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.

A Dystopian Present And Future

Those of us who consider ourselves progressive bloggers are well-aware of the dystopian nature of the world we live in. It is a world where black is often white, white is black, and deceit abounds. The perpetrators of environmental degradation and climate change offer us commercials showing pristine landscapes to ponder; the moneyed elite tell us that their success is our future success, and those who wage war tell us of their commitment to peace.

Sadly, Canada is not exempt from this madness. Now that the Harper regime has seized the narrative following the attacks in Quebec and Ottawa, almost immediately labelling them as acts of terrorism, it is wasting no time in pursuing measures that will diminish, not protect, all of us.

Consider this:

A 30-year-old assault-rifle collector from Pakistan has been arrested on allegations that he is a terrorist threat to Canada. The Ontario resident is in jail, charged under immigration laws that would allow him to be deported, just one year after he avoided prison on different charges.

The accused, Muhammad Aqeeq Ansari, a Karachi-born software designer who has lived in Ontario for several years, was arrested on Oct. 27. Last year, as part of a plea bargain for illegal storage of legally-acquired firearms, he surrendered them. There was no suggestion of terrorism at that time.

Now, however,

federal officials allege Mr. Ansari has ties to terrorists in Pakistan, that he had amassed “a small arsenal” of guns; and that he has expressed extreme opinions on Twitter.

What were those opinions?

On a Twitter account that has not been updated since the day of Mr. Ansari’s arrest, @aqeeqansari appeared to suggest at least one of last week’s attackers was framed.

“#MartinRouleau … Seems like the cops shot the guy and placed the knife,” the account says, referring to one the suspected terrorists.

Those who know Ansari have a more benign view of him, describing

him to The Globe as a firearms enthusiast and a strict Muslim. But they doubt he is capable of violence. “I think he was just a shooting hobbyist who didn’t follow the regulations,” said Ed Burlew, who represented Mr. Ansari in the criminal case.

Despite that benign assessment, he is now facing deportation. And despite what some would describe as a gross overreaction by authorities, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson is

urging Parliament to make it easier for police to get search warrants and to seek restrictions on the movements of suspects in terrorism investigations.

Equally worrisome comes a report that the regime is looking at ways of suppressing freedom of expression on the Internet, a fool's errand if there ever was one, but a measure that could have many second-guessing themselves lest they run afoul of the authorities for 'wrong thinking.'

'Justice' Minister Peter MacKay (a constant reminder that a mind is a terrible thing to waste) is now seeking measures that

could include tools to allow for the removal of websites or Internet posts that support the “proliferation of terrorism” in Canada.

His desire is to interdict materials that, as he puts it, contribute to the poisoning of young minds.

Being either benighted or disingenuous, MacKay says,

Such measures risk infringing on free speech but Mr. MacKay said he believes it’s possible to set “an objective standard” with which to judge what constitutes promoting terrorism.

And there, of course, is the crux of the matter. What is terrorism to a government might very well be considered fair comment to others. In a Canada where a man is facing deportation in part because he questions a police report on Twitter. the dangers to all of us should be readily apparent.






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For Those Who Don't Know Their Place

What do you do when citizens believe that democratic rights should be more than an illusion? Call in the authorities to remind them of their true place in the foodchain.



On a related topic, The Star's Rosie DiManno has an excoriating assessment of yet another free pass given by the SIU to the officers involved in the 'high-risk' takedown of 80-year-old Iole Pasquale, the dementia sufferer who was tasered, not once but twice, while meandering down the street in the middle of the night in late August holding a bread knife.

Says DiManno:

... as SIU head Ian Scott noted in his reasons for not laying a charge, the cops had no knowledge of Pasquale’s mental condition, although they suspected there might be synapses misfiring in the poor woman’s brain. And Pasquale was non-compliant, which is the de facto rationale just about any time an officer resorts to escalating forcefulness.

Clearly not the finest hour for either the Peel Police or the SIU, if the latter has indeed ever had one.

From The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave

Somehow I don't think our 'friends' to the south have anything to teach us about civil society and democratic rights, although I can't help but think that much of this footage would gladden the dark chambers of the Harperite heart:

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.