More police and security agency powers: Is this who we are?

After two “homegrown extremists” murdered two members of the Canadian Armed Forces last month, the Canadian government is pushing to grant even more new powers to police and spy agencies to prevent terrorism.

Since 2001, Canada has already drastically changed the powers available to police, spy agencies and courts. Before we go further, we should ask whether these have made a difference in making the country safer, and whether they are right for Canada.

Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the then-Liberal government introduced the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA), similar to the U.S. Patriot Act. Under the ATA, you could be: 

• Detained without charge — taken off the street by police and held for a number of days without explanation.
• Pressured to testify in secret hearings, and if you refuse, be held in jail for months. 

In 2007, that bill expired, but in April 2012 the majority Conservative government used the Boston Marathon bombing as a rationale for fast-tracking its approval of new anti-terrorism provisions, with less oversight.

Politicians who oppose these measures may fear being branded as soft on terror. They may be reluctant to scrap measures that have already been passed for fear of a terrorist attack happening “on their watch.”

But two attacks did just occur on the government’s watch. It wasn’t until after a gunman murdered an unarmed soldier at the National War Memorial and charged into Parliament that anyone bothered to ensure the three different Parliament Hill security teams shared the same radio frequency.

Massive budgets, poor oversight

The focus on security and secrecy often comes along with massive budgets and poor oversight. The new headquarters of Canada’s digital spy agency in Ottawa, the Communications Security Establishment, cost more than $1.2 billion in construction costs alone.

What are these special powers being used for, if not to fight terrorism? Rummaging through ex-girlfriends’ digital files, for one.

That was just one of Edward Snowden’s revelations when he released files showing the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on millions of Americans.

Another Snowden revelation was that Canadian spy agencies and the RCMP were spying on anti-oilsands environmental groups and foreign oil companies, then sharing their findings with the Canadian oil industry — for whom CSIS committee member Chuck Strahl, a former MP, works as a lobbyist.

On top of all this, Dr. Arthur Porter, whom the prime minister appointed as chair of the committee overseeing Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, was charged for bilking a Montreal hospital out of $22.5 million and is currently in Panama, awaiting extradition to Canada.

Legal protections stripped away

But these violations seem almost petty compared to what can happen when “special powers” strip away the legal protections provided by due process.

The Supreme Court of Canada has approved the use of “security certificates” in trials of terror suspects. Witnesses can testify in secret and neither the defendant nor their lawyer can see the evidence, so presenting a defence is impossible.

The Conservative government now wants to go further and allow secret testimony by witnesses whose identity is concealed even from the judge.

Canada has now also made it possible to use information obtained from torture — a practice that used to be universally condemned.

Among cruel and unusual punishments, torture is still unique. Even governments that impose the death penalty have a trial first to ensure they are putting the right person to death. There is no such test before a torturer gets to work.

Torture produces information that is often useless, since the victim will say anything to make the pain stop. Is that the kind of intelligence we want being used in secret trials, or being used to justify a war?

Manipulating the state

There is an assumption that only the guilty need to worry about having their rights violated.

But when the state weakens its protections of citizens, “bad actors” can exploit secret courts and secret police by manipulating the state into doing their dirty work for them.

An innocent person accused of terrorist sympathies can end up detained without charge, rotting in jail for failing to testify, or subjected to "extreme rendition.” This is not a what-if situation; it happened to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was “rendered” and tortured in Syria.

In a war zone, people who are framed this way end up dead.

This debate is happening as we mark Remembrance Day, 100 years after the First World War began, and the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Bloc, a political system defined by its secret police, secret trials and a surveillance state.

Before we, as citizens, strip ourselves of any further rights and freedoms, we need to ask ourselves not just “will this make us safer?” but “is this who we are?”

Dougald Lamont is a writer in Winnipeg