Stengel, the baseball manager-philosopher, would tell skeptical writers that “You could look it up,” when they questioned his facts. The phrase became the title of a Stengel biography.
Peter MacKay is no Casey Stengel. Stengel was a strategic thinker, which you must be to win seven World Series. MacKay isn’t known for that.
The justice minister suggested that the would-be Halifax mall killers weren’t terrorists because “the attack does not appear to have been culturally motivated, therefore not linked to terrorism.”
MacKay’s critics were shocked. They argued that the accused conspirators, apparently, are wannabe neo-Nazis and that should qualify them as terrorists. The minister saw them more like the Columbine murderers; apolitical thrill killers.
The real shocker was that a Harper government minister had blown a chance to warn of scary terror threats against Canadians. It’s a central Conservative campaign theme in an election year, after all.
If you do look up “terrorism,” you’ll find it defined in the Criminal Code as crimes committed “for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause” or with the intent to intimidate the public or force some action by government or society.
The Halifax case doesn’t fit that definition.
Still, I’ll bet MacKay got in trouble with the PMO for failing to seize on the Halifax case as more evidence of terrorists on the warpath.
I think his caution was well-advised. The Halifax conspiracy shouldn’t be used to justify more state security powers, as proposed by the Harper government’s Bill C-51. That the alleged plotters were nabbed before they could act proves that the state already has adequate powers of surveillance and arrest.
Still, the Conservatives sense a winning issue with their bill expanding the powers of the national security apparatus. A Reid poll last week suggested that Canadians are so scared that eight out of 10 respondents said they support the new bill.
The pollsters also found that three-quarters of those surveyed knew little or nothing about the actual contents of C-51. One in five hadn’t even read a news story about it.
So people are supporting more state security powers, more surveillance and potential breaches of the Charter of Rights without even knowing what’s proposed, let alone what it means.
The Conservatives understand that. The poll had barely been published when Defence Minister Jason Kenney gave a speech warning of the “high probability of jihadist attacks from within” Canada. “The threat of terrorism has never been greater.”
For Conservatives, C-51 also has had the satisfying effect of splitting the parliamentary opposition. The NDP is doing its job and will fight the bill as an overreaching intrusion into the private lives of Canadians with too little oversight.
The prime minister has already rejected any suggestion of improved accountability. Despite that, the craven Liberals will approve the bill. They fear the polls.
So while the Conservatives bulldoze ahead with the legislation, they can promote themselves as the party of public safety. Scared voters are Conservative voters, it would seem.
Yet at the root of all this is not so much the definition of terrorism, but the definition of war. The prime minister says we are at war with the terrorists. It follows that in war anything goes, including restricting our civil rights.
This “war on terror” idea has become a dangerous cliché. This isn’t 1914 or 1939. No war has been declared or voted in Parliament. In fact, these extraordinary measures limiting civil rights and freedoms seem more political than practical.
And if approved, they’ll last far past the date of the next election.
Casey Stengel cautioned to “never make predictions, especially about the future,” but C-51 promises a Canadian future where we are less free, with fewer rights and where privacy has become a thing of the past.
Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca/
Author: DAN LEGER
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