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