News from ICLMG

Event: The Supreme Court’s Bissonnette Decision: Anti-Racist and Abolitionist Perspectives

*This event was hosted on unceded Algonquin territory. This stolen land must be returned to the care of the Algonquin Nation*

On May 27, the Supreme Court of Canada issued its ruling in the sentencing case of Quebec mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette. The Court found the imposition of consecutive life sentences without realistic possibility of parole unconstitutional. The ruling has elicited much analysis and discussion. Our panelists looked at this decision from anti-racist, abolitionist perspectives.

OUR PANELISTS

Atiya Husain

Atiya Husain is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University. Atiya’s current stream of research is about race and terrorism. Currently under review, Atiya’s book manuscript excavates the epistemological, racial, and theological foundations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted program (1950-present). Other recent and forthcoming writings in this stream of research examine counterterrorism in relation to the abolition movement.

El Jones

El Jones is a spoken word poet, educator, journalist, and community activist living in African Nova Scotia. She is a co-founder of the Black Power Hour, a live radio show with incarcerated people on CKDU that creates space for people inside to share their creative work and discuss contemporary social and political issues. Her book of spoken word poetry, Live from the Afrikan Resistance! was published by Roseway Press in 2014. She has taught at Dalhousie University, Acadia University, Nova Scotia Community College, Saint Mary’s University and Mount Saint Vincent University. In 2021, Jones became a contributor to The Breach, an alternative, Canadian news website. Her work focuses on social justice issues such as feminism, prison abolition, anti-racism, and decolonization.

Kent Roach

Kent Roach is Professor of Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is the author of 16 books including Constitutional Remedies in Canada; (with Craig Forcese) False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism and Canadian Justice, Indigenous Injustice: The Gerald Stanley/Colten Boushie Case. His 16th book Canadian Policing: Why and How it Must Change was published in 2022. Professor Roach has served as research director for the Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182, for the Independent Civilian Review of Toronto Police Missing Persons Investigations and for the public consultations resulting in A Miscarriage of Justice Commission report.

Yavar Hameed

Yavar Hameed is a human rights lawyer at Hameed Law in Ottawa. Yavar worked for three years at a labour law firm focusing on trade union law, employment law and human rights. For the past twelve years, he has worked on important cases to help individuals and communities to resist injustice such as discrimination on the basis of poverty, police brutality, persecution of people on the basis of dissident political views, whistle blowing, racial profiling, deportation of migrants, Islamophobia, homophobia and abuse of prisoner rights. Since 2009, he has also taught a seminar course at Carleton University’s Department of Law and Legal Studies entitled, State, Security and Dissent, in which he continues to explore contemporary and historical human rights problems in Canada with a focus upon the importance of material and ideological persecution of dissent by the state.

Co-moderated by Azeezah Kanji, legal scholar and journalist, and Tim McSorley, National Coordinator, ICLMG.

This event is co-hosted by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group and the Noor Cultural Centre.

Thank you for attending live or watching now!

Since you’re here…

… we have a small favour to ask. Here at ICLMG, we are working very hard to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called “war on terror” in Canada. We do not receive any financial support from any federal, provincial or municipal governments or political parties. You can become our patron on Patreon and get rewards in exchange for your support. You can give as little as $1/month (that’s only $12/year!) and you can unsubscribe at any time. Any donations will go a long way to support our work.panel-54141172-image-6fa93d06d6081076-320-320You can also make a one-time donation or donate monthly via Paypal by clicking on the button below. On the fence about giving? Check out our Achievements and Gains since we were created in 2002. Thank you for your generosity!
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ICLMG to Senate: new rules for cell phone border searches threaten privacy, risk racial profiling

It is imperative that senators reject the government’s proposed new threshold of “reasonable general concern” to allow Canadian border officers to search the cell phones and digital devices of Canadians and international travellers when they come to Canada. Such a threshold would grant border officers too broad a discretion in deciding whose devices to search and why, allowing for the violation of privacy rights. It would also allow for racial profiling and discrimination at the border to continue.

This was the message delivered by the ICLMG’s national coordinator at the June 1, 2022, Senate committee hearing on the proposed Bill S-7. Below is the full transcript of his remarks. Above, you can watch his.

Brenda McPhail of the CCLA and Meghan McDermott of the BCCLA also appeared at the meeting. You can watch their testimony and the full discussion with senators here.

Statement to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence (SECD) regarding Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Customs Act and the Preclearance Act, 2016

Tim McSorley, National Coordinator
International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group

Thank you honourable Senators for inviting me to speak to you today on behalf of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group in regards to Bill S-7. To begin, I’d like to make clear that we find the central provisions of this bill, the creation of a new threshold of “reasonable general concern” in order to search personal digital devices at the border, deeply worrisome, and we are strongly opposed to its adoption. In the next few minutes I will make clear why we are opposed, and propose an alternative. I’d also mention right away that, similar to my colleagues here today, and what we expect to appear in written briefs, there are other parts of this bill that deserve examination, and I hope they can be raised during our discussion today.

Every day, tens of thousands – and in pre-COVID times, hundreds of thousands – of Canadians and foreign travellers enter this country. Most of them will be carrying a cell phone, laptop, tablet, smartwatch or other personal digital device. Many will be carrying multiple devices. All of these devices carry troves of intimate information about the individual person, from health to financial to personal records. They also carry intimate information about the people in our lives – our family, friends, colleagues and more.

If any devices carry a reasonable expectation of privacy, these do. Much more so than a suitcase, purse or other piece of luggage.

The courts have recognized this, both in the Alberta Court of Appeal decision in R v. Canfield, but also in a recent Ontario Superior Court decision, and even in a 2021 immigration decision. What the courts have told us is clear: these devices cannot be searched without a reason.

The government’s solution is the creation of the novel threshold of “reasonable general concern.” As you’ll likely hear from my colleagues from the CCLA and BCCLA today, this proposed threshold is unacceptable for several reasons, and we support many of the concerns they will raise. We are expected to believe that a “reasonable general concern” will be based on specific, objective criteria, when the wording of the threshold indicates the exact opposite. At the same time, we are told that this new threshold will help codify the policies CBSA agents have already been following – and what the courts rejected as not meeting an adequate threshold.

Why should we be worried? On Monday, several Senators raised concerns about racial and religious profiling, including speaking powerfully about their own experience at the border. Our coalition’s specific mandate is around the impacts of anti-terrorism and national security on civil liberties in Canada. What we have documented over the past 20 years reflects the same problems: people from specific countries, religions, ancestries and races face greater profiling at the border. This is especially true for Muslims, and those believed to be Muslim. And we see how these prejudices are justified: Pro-democracy activists from Egypt are declared security risks by Canadian border agents because they are affiliated with a Muslim party. A Ph. D. student is told their secondary screening is because they are from Somalia – a predominantly Muslim country. Reports from Muslim Canadians of back to back “random searches” while seeing fellow white travellers waved through, or of being asked at length about their religious and political views, clearly demonstrate the problem.

A “reasonable general concern” threshold will not ensure that those who are already bearing the brunt of profiling at the border have their privacy rights protected in regards to searches of their digital devices. Instead, it will simply make it more acceptable.

What is the solution? It is already found in the law. While not perfect, reasonable suspicion sets a known standard with known requirements to justify a search. On Monday, you heard arguments that the search of a phone does not meet the same level as a strip search. However, reasonable suspicion is not restricted to strip searches. It is also the threshold for searching mail. Like many others, I suspect, I receive very little letter mail these days. Most of what would have been sent by post, including across the border, is now stored locally on my phone and laptop. Why should we not use the standard that we already know? That is what a report from the ETHI committee from the other place has suggested, as well as what the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has said.

In closing, we have been asked to be reassured that regulations and after-the-fact complaints and review will help ensure that this new threshold does not run roughshod over our rights. We disagree. Regulations are adopted under less scrutiny than a law, and can be changed more easily. Complaints and review place the burden on those impacted to work to fix the system, after already having to go through a stressful, unacceptable and often demeaning process at the border. Instead, it is important that the law itself meets a standard that will protect the rights of Canadians and other travellers, and that after the fact review is used to ensure it is doing that job.

Thank you.

Since you’re here…

… we have a small favour to ask. Here at ICLMG, we are working very hard to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called “war on terror” in Canada. We do not receive any financial support from any federal, provincial or municipal governments or political parties. You can become our patron on Patreon and get rewards in exchange for your support. You can give as little as $1/month (that’s only $12/year!) and you can unsubscribe at any time. Any donations will go a long way to support our work.panel-54141172-image-6fa93d06d6081076-320-320You can also make a one-time donation or donate monthly via Paypal by clicking on the button below. On the fence about giving? Check out our Achievements and Gains since we were created in 2002. Thank you for your generosity!
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Video: Canada must reform its extradition laws now!

Canada’s extradition system is broken. It has led to grave harms and rights violations, as we’ve seen in the case of Canadian citizen Dr Hassan Diab and many others. It needs to be reformed now!

Watch our new video summarizing the issues with the Extradition Act, using Hassan Diab’s case as a frame, and presenting the recommendations of the Halifax Proposals to reform what Gary Botting – one of the country’s leading authorities on extradition law – has called: “the least fair law in Canada”.

Please click on the button below to urge the Canadian government to reform the Extradition Act before it makes more victims.

TAKE ACTION


Learn more about Dr Hassan Diab’s fight for justice at
justiceforhassandiab.org & take action at iclmg.ca/diab-letter. Thank you!

Since you’re here…

… we have a small favour to ask. Here at ICLMG, we are working very hard to protect and promote human rights and civil liberties in the context of the so-called “war on terror” in Canada. We do not receive any financial support from any federal, provincial or municipal governments or political parties. You can become our patron on Patreon and get rewards in exchange for your support. You can give as little as $1/month (that’s only $12/year!) and you can unsubscribe at any time. Any donations will go a long way to support our work.panel-54141172-image-6fa93d06d6081076-320-320You can also make a one-time donation or donate monthly via Paypal by clicking on the button below. On the fence about giving? Check out our Achievements and Gains since we were created in 2002. Thank you for your generosity!
make-a-donation-button

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