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Canada Rejects Anti-Terror Laws
Coryoth writes "The Canadian parliament has voted against renewing anti-terror laws that had been introduced after September 11, 2001. The rejected laws included provisions to hold terror suspects indefinitely, and to compel witnesses to testify, and were in some sense Canada's version fo the Patriot Act. The laws were voted down in the face of claims from the minority Conservative government that the Liberal Party was soft on terror, and despite the fact that Canada has faced active terrorist cells in their own country. The anti-terror laws have never been used, and it was viewed that they are neither relevant, nor needed, in dealing with terrorist plots. Hopefully more countries will come to the same conclusion."
Canada has faced active terrorist cells in their own country.
Well, just to put this in context...
The Mounties, scared the hell out of Canadians by announcing that these people acquired three tons of ammonium nitrate, and were quoted in their press conference as saying "To put this in context, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people took one ton of ammonium nitrate."
Only later did it come out that it was undercover Mounties who sold them fake ammonium nitrate, and even encouraged them to buy the stuff.
Deconstruct the State
The anti-terrorism act is still there. Just a portion of the laws are being allowed to expire. Frankly, I never saw the point of the laws in the first place. If there ever was a real terrorist issue, we have enough criminals laws to deal with them. That is what they are... criminals. Sometimes they are better armed and organized than the average bear, but they can also be three kooks with an ax to grind.
If the threat was more widespread, we always have the emergencies act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act ) which replaced the war measures act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act ).
... when you can invoke the War Measures Act?
That's how Canada dealt with (domestic) terrorists the last time.
-- Alastair
The plan was to bomb major buildings in downtown Toronto, so yes there were significant targets, and yes they were Canadian targets. As to cells being in place to attack US targets - well that implies or assumes some sort of overall governing strategy which simply doesn't seem to be the case. The Canadian terrorist plot that was foiled was, much like the London bombings, a case of home grown terrorists who were simply "inspired by", but had absolutely no links to, Al Qaeda. The claim that there is some worldwide terrorist network that is out to get the US seems to be more a phantom created by certain US politicians than anything. The reality seems to be unconnected groups who, inspired by the publicity given to "global terrorism", decide that terrorism seems to be a way to take out their personal (and often local an homegrown) frustrations. There is no terrorist mastermind behind it all. And that's one of the reasons why local law enforcement is already sufficiently empowered to deal with such groups without any special provisions for "terrorists". We need to stop treating "terrorists" as anything significant and start treating them like the common criminals they are.
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The PATRIOT Act (Please don't upper case "act") did amend various laws but in doing so it also altered those laws giving the government powers that it never had before.
Sectons 505 and 805 for example have already been struck down as unconstitutional. I expect more to follow.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
The five individuals you speak of have been held on security certificates, an aspect of Canadian law that was not part of the Anti-terrorism act that will sunset tomorrow. Certain aspects of those security certificates, however, were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme court of Canada last week in a 9-0 ruling, giving the government one year to come up with provisions for adequate defence for the accused and a means for the dealing of evidence that is deemed essential to national security.
The anti-terrorism act was largely a means by which the government of the day dealt with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, both to appease the public that something was being done about terrorism, but mostly to head off accusations from the Bush administration that Canada was soft on terrorism. They were never used because Canadian law already possessed draconian measures to detain suspects indefinitely without charge, the ability to try them without ever revealing the charges, and to use evidence that they and their lawyers are not allowed to see.
The next runner up is Saudi Arabia with 15.4%
Honestly though, the oil market is so tight & unstable that serious disruptions in any large country's output would have a dramatic effect on the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Consider that Canada's total (not just crude) oil production is ~64% of Iran's.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The PATRIOT Act (FYI, 'Act' should not be in all caps, since it is not part of the acronym) removes restricitons on apprehension of suspected terrorists that remain for drug & RICO suspects. The PATRIOT Act is a wish-list from law-enforcement agencies (including unconstitutional provisions) that was rushed through on the pretext of preventing terrorism -- it's all the the things they wished they could do, but couldn't (even under RICO) prior to 9/11.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Funniest comment ever. This guy was minister of the environment for four years, and didn't do a thing to curb carbon emissions. Now that he is in opposition, he's Mr. Greenjeans. He's a hypocrite and an opportunist; integrity is one thing he doesn't have.
What was once true, is no longer so
We've been one of the most active forces in Afghanistan, and were there from the start. And if you believe that terrorists hate freedom/the West/women without veils, then we're obviously as much of a target as the US.
Oh, and we're a member of the G7, a major resource exporter, and the only country that Osama explicitly threatened that hasn't seen related terrorist bombings.
In other words, you're overwhelmingly ignorant on the real world.
Here's the reference, but unfortunately it says "The first, second, and third most centrist outlets are respectively Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN's Newsnight with Aaron Brown, and ABC's Good Morning America."
It goes on to say, "The fourth and fifth most centrist outlets are the Drudge Report and Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume." Nonetheless, the scale was 0-100, with 100 being most liberal and 50.1 being centrist. Brit Hume's score was 39.7, making it clearly conservative.
And finally, "Our method only measures the degree to which media is liberal or conservative, relative to Congress," ergo even FOX's most centrist show is more conservative than Congress.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere