors (and bring it to light).

As another example, look at the way that law enforcement in Canada dealt with the G20 summit.

pjc50• 11 years ago

Pretty much every anti-terror bill is unnecessary and dangerous.

maerF0x02• 11 years ago

I respect Elizabeth May's perspectives on many matters. She may be the hardest working MP.

http://www.straight.com/news/818486/elizabeth-may-condemns-b...

spatten• 11 years ago

I'm confused by the caption under the photo (and I live in Vancouver, right next door to Victoria):

Victoria MP Murray Rankin: "I heard 10 gunshots at least and huddled with colleagues under a desk."

It feels like a mistake. Anyone know what this refers to?

sospep• 11 years ago

He is referring to the attack on Canadian parliament(0) by a lone gunman on 2014-10-22

[0]http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/shooting-on-parliament-hill-...

GigabyteCoin• 11 years ago

It's certainly a strange place for that caption. It's not mentioned at all in the article. But what I think it's referring to is the recent Parliament Hill shootings in late 2014. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_shootings_at_Parliament_H...

Why Canada's anti-terror bill is unnecessary and dangerous

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