Where Do We Find That Fine Line?
| 10/24/2006 | Posted by Patti under Canadian Politics, War on Terror |
The Toronto Star today reports that a parliamentary committee is urging that the preventive arrest and investigative hearings provisions brought in following the 9/11 attacks be continued until 2011 which would provide a decade to look back and review their use and effectiveness. They are set to expire in December of this year. Their report must pass the Commons and the Senate or the provisions expire.
The Conservative & Liberal members of the committee brought in the majority report while the Bloc and the NDP brought forward a minority report. The minority reports raises concerns that laws like this seriously impact on civil liberties and can lead to abuses. On the one hand they argue that it is of no value in the war on terror and can be used on innocent citizens.
It is interesting to note that these provisions have yet to be used in the hysteria and fear immediately following the attacks on New York. That begs the question if the provisions should remain as a fall back position for law enforcement if they should really need to pick a suspect up to prevent a terrorist act but yet lack enough to charge them with the act or the conspiracy.
The minority report writers lack credibility in regards to their expertise on what or what isn’t effective in battling terrorism. The ones who can provide that credibility are the intelligence agencies and police. Unfortunately, since they are the ones who are also capable of and have abused the power provided to them by parliament we walk a truly difficult line between laws needed to protect us and laws designed for fear and control.
When we start to lower the threshold of proof we then open up the potential for honest law abiding Canadians to be arbitrarily arrested and detained for up to a year without charges on very flimsy grounds. The evidence used to detain someone under those provisions can be as thin as having association with someone else who the police are investigating. We can associate with a lot of people in the course of our lives but unless we live in their space, we truly don’t know them.
On the other side of the coin, law enforcement should be able to act on reasonable suspicions that someone may be involved in potential terrorist activity without having to wait for the proverbial smoking gun.
So, where to we find that fine line between providing the police the ability to act in our defense and to at the same time restrain them from overreacting or outright abusing the power we grant them?
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