There is no sign so far that the Tories will bow to opposition demands to soften the bill. Chief among critics’ concerns are worries about lawful protesters being labelled potential national security threats, dramatic additional powers at home and abroad for Canada’s spies, and insufficient independent oversight of the state’s increasingly powerful security apparatus.
From the start, Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged the public safety committee “to study it as quickly as possible.” Conservative committee members are pushing to have the bill through committee before the two-week Easter break begins April 2. That gives them nine more sitting days. Using their majority, they could try invoking time-allocation and closure to hit their deadline.
That would still leave less than nine weeks to get the bill through the House of Commons, Senate committee hearings, debate and a final Senate vote before the summer recess.
Given the Conservative majority, many of this week’s speakers will be government witnesses. One is Louise Vincent, sister of slain Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who is to address the committee Monday night at one of four evening sessions this week.
Two day-time sittings also are scheduled, for a total of 12 hours of hearings. Each witness is allotted just 10 minutes to deliver remarks. MPs are given another 10 minutes to ask questions — or as has frequently been the case — slip in partisan commentary.
Vincent is to be seated with government witness and recently retired senator Hugh Segal. He largely supports the legislation, but says the bill has a serious weakness in not increasing independent oversight of federal security agencies. A private member’s bill Segal introduced in the Senate last year for new parliamentary oversight remains stalled.
The NDP and Liberals, based on their seat strength in the Commons, have invited a combined total of fewer than 20 speakers, including some who appeared earlier this month. Two attempts by the opposition parties to get the committee to agree to invite federal Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien were summarily dismissed.
Several notable Canadians and others declined committee invitations to speak, for scheduling and other reasons. They include former Liberal Solicitor-General Anne McLellan, who ushered in Canada’s original Anti-terrorism Act in 2001, former Liberal MP Bob Rae, and former Supreme Court justice and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour.
The committee also invited, but won’t hear from: U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, New Zealand Attorney General Chris Finlayson, and Maher Arar, the Ottawa man whose wrongful labelling as a possible security threat by the RCMP led to his secret 2002 rendition by the United States to a Syrian prison, where he was tortured.
In appearance on CBC television last week, McLellan made no direct comments on the content of C-51, but did say “the government has not made the case for the speed with which this is going through committee.”
Tuesday’s witnesses include Wesley Wark, a leading expert on security intelligence issues at the University Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
He is expected to suggest parliamentarians weigh which parts of the omnibus bill genuinely advance Canadian counter-terrorism capabilities and which parts, on balance, fail to do so, either for operational reasons or because they do not sufficiently protect democratic rights and privacy. Also, he will address which parts he feels should be put on hold for further study, which Wark believes includes the proposed extraordinary powers for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
The legislation would expand the spy agency’s mandate from an intelligence-collection-only agency to one authorized to actively and directly disrupt threats to national security, both at home and abroad. Wark believes that work should be left to the RCMP. He is, however, to make a case for CSIS taking a lead role in overseas disruption operations targeting Canadians — but only after further study.
Original Article
Source: canada.com/
Author: IAN MACLEOD
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