UPDATE: Watch the video of the talk now

This panel is the first of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group’s National Security & Human Rights Speaker Series, sponsored by CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees.

ICLMG will be hosting one panel per month for 5 months on an important and timely issue related to national security and human rights in Canada. Stay tuned for the next dates and topics!

Join us for our first panel: “C-51 two years later: Will Bill
C-59 restore human rights?”

When: Tuesday, September 26, 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM

Where: 25OneCommunity, 251 Bank Street, 2nd floor, Ottawa, Ontario K2P 1X3

What: Micheal Vonn (BCCLA), Tamir Israel (CIPPIC, University of Ottawa) and Paul Champ (Champ and Associates) will be discussing the different aspects of the bill – oversight & review, information sharing, new powers for CSIS and CSE, the no-fly list – what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s ugly.

Our National Coordinator, Tim McSorley, will be moderating, and we will have a Q&A after each presentation. Le panel sera en anglais mais vous pourrez poser vos questions en français.

The event is FREE and open to everyone. We will be collecting donations in support of our work. RSVP on Facebook and invite your friends!

If you cannot attend, the event will also be livestreamed on our Facebook page: facebook.com/iclmg.csilc. And you can support our work by giving at iclmg.ca/donate.

In the meantime, read and share our Open Letter to the Federal Government on C-59: New National Security Bill Fails to Reverse C-51 And Introduces Serious New Problems.

We hope to see you there!
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Who are our panelists?

Micheal Vonn is a lawyer and has been the Policy Director of the BCCLA since 2004. She has been an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) where she has taught civil liberties and information ethics. She is a regular guest instructor for UBC in HIV/AIDS Care. She has been honoured for her work in HIV/AIDS with both an AccolAIDS Award and a Red Ribbon Award, and she is the recipient of the 2015 Keith Sacré Library Champion Award for support, guidance and assistance given to the BC library community. Ms. Vonn is a frequent speaker on a variety of civil liberties topics including privacy, national security, policing, surveillance and free speech. She is currently a collaborator on Big Data Surveillance, a multi-year research projected lead by Queens University. She is an Advisory Board Member of Ryerson University’s Centre for Free Expression and an Advisory Board Member of Privacy International.

Tamir Israel joined CIPPIC as staff lawyer after articling with the clinic. He conducts research and advocacy on various digital rights-related issues, with a focus on online privacy and anonymity, net neutrality, intellectual property, intermediary liability, electronic surveillance, spam, e-commerce, and Internet governance generally. His advocacy activities have taken him before the courts, various regulators, parliamentary committees, and international Internet governance fora. Prior to joining CIPPIC, Tamir received a J.D. from the University of Toronto and a B.A. from the University of British Columbia. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of Privacy International and lectures on Internet regulation matters at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Graduate & Post-doctoral Studies.

Paul Champ is a litigation lawyer with a focus on human rights, employment, labour, and public interest law. Paul has developed a practice in national security law and has acted as counsel in several important constitutional law cases dealing with fundamental human rights, including the settlement for Benamar Benatta, rendered to the US by Canadian officials and emprisoned for 5 years without charges, the case of Abdelrazik v. Minister of Foreign Affairs, in which the court ruled that Canadian government officials violated a Canadian citizen’s Charter rights by arranging for his unlawful detention by Sudanese authorites and refusing to provide a passport, and the case of Canada v. Khadr (2008), which found that Canadian government officials violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by interrogating a Canadian youth detained by U.S. in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.