Rally on Parliament Hill against Bill C-51. Credit: Obert Madondo

By Dominique Peschard

I have been assigned the formidable task of presenting 20 years of ICLMG work on anti-terrorism legislation in less than 1,000 words. It is impossible in such a short text to even simply enumerate all the interventions on a multitude of legislative pieces, so I will focus on some key interventions which illustrate the principles that have guided the work of the ICLMG throughout the years.

The first major intervention, which set the tone for all subsequent ICLMG positions, was the report, entitled “In the shadow of the law”, submitted by the ICLMG in March 2003 in response to Justice Canada’s first annual report on the application of the Anti‑terrorism Act (ATA), also known as Bill C-36. The report underlined a series of major concerns with the ‘War on Terror’ initiated after 9/11:

• The introduction of the new crime of terrorism in the Criminal Code. The ICLMG rightly pointed out that terrorist acts were already crimes and that the broad and imprecise definition of what constituted “terrorism, facilitating terrorism and financing terrorism” could target a series of activities of political dissent having nothing to do with terrorism.
• The use of the national security argument to deprive people of their freedoms and of the right to know the “evidence” held against them. Other articles in this publication provide several examples of the denial of the right to due process and a fair trial.
• The association of terrorism with Islam. This led to the racial profiling of an entire community.
• The surveillance powers granted to police and security agencies and the constitution of vast data banks with no possibility to correct errors.
• The information sharing agreements with the US with no control over what the information would be used for.
• The lack of control and accountability over the use of these new extraordinary powers.

The report concluded by emphasizing that security is not achieved by limiting freedoms; on the contrary, freedoms are what guarantees our security.

Later, during the 2006 parliamentary review of the ATA, the ICLMG played a crucial role in the final position adopted by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois, and was instrumental in the drafting of two minority reports tabled in Parliament by these opposition parties. The minority reports called for the repeal of the ATA.

A protracted struggle took place between 2006 and 2011 when a minority Conservative government tried to re- introduce the two clauses (investigative hearings and preventive detention) which had expired as a result of a sunset clause in the ATA. The campaign and lobbying of the opposition parties against the reintroduction of these clauses was successful… until the Conservatives won a majority in 2011.

The Conservative government used the pretext of the murders of two Canadian servicemen by two isolated individuals in the fall of 2014 to introduce and adopt Bill C-51, the Anti‑terrorism Act, 2015; the most important piece of anti-terrorism legislation since the 2001 ATA. Among other things, C-51 enacted a broad information-sharing regime between government departments, increased the time a person could be detained before appearing before a judge, and gave CSIS the power to commit covert illegal acts. The ICLMG played a very active role in a broad coalition of organizations opposed to C-51 which succeeded in raising awareness and mobilizing a significant part of the population against the bill.

Ottawa protest against Bill C-51. Credit: Communist Party of Canada

With the Liberals back in power in 2015, the ICLMG, along with several other organizations, undertook a campaign for the repeal of C-51. But the government ignored the numerous voices asking for the repeal, and chose instead to present and adopt yet another anti-terrorist piece of
legislation, Bill C-59, the National Security Act, 2017. Not only did C-59 not fix the problems posed by C-51, it raised more concerns, for example, granting the Communications Security Establishment – Canada’s NSA – the power to carry out defensive and offensive cyber activities at home and abroad. Nevertheless, C-59 was a partial victory. The ICLMG had campaigned relentlessly since 2006 for the implementation of a review mechanism for all national security bodies proposed by Justice O’Connor in his second report following the Commission of Inquiry Into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar. The government finally
responded to this demand by creating the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency.

Over the years, the ICLMG has systematically intervened before parliamentary committees to challenge legislative attacks on rights and freedoms and, more broadly, to inform MPs of the dangers of the measures they were asked to adopt. The ICLMG has also worked actively, alone and in coalitions, to keep the public informed on these issues. As a result, the public today is more critical and wary of new surveillance or security measures which infringe on civil liberties and human rights.

Dominique Peschard has been a co-chair of the ICLMG since 2012 and president of La Ligue des droits et libertés (LDL) from 2007 to 2015. He is currently a member of the LDL committee “Population surveillance, artificial intelligence and human rights.”

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By Xan Dagenais & Tim McSorley

We hope this overview of the last 20 years provided a glimpse of the ICLMG’s efforts, in collaboration with so many partners, to curb the impact of government measures that seriously infringe on our rights in the name of “national security” and “anti-terrorism.” We also hope this publication renewed – or sparked – your commitment to the struggle for the protection and promotion of civil liberties from the negative impact of national security and the “War on Terror.”

The concepts of “law and order” and “national security” have been used on the territory now called Canada since European settlers decided that this land was theirs. The RCMP was created – then as the North-West Mounted Police – in large part as a paramilitary force to surveil, control and displace Indigenous people; a role they are still playing to this day.

The words “terrorism” and “threats to national security” are powerful. Thanks to years of relentless fear mongering by governments and the media, they elicit automatic condemnation of whoever is stamped with those labels. As a result, these labels have become a very effective tool to discredit and repress any group, movement or person who opposes government policies and actions, and fights for justice and collective liberation.

As our contributors have shown, we cannot simply reform anti-terror laws and the national security apparatus to fix its abuses and the erosion of civil liberties. Given that the Criminal Code already covers all violent crimes, there is no need for or benefit to anti-terror and national security laws and tools.

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By Xan Dagenais

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, we were all in shock. The news that the government was working on the COVID Alert app, an application that would track our infection status and who we had been in contact with, immediately triggered alarm bells among civil society. We are all too familiar with the government reacting too quickly to a crisis and adopting new laws or measures that infringe on people’s freedoms and human rights. And once those are in place, it’s much harder to backtrack, especially when those laws and measures give more power to the state and its agencies.

We therefore had to react quickly, especially since, to our knowledge, no other civil liberties organization was looking at the COVID app. After meeting with the Director of the Privacy Management Division of Health Canada to discuss our concerns, we were able to secure a commitment from the government that the COVID app would not collect personal information, and that national security agencies would not be involved in COVID surveillance or have access to COVID information.

We also co-wrote a statement listing seven principles to ensure that government efforts to combat COVID-19, particularly when considering any kind of enhanced digital surveillance or data collection, respected privacy, and we met with the Justice Minister to discuss them. We then created a video and launched a letter-writing campaign in support of the joint statement, and thanks to a subsequent joint open letter, the federal government delayed the release of the national contact tracing app until the Privacy Commissioner had examined and approved it. Finally, we joined 300 organizations and individuals to call on all levels of government to strengthen human rights oversight amid the pandemic.

Xan Dagenais is the Communications and Research Coordinator of the International Civil Liberties

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