News from ICLMG

Event: International Voices Join MPs in Call for Repatriation from Syria

 

On June 23, 2022, ICLMG hosted an international press conference/public event to expose and demand an end to one of the gravest human rights violations currently perpetrated by the Canadian government.

Canada’s Guantanamo Bay – where Canadian Muslims are off-shored beyond reach of law & rights, respect & dignity – is located in North Eastern Syria. Forty-four Canadians – 8 men, 13 women and 23 children – are illegally detained there under conditions the United Nations and many human rights groups describe as akin to torture.

The Canadian government is violating their Charter Rights by refusing to repatriate them.  Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The International Committee of the Red Cross, the United Nations, the US State Department, Save the Children and, in a rare show of cross-party unanimity, a Canadian Parliamentary Committee, have all called for repatriation.

The detainees’ captors themselves (who are in fact allies of Canada) have repeatedly asked that Canada send a representative or delegate for an official handover of the detainees. That’s not too much to ask, especially as dozens of other countries have managed to do this with no problem whatsoever. In addition, Canada has invested $2.5 million to repatriate Iraqi nationals from these same camps and prisons, yet not a cent has been spent on repatriation of Canadians! In fact, the federal government has forced family members of the detainees to go to Federal Court later this year seeking an order to return them home.

A stellar line-up of human rights advocates spoke at this conference:

  • Moazzam Begg, former Guantanamo Bay detainee and outreach director of Cage, UK
  • Nafeesa Mohammed, attorney and former Senator of Trinidad & Tobago, suing her government for repatriation as well
  • Clive Stafford Smith, human rights lawyer, who was one of the first lawyers into Guantanamo 20 years ago, and co-founder of Reprieve
  • Monia Mazigh, author and academic
  • Elizabeth May, Green Party MP
  • Taha Ghayyur, Justice for All
  • Natascha Mikkelsen, Repatriate the Children, Denmark
  • Sally Lane, author and mother of Jack Letts, detainee in Syria
  • Tim McSorley, International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group
  • Matthew Behrens, Stop Canadian Involvement in Torture
  • Heather McPherson, NDP MP and Foreign Affairs Critic

Important questions were asked. Among them:

– How can the Government of Canada celebrate its lead role in developing a Global Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention while it has refused to end the arbitrary detention of 44 of its citizens held by Canada’s ally in NE Syria?
– How can the Government of Canada claim compliance with the Convention Against Torture when it is well aware that 44 of its citizens are held under conditions akin to torture?
– How can the Government of Canada  oppose repatriation of its own citizens when it is actively funding the repatriation of Iraqi nationals from the same camps and prisons in NE Syria?
– How can the Government of Canada celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms when it is actively denying these 44 citizens their Section 6 Charter right to return home?

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

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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Senate amendments to electronic device search bill will strengthen privacy, help protect against profiling at the border

Senate amendments to a new government bill on searching cell phones, laptops and other personal electronic devices at the border are an important step towards protecting privacy rights and limiting racial, religious and political profiling, says the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group.

“Canadian courts have made it clear: Canadians and travellers to Canada deserve privacy protections for their cell phones and laptops when crossing the border. We’re very happy and grateful to senators who recognized that and voted to strengthen the bill,” said Tim McSorley, national coordinator of the ICLMG.

At a Senate committee meeting on Monday, senators studying the bill voted to replace the new, heavily criticized standard of “reasonable general concern” with the stronger and recognized standard of “reasonable grounds to suspect.” While “reasonable grounds to suspect” is still the lowest threshold for searches in Canadian law, it is stronger than the government’s new proposal.

“If adopted, ’reasonable general concern’ would have allowed border officers to search electronic devices based on a hunch, accessing an incredible amount of our private and personal data,” said McSorley. “These ‘hunches’ are often influenced by conscious and unconscious biases, resulting in racial profiling at the border. Strengthening rules around when and how searches are carried out is a step forward in fighting this systemic discrimination.”

In 2020, the Alberta Court of Appeal found the provisions of the Customs Act used to justify the search of personal electronic devices at the border to be unconstitutional because they did not require any legal justification for the search. This placed electronic devices in the same category as the search of a suitcase, wallet or purse. Because travellers carry so much more private information in their phones and other devices, the court ruled there needed to be a higher threshold that justified those searches. A recent Ontario Superior Court ruling in 2022 came to the same conclusion.

In response, Bill S-7, An Act to amend the Customs Act and the Preclearance Act, 2016, proposed an entirely new threshold known as “reasonable general concern.” Multiple civil liberties, legal and human rights experts rejected this new threshold as being overly-broad and creating a way to avoid addressing the specific privacy and rights concerns of searching cell phones and laptops. Such a weak threshold would also mean that those who already face disproportionate levels of searches and interrogation at the border, including Muslim, Indigenous, Black and other racialized people, would continue to be subject to profiling and discrimination. Instead, witnesses proposed that senators amend the bill to adopt a stronger threshold. As Senator Mobina Jaffer, who proposed the amendment to strengthen the bill, pointed out, “We did not have one witness, except the minister and the officials, say that this [new threshold] was a good idea.”

Senators agreed to replace “reasonable general concern” with the more established “reasonable grounds to suspect.” While still lower than “reasonable grounds to believe,” reasonable grounds to suspect provides a stronger, known threshold that is already present in the Customs Act, including for the searching of cross-border mail and for strip searches.

Other positive amendments included adding to the bill that network connectivity of devices must be deactivated (moved by Senator David Wells) and that the government may make regulations concerning the treatment of privileged documents during the search of electronic devices (moved by Senator Pierre Dalphond).

At the same time, other worrisome aspects of the bill remained unaddressed, including amendments changing the offense of hindering the work of a border security officer from a summary offence to a hybrid summary/indictable offence, which could have significant consequences for immigrants and asylum seekers coming to Canada. Another amendment would extend the time limit to start proceedings for a summary conviction under the Customs Act from three years to eight years. Neither of these changes were accompanied by explanations, nor addressed by government officials during Senate committee hearings.

The bill will now return to the Senate as a whole for third reading, before being sent to the House of Commons. The ICLMG is calling on Senators and Members of Parliament to recognize the in-depth and rigorous study carried out by the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence and maintain the wording the committee adopted, while working to continue to improve all aspects of the bill.

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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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!
make-a-donation-button
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