UPDATED: A Comforting Illusion Shattered

When it comes to massive intrusions by the state, the kind reflected in legislation like Bill C-51, people frequently rationalize their acceptance and passivity by this comforting fiction: "I don't have anything to hide; I'm not a terrorist, so why should I worry?"

A story of one family's unpleasant experience may prove instructional in challenging that complacence.

Firas Al-Rawi, an emergency room doctor at Toronto General Hospital, said he booked the Family Day holiday trip [to Disney World] in early December so his wife and children could join him at a professional conference in Orlando that week. The family had taken numerous trips to the United States by air and car without incident.

"My kids were so excited, and they were counting down the days for the trip,” said Al-Rawi, 48, an Iraqi who immigrated to Canada with his family in 2006 via Qatar, where he and his wife, Asmaa Ahmed, both worked as physicians. They and their children are all citizens who hold Canadian passports.

Alas, the trip was not to be:

The Al-Rawis became part of the 330 or more travellers a day who are refused entry to the United States under the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives border officials the right to refuse admission of non-Americans — including Canadian citizens.

The apparent grounds for their inadmissibility appears to be that they are Muslims:

According to the National Council of Canadian Muslims, 14 per cent of the 182 human rights complaints it received between 2011 and 2013 involved travel restrictions to the U.S.

After being fingerprinted and photographed at the check-in counter, Al-Rawi said, they were asked to go for a secondary inspection.

As his family waited in a public area, Al-Rawi said he was questioned about the purpose of his visit, his employment and his family trips in 2014 to Qatar and Dubai.

“We didn’t really mind if it was a random check, given the typical screening with what’s happening with ISIS (the terrorist Islamic State group). We had nothing to hide,” he said. “But we were not prepared for the rest of it. We were stressed, not knowing what was going on.”

After a 10-minute interview, Al-Rawi said he and his family were fingerprinted and photographed again before uniformed officers came to inspect their suitcases.

During the inspection, the family said, their electronics — one iPhone, two MacBooks and three iPads — were confiscated, and they were ordered to provide passwords so officials could unlock the devices.

The reason given to the family for refusal was that U.S. officials did not think they would return to Canada, despite the fact that Al-Rawi spent more than five years working to earn an Ontario medical licence and restart his stalled practice in Canada.

Of course, entry to another country is not an automatic right, but the fact that the refusal amounts to a denial of natural justice is disconcerting:

United States Customs and Border Protection refused to comment on the Al-Rawi incident, but said travellers are responsible for proving their innocence.

Think about that - guilty unless proven innocent.

So what does any of this have to do with legislation that curtails one's civil liberties? It is, I suspect, a peek at what may be ahead for anyone who takes his or her citizenship responsibilities seriously and holds to them tenaciously, despite the kind of conformity that Bill C-51 will promote.

Of course, there will be other comforting illusions we can fall back on to discount the experiences of the Al-Rawi family: I'm a citizen (but isn't the entire Al-Rawi family as well?), I'm not a Muslim (Should that be a barrier?) I don't have a foreign-sounding name (Congrats! You won the birth lottery there).

But how long will it be before we have to come up with additional disclaimers, such as I have never joined an environmental protest, I have never stood up for any cause, I have never written a letter of criticism of my government, etc. etc.

Congratulations, Unknown Citizen, for living what will have been a wholly unexamined life.

UPDATE: if you think Canadian Border Services is more respectful of privacy, think again and click here.

And Thus It Begins

One of the misgivings I expressed in yesterday's post seems to be a little closer to reality today.

The National Post headline reads:

Conservatives mulling legislation making it illegal to condone terrorist acts online.

Says John Ivison,

The Conservatives are understood to be considering new legislation that would make it an offence to condone terrorist acts online.

There is frustration in government, and among law enforcement agencies, that the authorities can’t detain or arrest people who express sympathy for atrocities committed overseas and who may pose a threat to public safety, one Conservative MP said. “Do we need new offences? If so which?”

Sources suggest the government is likely to bring in new hate speech legislation that would make it illegal to claim terrorist acts are justified online.

The Prime Minister told the House of Commons on Thursday that Canada’s law and policing powers need to be strengthened in the areas of surveillance, detention and arrest. He said work is already under way to provide law enforcement agencies with “additional tools” and that work will now be expedited.

Hopefully, even the naive and guileless will want to ask themselves, after reading the article, if it is wise to let government decide what constitutes unacceptable speech?

I assume no further comment on my part is needed.

Now Here's An Interesting Idea

At a time when workers' rights are under constant attack, dangerous, Draconian, Orwellian and unconstitutional measures have been passed in Alberta that not only strip away the arbitration rights of public servants, but also limit their freedom of speech.

First, to the 'less contentious' of the two bills recently passed by Alison Redford's Conservative government. In Alberta, strikes by the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, who have been without a contract since last March, are forbidden. However, recently passed Bill 46 removes the underpinnings enjoyed by most unions where strikes are prohibited: binding arbitration. With the removal of that right, Redford's government will now be able to impose the following after the negotiation deadline of January 31:

... a legislated four-year deal with no increases over the first two years and one-per-cent increases in each of the next two would come into effect.

However, there are even more grievous measures contained in companion Bill 45, ostensibly legislation to introduce a more comprehensive range of measures that can be applied when there is an illegal strike or threat of an illegal strike that goes much further.

As noted at Rabble.ca, the bill

... denies individuals the fundamental right to freedom of expression. Bill 45 introduces for the first time in Canada, a vague legal concept of "strike threat" which makes it illegal to canvass the opinion of "employees to determine whether they wish to strike" or to freely express a view which calls for or supports strike action.

So Bill 45 essentially attempts to strip away our constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech; it likely will not withstand a Charter challenge, but the bill's intent nonetheless provides a rather frightening look into the minds of legislators today, minds that seem to endorse the attack on essential rights and freedoms as somehow good and just. Even the Calgary Herald and Wild Rose leader Danielle Smith condemn such a worldview. The former describes the bills as marking a dark chapter in Alberta history.

How does one fight such a mentality? Writing in the Edmonton Journal, Lloyd Maybaum, an Alberta physician, draws upon his experience in 2012 during a period of protracted negotiations. He suggests an innovative strategy to combat this assault on basic rights: a virtual strike.

During a virtual strike, unlike an actual strike, there is no cessation or slowdown of work, and everyone earns their regular pay.

The power of the virtual strike lies in the strategic donation of earned income. In the case of a hostile, bullying government, one could follow the adage that the enemy of your enemy becomes your friend and donate income from virtual strike days to opposition parties in the legislature.

Every Wednesday, for instance, union leaders could encourage nurses from across the province to go online and donate $100 to the political party of their choice.

By so doing, the union would be taking its fight directly to the governing party, not allowing patients to become caught in the crossfire of negotiations.

And as Maybaum points out, every $100 donation would only cost $25 after the political donation deduction, and could prove a potent weapon in a jurisdiction that is apparently trying to cripple people's rights.

Should those of us not living in Alberta be concerned? Without question. Both federally and provincially, workers are increasingly seen as impediments to the unfettered profits of business. There is, for example, Tim Hudak in Ontario who wants to make the province a 'right to work' jurisdiction; the Harper cabal seeks to cripple unions through disclosure of expenditures via Bill C-377, legislation that has been weakened, fortunately, by a amendment in the Senate put forward by Hugh Segal.

Constant vigilance is required. Truly, the battle taking place in Alberta is everyone's fight.

Judgemental? Yes

But true nonetheless:



You can read more about our perilous state here.

Our Inconvenient Civil Liberties/Charter Rights

It may be that I am overly sensitive to the reactionary agenda that seems to dominate society today. It may be that I am misinterpreting a public statement made by a Canadian professor who teaches at both the Royal Military College of Canada and Queen’s University. It may mean nothing at all. Or it could have very dangerous implications.

Ever since the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001, there has been a steady erosion of civil liberties in the United States. Illegal renditions by that country, aided and abetted by many other jurisdictions, targetting American citizens for assassination, and denying suspects their Miranda rights are but three examples.

Lest we think we are beyond such practices in Canada, we need only think of the infamous case of Maher Arar, whose rendition to Syria for torture and imprisonment was aided and abetted by our government.

So it was with real interest that I read in this morning's Star the fact that two years ago, Russia warned the FBI that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26-year-old bombing suspect killed earlier Friday after a firefight with police, was a follower of radical Islam” and that “he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.”

The question naturally arises, of course, as to why, with that warning, nothing was done to prevent the deaths and grievous injuries that occurred last week at The Boston Marathon.

Canadian professor Christian Leuprecht addresses that question in the following way:

“Is there anything in the way that the law is written that prevented intelligence agencies from doing the job they need to do?”

“It points to the difficulty we’ve put intelligence services in,” he said. “On the one hand we expect them to pick out all the radicals and rein them in and make sure they don’t do anything crazy. On the other, we live in a society where we agree that just having marginal ideas is not illegal.”

Again, I am perfectly willing to admit the possibility that I am misinterpreting Professor Leuprecht's comments, which may simply be observational in nature. However, if they are, instead, prescriptive, he and everyone else who may see our rights and freedoms as inconvenient or unnecessary fetters to law enforcement need to be reminded of one inconvenient truth: those rights and freedoms exist to protect citizens against abuses from the state; they are not there to make anyone's job easier, even for those charged with the responsibility of rooting out terrorism that may reside in our midst.