There are many quotes that pay homage to the power of the spoken and written word. Once uttered, and having taken root in the mind of people, words and the ideas that they express can last for thousands of years. They are by their very nature a source of great good and great harm. Accordingly, those who wield them as part of their professional lives should use them with care.
I have spent some thirty-six years dealing with public safety matters, some twenty of which dealt with national security at the highest of levels within government. Both senior officials and ministers were sensitive to the use of terms such as “extremist” or “radical” to describe individuals or organizations. These are loaded terms that convey a stigmatization that has few parallels in a democracy. Yet this language has intentionally been employed as a sword by the government to attack its critics both in Parliament and in an “Open Letter” to the public by the Minister of Natural Resources in January of this year. This Open Letter, describing the need to diversify our energy markets, would have been a very carefully crafted communication. Each word would have been weighed and scrutinized to ensure that the government’s position was crystal clear. The following words, lifted from the open letter, are reflective of the government’s thinking:
“Unfortunately there are environmental and other radical groups that seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade….
These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda….
They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national interest…
It is an urgent matter of Canada’s national interest.”
Running in parallel with this theme we had statements by the Minister of the Environment on CBC’s Power and Politics wherein he suggested that funding received by these groups might constitute money laundering.
There is a temptation to think that this is all just so much heated rhetoric and the Parliamentary Secretary and the two Ministers just got carried away with themselves. These statements however were first expressed in September of 2011 and have become more strident in the nine subsequent months. To find out where the Government’s thinking may be in this matter it is instructive to examine the Harper Government’s Counter Terrorism Strategy entitled Building Resilience Against Terrorism, released in February 2012.
This document is largely a recasting of the 2004 National Security Policy of the previous Liberal government entitled Securing an Open Society to which they have cut and pasted elements of the operational processes that were followed by officials and Ministers during a crisis. The structure and framework described in the recent strategy have, in fact, been in place for decades and were augmented in 2002 when the then Liberal government made some 7 billion dollars available to augment public safety capacities post 9/11.
Other than clawing money back from the public safety sector and reducing oversight of CSIS thought elimination of the Office of the Inspector General it is hard to see what positive contribution the current government has made to national security. Even the recent announcement of one million dollars for terrorism related research to study the root causes of terrorism is of questionable value in light of the Prime Minister’s refusal to use taxpayers’ monies to fund organizations that disagree with his view of the world.
That does not mean however that the Harper government has overlooked the strategic value that national security offers. It is with the words spoken by government ministers in relation to the energy file in mind that we should examine elements of their Counter Terrorism Strategy.
The core element is the very definition of “terrorism” that is employed in that document. The drafters, under the sub-heading “The Terrorist Threat “opted to employ some of the language found in section 83.01(1)(b) of the Anti Terrorism Act of 2002 which, in part, defines terrorist activity as including
“… an act or omission undertaken…for a political…or ideological purpose that is intended to intimidate the public with respect to its security, including its economic security, or to compel a person, government or organization….from doing or refraining from doing any act, and that intentionally causes one of a number of specified forms of serious harm.”
The paper goes on to provide examples of “Domestic Issue-based Extremism” such as environmentalism and anti-capitalism. Immediately following this listing we are provided with reference to the Oklahoma City bombing and the recent shooting in Norway, as presumably useful examples that we should bear in mind. We are also cautioned about the risk that these terrorists will continue to explore means to acquire financial and logistical support using both legal and illegal enterprises.
Beyond the overkill employed in juxtaposing examples of mass murderers with those who have expressed concerns regarding some of the most pressing issues of the day, what is most telling about the mindset of the government is what it decided not to reproduce from the definition of terrorism as found in the Criminal Code.
For instance, the serious harm that constitutes terrorism is quite specific. It must cause death or serious bodily harm, endanger a person’s life, cause a serious risk to the health or safety of the public, or cause substantial property damage and such damage is of such a nature as to occasion the aforementioned harms – i.e., death, serious bodily harm etc.
The Criminal Code further specifies that excluded from the definition of terrorism is a serious interference with or serious disruption of an essential service, facility or system, whether public or private, that results from advocacy, protest, dissent or stoppage of work that is not intended to result in the conduct or harms listed above.
Parliament was sufficiently concerned with limiting the scope of the definition of terrorism that in section 83.01(1.1) it added the following interpretation clause.
“For greater certainty, the expression of a political, religious or ideological thought, belief or opinion does not come within paragraph (b) of the definition “terrorist activity” in subsection (1) unless it constitutes an act or omission that satisfies the criteria of that paragraph.”
In other words that it is intended to cause those specific serious harms.
The investigative mandate of CSIS also excludes lawful advocacy, protest or dissent unless such activities are directed towards or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.
The failure, intentional or otherwise, to include in such a public document the limitations upon what activities constitute terrorism, and recourse by key government spokespersons to highly inflammatory rhetoric, mimicking the words of the Counter Terrorism Strategy, to silence their critics has poisoned the climate in which mature debate concerning serious public policy issues must take place. Robust advocacy, protest and dissent are the lifeblood of a democracy. Any inappropriate limitation or threat to limit such activity constitutes a violation of the very essence of the rights enshrined by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in our Constitution.
It would be wise for Ministers to choose their words more carefully whilst remembering that the overarching objective of a counter terrorism strategy is to protect and foster our freedoms. Their words, to date, diminish not only themselves but also our democratic rights.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Paul Kennedy
I have spent some thirty-six years dealing with public safety matters, some twenty of which dealt with national security at the highest of levels within government. Both senior officials and ministers were sensitive to the use of terms such as “extremist” or “radical” to describe individuals or organizations. These are loaded terms that convey a stigmatization that has few parallels in a democracy. Yet this language has intentionally been employed as a sword by the government to attack its critics both in Parliament and in an “Open Letter” to the public by the Minister of Natural Resources in January of this year. This Open Letter, describing the need to diversify our energy markets, would have been a very carefully crafted communication. Each word would have been weighed and scrutinized to ensure that the government’s position was crystal clear. The following words, lifted from the open letter, are reflective of the government’s thinking:
“Unfortunately there are environmental and other radical groups that seek to block this opportunity to diversify our trade….
These groups threaten to hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda….
They use funding from foreign special interest groups to undermine Canada’s national interest…
It is an urgent matter of Canada’s national interest.”
Running in parallel with this theme we had statements by the Minister of the Environment on CBC’s Power and Politics wherein he suggested that funding received by these groups might constitute money laundering.
There is a temptation to think that this is all just so much heated rhetoric and the Parliamentary Secretary and the two Ministers just got carried away with themselves. These statements however were first expressed in September of 2011 and have become more strident in the nine subsequent months. To find out where the Government’s thinking may be in this matter it is instructive to examine the Harper Government’s Counter Terrorism Strategy entitled Building Resilience Against Terrorism, released in February 2012.
This document is largely a recasting of the 2004 National Security Policy of the previous Liberal government entitled Securing an Open Society to which they have cut and pasted elements of the operational processes that were followed by officials and Ministers during a crisis. The structure and framework described in the recent strategy have, in fact, been in place for decades and were augmented in 2002 when the then Liberal government made some 7 billion dollars available to augment public safety capacities post 9/11.
Other than clawing money back from the public safety sector and reducing oversight of CSIS thought elimination of the Office of the Inspector General it is hard to see what positive contribution the current government has made to national security. Even the recent announcement of one million dollars for terrorism related research to study the root causes of terrorism is of questionable value in light of the Prime Minister’s refusal to use taxpayers’ monies to fund organizations that disagree with his view of the world.
That does not mean however that the Harper government has overlooked the strategic value that national security offers. It is with the words spoken by government ministers in relation to the energy file in mind that we should examine elements of their Counter Terrorism Strategy.
The core element is the very definition of “terrorism” that is employed in that document. The drafters, under the sub-heading “The Terrorist Threat “opted to employ some of the language found in section 83.01(1)(b) of the Anti Terrorism Act of 2002 which, in part, defines terrorist activity as including
“… an act or omission undertaken…for a political…or ideological purpose that is intended to intimidate the public with respect to its security, including its economic security, or to compel a person, government or organization….from doing or refraining from doing any act, and that intentionally causes one of a number of specified forms of serious harm.”
The paper goes on to provide examples of “Domestic Issue-based Extremism” such as environmentalism and anti-capitalism. Immediately following this listing we are provided with reference to the Oklahoma City bombing and the recent shooting in Norway, as presumably useful examples that we should bear in mind. We are also cautioned about the risk that these terrorists will continue to explore means to acquire financial and logistical support using both legal and illegal enterprises.
Beyond the overkill employed in juxtaposing examples of mass murderers with those who have expressed concerns regarding some of the most pressing issues of the day, what is most telling about the mindset of the government is what it decided not to reproduce from the definition of terrorism as found in the Criminal Code.
For instance, the serious harm that constitutes terrorism is quite specific. It must cause death or serious bodily harm, endanger a person’s life, cause a serious risk to the health or safety of the public, or cause substantial property damage and such damage is of such a nature as to occasion the aforementioned harms – i.e., death, serious bodily harm etc.
The Criminal Code further specifies that excluded from the definition of terrorism is a serious interference with or serious disruption of an essential service, facility or system, whether public or private, that results from advocacy, protest, dissent or stoppage of work that is not intended to result in the conduct or harms listed above.
Parliament was sufficiently concerned with limiting the scope of the definition of terrorism that in section 83.01(1.1) it added the following interpretation clause.
“For greater certainty, the expression of a political, religious or ideological thought, belief or opinion does not come within paragraph (b) of the definition “terrorist activity” in subsection (1) unless it constitutes an act or omission that satisfies the criteria of that paragraph.”
In other words that it is intended to cause those specific serious harms.
The investigative mandate of CSIS also excludes lawful advocacy, protest or dissent unless such activities are directed towards or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.
The failure, intentional or otherwise, to include in such a public document the limitations upon what activities constitute terrorism, and recourse by key government spokespersons to highly inflammatory rhetoric, mimicking the words of the Counter Terrorism Strategy, to silence their critics has poisoned the climate in which mature debate concerning serious public policy issues must take place. Robust advocacy, protest and dissent are the lifeblood of a democracy. Any inappropriate limitation or threat to limit such activity constitutes a violation of the very essence of the rights enshrined by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in our Constitution.
It would be wise for Ministers to choose their words more carefully whilst remembering that the overarching objective of a counter terrorism strategy is to protect and foster our freedoms. Their words, to date, diminish not only themselves but also our democratic rights.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Paul Kennedy
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