The governing Conservatives are quite obviously hoping to capitalize on the public fears they’ve worked so hard to promote. After all, why scare people if it doesn’t get you votes?
The NDP might put up a fight, but the Liberals have reacted like terrified sheep. They want better oversight of the security services, but that doesn’t go nearly far enough.
We need a thoroughgoing, informed debate on what the new law means and its impact on our rights. The onus is on the government to prove that more police powers are required, not on the citizens to fend off the state.
Instead, the Conservatives will ram through the changes while laughing off all objections as being “soft on terror.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper claims that the Islamic State, or violent jihjadis, or foreign people with guns are urgent threats to Canada. But the real urgency is about the next election.
The Conservatives have cynically exploited public anxiety over terrorism. Now comes the payoff.
But what happened to the idea of a balance between civil rights and state security? Nowadays, few in Parliament care. It is security first, last and always. Questioning that is cowardice.
The Conservatives, rather smugly, feel they have a winning issue in the matter of public fear. Polls suggest Canadians trust Harper more than the other party leaders on national security.
The irony of it is that if the other parties bend to the will of the government, they vacate the field to the Conservatives. It’s not even good politics.
Meanwhile, we tolerate the hypocrisy of supporting freedom of speech for French cartoonists while allowing our own Charter to be undermined. Who knows how the government will exploit the new spy agency powers?
Can environmental groups be targeted, or First Nations defending their interests?
We need a rigorous, open debate about national security and the powers of the state. Instead, we get craven rhetoric.
The prime minister exemplified that as he announced the new measures at a campaign-style event in vote-heavy suburban Ontario.
“Every time we talk about security, (opposition parties) suggest that somehow our freedoms are threatened,” he said. “Violent jihadism is not a human right, it’s an act of war.”
What? Who ever suggested that terrorism was some kind of right?
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney claimed in a Conservative party letter to supporters that radical Muslims are trying to take over the world.
“Jihadist extremists are targeting Canada because of what we stand for. We are ... a beacon of peace, democracy, and individual freedom. That stands in stark contrast to the totalitarian regime they seek to impose across the globe,” according to Blaney’s copywriters.
“Jihadist terrorists have declared war on us all.”
Another Conservative MP told CTV that parliamentary oversight of secret agencies would be just more “needless red tape.”
Really? How about insisting that any measures that limit our rights be enacted for unambiguous public safety reasons, not for partisan advantage or to make life simpler for the security apparatus?
That won’t happen, if the polls are any indication. They suggest that the Conservatives are gaining on the pack, mainly over public security concerns.
And by cosmic coincidence, the police picked up one alleged jihadi and laid charges in absentia against two others. The Conservatives must have cheered.
The prime minister claims that “jihadi terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced,” apparently right up there with Hitler, Stalin and the Huns.
Yet terrorists can never defeat legitimate states; they are simply too weak. All they have is desperate, inhuman violence, which they use to provoke legitimate governments into self-defeating behaviours.
In Canada, that strategy is working out just fine.
Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca/
Author: DAN LEGER
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