Soft On Terror?

The Anti-Terrorism Act is indeed a difficult piece of legislation, one on which people can and will honestly disagree. It was put in place by the Chrétien government in the wake of the September 11^th terrorism attacks and now needs to be renewed.

Parliament is totally divided on the issue. The Conservatives call it an essential piece of their strategy to fight terrorism and several Liberal tenors including Anne McLellan, John Manley and Irwin Cotler have voiced their support for the bill. Bob Rae, who chaired the Air India inquiry, also concluded it was a necessary measure to deal with terrorism.

On the other hand, a majority of Liberal MPs, along with the NDP and the Bloc, oppose the act because of the key civil liberties it violates. They cite a recent unanimous Supreme Court ruling calling for the abolishment of security certificates, as the issues raised by that ruling are comparable to the ones raised by the Anti-Terrorism Act.

Sounds like a deadlock to me, time for a compromise. This is what the opposition parties had in mind when they created a committee to improve the bill. This committee has met regularly for the past few months, and has prepared a number of suggestions for the government.

You’d think that a government which calls this Act an essential piece of its strategy to fight terrorism would move quickly to implement these suggestions and get it passed by Parliament. If that’s what you think, you obviously haven’t gotten to know the Conservatives well enough yet.

As could have been expected, Harper’s government implemented NONE of the committee’s suggestions. They preferred to use the bill as yet another opportunity to call the Liberals soft on terror.

As far as I’m concerned, the party which is soft on terror is the one which refuses to implement suggestions from a parliamentary committee out of sheer political opportunism.

Conservative Transparency

The Ministry of Public Safety headed by Stockwell Day has just taken partisanship to a new level by posting the following comments on its Website:

“At a time when the Opposition Parties are being soft on security and soft on terrorism, Canada’s New Government remains unwavering in its determination to safeguard national security and is committed to working with all its partners to protect the safety and security of Canadians”

Here’s my question: How on earth can Canadians trust their Ministry of Public Safety if it posts partisan comments on its website. The answer is simple: They can’t!

Public servants are supposed to be completely non-partisan; this is one of the pillars of democracy. Yet they decided to join the Conservative Party in its frenetic Liberal-bashing dance!

First we get the Conservatives appointing their friends to the judge selection panel, then we get General Rick Hillier keeping his job after having criticized the Liberal’s handling of the defense portfolio, and now we get this! For a party that boast about its transparency, this is pathetic.

Just Watch Dion Win The Next Election

Ever since Dion has assumed the Liberal Leadership, the Conservatives have been in attack mode. They spend more time in question period talking about what the Liberals didn’t do than they spend talking about what their government is doing. This strategy would work well against certain leaders, but in the long run, I am convinced that Dion’s personality will have the better of it.

Now, let me explain myself.

Nobody has ever questioned Stéphane Dion’s courage and integrity, and by doing just that, the Conservatives are making themselves look like sleazy politicians. Though their attacks will pay off in the short term, the Conservatives are unintentionally creating a “moral gap” between Dion and Harper.

This may take some time, but a year from now, I think Canadians will be more inclined to trust the principled professor who stuck to his game plan despite continuous attacks, than the sly politician who’s sole desire seems to be winning a majority.

You Can't Have It Both Ways

My French friends and teachers often ask me about Canada. The vast majority of them simply want to know whether it is minus 20 or 40, but once we get past that question, a number of different topics come up. Most of them simply present me with an opportunity to brag about the virtues of my country. Nothing is more enjoyable than sharing Trudeau’s romantic vision of Canada with an innocent fourteen year old schoolboy!

The only topic I do have difficulty talking about is education. You see, one of the pillars of the French identity is secular schooling, so they naturally all want to know if the same is true in Canada. This is when it starts to get difficult. I start by reassuring them that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees a secular schooling environment for all students. We do allow headscarves, and even Sikh daggers, but children can be assured that the teaching will be completely secular. Unfortunately, this does not always satisfy them. The really tenacious ones want to know Canada’s position on religious education.

At this point, I have no other choice than to look away and admit that a number of provinces of my beloved multicultural country allow separate schools. Yes, in Canada, the capital of multiculturalism, schools that include catholic education in their curriculum are publicly funded. You should see the shock on their faces! How can a country claim to be open to all religions if it only funds the catholic school board? Why don’t Muslim and Jewish schools get publicly funded?

I understand that for a number of historical reasons, the existance of separate schools has become a right, but that can be changed. If we are really serious about multiculturalism, we have to create an environment in which no religions are favored. This obviously doesn’t include funding the schools of one religious group and not of another.

Read Your Job Description General

One of the first articles of the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sevice of Canada says: Public servants must work within the laws of Canada and maintain the tradition of the political neutrality of the Public Service.

General Rick Hillier is a public servant, so in all logic, this Values and Ethics Code must apply to him. Judging by recent statements he made, that fact hasn’t sunk in.

This morning, General Hillier told the annual meeting of the Conference of Defence Associations that "Over the past one to two years, we have begun to fully realize the immense, the negative impact of the defence expenditure reductions in 1994 and the lasting, almost negative legacy that they brought into effect that has to be put right."

He went on to say that "Those actions, dollar deprived, have now led to some deep wounds in the department in the Canadian Forces over this past, what I would call, a decade of darkness."

And this is political neutrality?

Hillier defended himself by claiming that he has a duty to paint a clear picture of the state of the Armed Forces. That’s perfectly true, but when you start littering your reports with figures of speech such as “deep wounds” and “a decade of darkness”, they lose their objectivity.

Again, by his sheer lack of judgment, Hillier has demonstrated that military intelligence is indeed an oxymoron.

Some Things Never Change

Everyone agrees that Steven Harper has historically shown excellent political judgment. For god sakes, he found a way to become Prime Minister of Canada nine years after calling it “a Northern European welfare state, in the worst sense of the term”. That, my friends, takes political genius!

You can therefore imagine my surprise when I read in today’s online Globe and Mail that he had decided to keep alive the old Liberal tradition of making partisan appointments. That’s right, at least 16 of the 33 men and women appointed to the committee in charge of choosing new judges are conservative partisans, including a former politician, political staffers and defeated candidates. For a party which succeeded in making itself look transparent, that certainly isn’t the way to win an election.

I guess I should have expected it. Now that he has a relatively stable government, Harper is starting to show his true colours. He just couldn’t resist the temptation of appointing a bunch of ideologically conservative individuals to the judge selection panel, even though they were totally unqualified. For god’s sakes, he appointed an unsuccessful conservative candidate whose background is in firefighting! That’s right; we now have a firefighter picking judges. I have nothing against firefighters, I think they’re tremendous individuals, but isn’t it a bit like asking a math teacher to pick the NAC Orchestra Concertmaster?

I have always been proud of Canadian society giving people second chances, giving people an opportunity to rethink themselves and restart their lives. This being said, I also believe in being rational. Is it really rational to expect an ex-leader of the Alliance to suddenly become socially progressive? I don’t think so.

I’m sure Mr. Harper understood this move would cost him support, I just don’t think he had the guts to pass on an opportunity to make our justice system ideologically more conservative.

Your Either Use It, Or You Lose It

When I heard US Ambassador David Wilkins say last week that “the US simply doesn’t recognize Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Passage” well... let's just say I felt really upset. Who does he think he is?

Naturally, I took for granted that this was simply another case of the Americans trying to look macho by bullying smaller states. I was sure that if the US decided to use those waters for shipping, the world would stick up for Canada’s rights. How more naïve could I have been?

No, the world won’t stick up for us, at least not the countries who would benefit from the Northwest Passage being international waters. We might have North Korea, Venezuela and Iran on our side, but I doubt that would be enough to fend off a US-EU-China coalition.

Let’s face it, nobody lives there. The population density of Canada’s territories is of about 0.36 people per square kilometer. If you were to parachute somebody in the arctic, they’d have no way of knowing it was Canada, and there wouldn’t be anyone living in the area to tell them. That matters! We’d love to think that we can simply call the Arctic Canadian territory and expect other countries to follow suit, but if it’s in those other countries best interests to disagree, they will.

Now, we mustn’t forget to keep in mind that the Passage is not yet navigable. The U.S. Navy anticipates that it will be open to conventional shipping "for at least one month each summer" by 2011 and that it will provide "entirely ice-free summer seasons" by 2050. This gives us a small window of opportunity to act.

I’m no specialist on the issue, so I’m not going to get into details about the type of action we should take. My gut feeling is that infrastructure is the beginning middle and end of the solution, but again, I don’t specialize in international relations.

What I do know is that action must be taken now! We need to have a concrete plan to assert Arctic Sovereignty, and that plan needs to be ready by the spring. We have four years before the Passage starts to become a viable shipping route. Four years, that’s all!

If in 2011, American, European and Chinese ships start going through the Northwest Passage without paying duty, Canadians will be able to say to themselves: “we are a bunch of shortsighted fools.”