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| Civil liberties at risk, ex-CSIS head says - Thursday, November 27, 2003 at 12:20 |
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PUBLICATION GLOBE AND MAIL ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Canada's former top spy says the federal government has gone too far in the war on terror and risks trampling on civil liberties. Reid Morden, the former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, is taking aim at the federal anti-terrorism laws enacted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, saying they make it too easy to outlaw groups and prosecute individuals as alleged terrorists. The new laws permit the cabinet, on the advice of CSIS, to designate groups as "terrorist" and makes it a serious crime for an individual to belong to such groups or provide material support. Mr. Morden argues that the definition of terrorism can be stretched so broadly that it can ensnare people who pose no real threat to national security. The people whose rights are most at risk of violation are newcomers to Canada, Mr. Morden said. His critique was published yesterday in an unlikely spot , the CSIS Web page, in the agency's Commentary series on intelligence issues. The essays, usually written by academics, do not reflect the official views of CSIS. It's rare for a former insider to argue that the CSIS spooks have too much power. Mr. Morden, who ran the agency as the Cold War was winding down from 1987 to 1991, is a private security consultant. He is also the former deputy minister of foreign affairs. The terrorist threat is real and Canada is not immune, Mr. Morden acknowledges. The attacks on New York and Washington "effectively demonstrated that every country in the world is vulnerable to attack. . . . Terrorism and this radical brand of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism will be with us for a long time," he writes. Referring to some of his own major challenges as CSIS director, he said the agency has vast experience dealing with terrorism in this country, including Armenian nationalist attacks on the Turkish embassy in Ottawa and gun and munitions smuggling by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. But Canada has well-established criminal laws that can deal with specific terrorist acts and conspiracies, he said. Nevertheless, the Canadian government, "in its race to catch up, went beyond the British and American legislation defining terrorist activities to include legal political, religious and ideological protests that intentionally disrupt essential services. . . .The overall effect is to lengthen the long reach of the criminal law in a manner that is complex, unclear and unrestrained." To date, 34 groups have been named terrorist entities under the new law, including the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, which has taken responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks, in which almost 3,000 died. Mr. Morden's critique arrives in Ottawa amid a storm of debate about the role of the Canadian government in the arrest in New York of Ottawa software engineer Maher Arar and his deportation to Syria, where he says he was tortured. Mr. Arar was deported as an alleged terrorist, but he has never been charged with a crime. Mr. Morden said he is not naive about the risks of an open democracy and that large numbers of people in Canada are sympathetic to radical political messages. "That radical message can lead to many forms of expression, including the planning and perpetration of an attack on Canadian soil." Nobody knows for sure what form an attack will take, but "most intelligence sources are agreed that it, or they, will come." Canada must prepare itself to protect infrastructure, heritage buildings, symbolic structures and nuclear power plants. But Canadians have to maintain the traditional regard for rights and freedoms, he said. "The question is whether the hastily drafted legislation has accomplished its essential purposes without unacceptably moving the line of balance between legitimate advocacy, protest and dissent and the security of the state and its inhabitants, thereby unacceptably chilling unfettered exercise of the former." He concludes that ". . .The new law diminishes due-process protections as it seeks to introduce counterterrorist measures." Moreover, the definition of terrorism "is so wide that it could easily include behaviour that doesn't remotely resemble terrorism. Once the 'terrorist' label is fastened on an individual, organization or suspect, then the rules of procedural justice are more easily suspended." The people most likely to be labelled as terrorists are "visibly identifiable as racial, ethnic or political minorities, recently arrived in Canada as immigrants and refugees." Ironically, he noted, these are the very individuals who rely on organizations within their communities for support learning Canadian languages and customs. The organizations also provide vital links to homelands. One of the biggest challenges facing Canadian policymakers, he said, is to convince the United States that this country is a trusted ally and not, as some have suggested a "Club Med" for terrorists. |