Egregious Abuse of Parliament to Make Rule by Police Powers the New Normal

– Anna Di Carlo –

One of the bills put on the top of the agenda for Parliament before its summer break was Bill C-70, the Countering Foreign Interference Act. On June 13, the House of Commons unanimously voted in favour of the bill which gives a legal veneer to the expansion of police powers. The legislation creates a foreign agent registry and expands what Canada's spy agencies will be enabled to do, along with their scope of operations.

Bill C-70 was introduced on May 9 by Dominic Leblanc, Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs. The Conservatives offered to ensure that the legislation was expeditiously enacted, and the other cartel parties in the House joined in. The legislation was allocated two hours at second reading on May 29, during which a motion to fast-track its adoption was passed.

The Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security took up its consideration of Bill C-70 on May 30. It heard from 42 witnesses, most from government and police agencies, in a period of less than 12 hours, followed by a three-hour clause-by-clause review. It is not likely that Committee members could have responsibly studied the 105-page Bill C-70 in that time, let alone seriously considered its implications. The haste with which the bill was being enacted was raised as a key point of opposition by members of civil liberties organizations who appeared as witnesses before the House Committee.

In a press release, the Liberal Government said the legislation will "update existing laws to better equip the government to detect, disrupt, and protect against foreign interference threats against all people in Canada, including members of diaspora, marginalized or otherwise vulnerable communities." To this stated end, the new law amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, the Security of Information Act, the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Bill C-70 also includes the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act. It sets up a mandatory registration system for people who "enter into an arrangement with a foreign principal and undertake activities to influence a government or political process." The registry will be administered and enforced by a Foreign Influence Transparency Commissioner. The Commissioner, housed in the Ministry of Public Safety, will be appointed following cartel-party consultation. Supporting motions for the appointee will be required in both the House of Commons and the Senate.

The legislation also includes significant regulatory powers accorded to the Governor-in-Council to determine who will be captured by the legislation.

At third reading, on June 12, Jennifer O'Connell, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, Democratic Institutions and Intergovernmental Affairs (Cybersecurity) asked the House to support a last minute amendment to enable the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) "to disclose, as part of a disclosure for the purpose of building resiliency against threat to the security of Canada, information specifically about a company with that company. [It] would allow CSIS to be more candid and transparent with Canadian corporations and entities by disclosing information around specific threats and vulnerabilities affecting them. An example of this would be information about a foreign state's interest in acquiring the company's unique and proprietary information or technology."

She explained that the last minute amendment was required because of the bill's expeditious treatment. "When one part of the bill was amended to provide [CSIS] enhanced information sharing authority for individuals, the same was not done for companies or community organizations and universities, as there was not enough time to properly craft the appropriate amendment."

O'Connell said the amendment was important "to ensure that CSIS can make authorized disclosures to both individuals and entities to better equip Canadians and Canadian society with the information and tools they need to build resiliency against foreign threats."

Speaking at third reading before she joined the unanimous aye vote, Green Party co-leader Elizabeth May said Bill C-70 was being adopted in "a breathtakingly expedited fashion." "I think it is important to say that I do not think I have ever seen a bill with so many substantial changes to critical areas of law pass so very quickly as this one," she said. "There are still a lot of questions as the bill moves forward. I have to say that, having the right, as any member of this place did, to say no to unanimous consent, I could have insisted that we have greater study. I have to say that I wish we did have greater study, but there was the timing and the consensus, and I am always inspired when I see members across party lines work together, because we do not see it often enough."

Commenting on unaddressed concerns raised during the Committee hearings, such as the vagueness of certain definitions and the potential violation of fundamental rights, May said, "I am increasingly unnerved by the number of groups that have approached all of us." She said she was left "disquieted by the fact that we have gone perhaps recklessly quickly in bringing the bill forward and getting it all the way through to third reading and over to the Senate."

Reiterating that she did not want to disrupt the required unanimous consent, she said, "I want to put on the record that we are going to have to be very careful from here and take every opportunity to ensure that we are not violating charter rights and that we are not creating additional hazards for members of diaspora communities that we had not considered before we moved so very quickly."

What she did not say is that these are war measures and that there should be no consensus among those who call themselves representatives of the people on the issue of giving the government police powers to act with impunity in the name of security when not a single one of them has held in vivo hearings with all their constituents to hear what they have to say.

Meanwhile, the Senate had already passed a motion for its Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs to begin its pre-study of Bill C-70 on June10. The Committee heard all kinds of objections to the bill but on June 18, it sent it back for third reading without amendment.

Matters of such import to the polity treated in such a hasty and suspect way certainly do not bode well for Canadians. It is reminiscent of the spate of so-called anti-terror legislation adopted post 9/11 in lockstep with the U.S. and its intelligence agencies and of the secret processes introduced which permitted Canadians to be charged without even being informed of the charges, arrested, interrogated to extract confessions and much more. All kinds of egregious practices which took place at the time are now once again being brought into the present, including giving free rein to defamation, rumours and the criminalization of dissent.

Who decides all these matters is, of course, the intelligence agencies, domestic and foreign which are all under one U.S. command in line with the arrangements under NATO and NORAD where the President of the United States commands the Canadian armed forces, notwithstanding the fact that another foreign monarch, Charles III is their Commander-in-Chief through his stand-in, Canada's Governor General. The role of the parliamentarians is to make this police rule "legal," "normal," "legitimate" by making it appear that it is the legislative body which makes the decisions.

Canadians need to discuss these matters in forums of their own, inform themselves of the implications of the new laws being passed in their name under the guise of national security, draw warranted conclusions and become vigilant. Canadians and Quebeckers need to speak out themselves directly against their increasing disempowerment.

Canada's Members of Parliament are doing Canadians a great disservice. They must be held to account.

This article was published in

Volume 54 Number 6 - June 2024

Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/Articles/M540062.HTM

Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca