MetroVan Independent News April 2015 | Page 3

MetroVanIndependent.com April 2015 A3 News Anti-terror bill spawns massive anti-Tory backlash Continued from A1 >> This developed as hundreds of groups coalesce into a united front including some 36,000-strong Canadian Bar Association, Canada’s biggest lawyer’s group, huge digital grassroot organizations such as OpenMedia, LeadNow, DeSmog Canada and other outstanding individuals such as six former Supreme Court justices, four former Prime Ministers, BC’s Premier Christy Clarke including over 100 law experts from the academe, personalities like Conrad Black, Rex Murphy, Tom Mulcair and the entire NDP, The Assembly of First Nation, and the editorial positions of the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Star. The Metro Van Independent News likewise adopts the same position. Writing in her blog originally published by Saanich News, Green Party leader Elizabeth May, a lawyer herself, revealed that the Conservative Bill C51 “is actually five bills rolled into one.” “Each part contains provisions I can only describe as dangerous. For example, part 5, amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Act, appear to allow the use of evidence obtained by torture.” “Part 3, ostensibly about getting terrorist propaganda off the Internet, uses a set of new concepts that would criminalize private conversations -- and not just about terrorism.” “The propaganda section does not require knowing you are spreading propaganda and "terrorist propaganda” has a definition so broad as to include a visual representation (a Che Guevera poster?) promoting a new concept called "terrorism in general." Experts are now referring to this as "thought chill." This is by far the worse ideological Conservative attack against Canada’s criminal justice system while subverting, at the same time, Canada’s democratic political structure in the name of big business such as American company Kinder Morgan who will now be considered, under Bill C51, as part of Canada’s critical infrastructure. Anti-petroleum activist are already being demonized in internal RCMP memos as environmental extremist threat – while CSIS targets them as multi-issue extremists -- a status that can evolve under Bill C51 into becoming a terrorist by legal fiat. More than 1,000 people blocked the streets of Granville and Georgia to protest the new anti-terror bill, C-51. The government, under Bill C51, can declare anybody a terrorist even without the hapless Canadian citizen being targeted -- knowing it. If Bill C-51 becomes too hot to handle, the Conservatives -- or big oil business groups behind them -- had planned an alternative solution. It had tabled a bill to amend the authority of Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) when it comes to access to sensitive information including those who have crossed the threshold and had become full-pledged citizens. The Charter protections on citizens are supposed to be equal but these amendment targets immigrants who are now Canadians. The evil Conservative plot appears Orwellian. Without judicial oversight, the CIC plan to access sensitive information – including tax returns which is protected by law when filled – in a law enforcement action they will unilaterally declare. The agency, without explicit legal authority by law, or proper leave through the courts, will declare a file a law enforcement matter and thus invoke the need to gather tax information and other details about an individual and share it with 17 other agencies. CIC, however, is technically not a law enforcement agency. Observers noted that the citizenship process is a combination of administrative and quasi-judicial action that CIC now alleges to have flaws. As a result, they want authority not only to access sensitive individual information including but not limited to tax returns, among others, and share the same with other agencies, who have no explicit authority under existing laws, to get sensitive personal information on migrants who had become citizens. Legal pundits said the move is clearly in violation of section 15 of the Charter of Rights which mandates equal protection under the law. The power will only cover immigrants. The authority to access this information is widely believed to be against provisions of the Income Tax Act