Mohandas Gandhi You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind
Benjamin Franklin They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
It’s been a bad summer for top Ottawa ‘secureaucrats’ – senior public servants in charge of the agencies with lead responsibilities for national security. First, CSIS Director Richard Fadden jumped recklessly into a media and political firestorm with comments about foreign infiltration of Canadian political institutions, leading to calls for his resignation. Then William Elliott, [...]
A week of the military commission trial in the case of the United States vs Omar Khadr has just wrapped up. And no one would have ever predicted where we’ve ended up.
When the week began, there were a multitude of doubts as to whether things were going to go ahead. It was not certain whether [...]
As I was reading the hundreds of incidents reports that Canadian Civil Liberties Association has received, I was struck by the common themes: astonishment and fear. People could not believe that such conduct could occur in Canada and they now fear the police.
“The people were sitting down, singing and chanting “peaceful protest”. The police surrounded [...]
The debate about security and human rights is not just about insidious practices like extraordinary rendition and infamous prison camps like Guantánamo Bay. It is not only about the tension between counter-terrorism laws and practices on the one hand and human rights protection on the other. In fact, governments have used arguments about security as [...]
On April 27, Peter Milliken, Speaker of the House of Commons, ruled that Parliament had the right of access to unredacted documents in the Afghan detainee issue, in order to fulfill its constitutional duty to hold the government accountable. As many observers said at the time, this was a landmark ruling, in two senses.
First, it [...]
It is not my role to “second-guess” military authorities here as to the security measures they feel need to be put in place.
With these words, Judge Patrick Parrish, who is presiding over the military commission hearings and trial in the case of Omar Khadr, starkly illustrated the fundamental concern that the proceedings at Guantánamo [...]
On April 23, the Minister of Justice introduced in the House of Commons a bill to reenact the two most contentious powers in the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act: investigative hearings and preventive arrests. Both powers had been allowed to expire when Parliament refused to renew them in 2007.
At that time, the Conservatives vowed to bring the [...]
Nuclear disarmament is back on the international agenda where it belongs, thanks to the efforts of U.S. President Barack Obama who is determined to earn the Nobel Peace Prize he’s already received. Obama understands that nuclear warheads are a threat to that most fundamental of human rights, the right to live. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate [...]
Ottawa has many questions to answer about Canada’s policies concerning the transfer of detainees in Afghanistan. The answer to the most important of those questions — what a rights-respecting transfer policy should look like — could guide other governments struggling with the same issues. Canada is not alone in facing controversy over its transfer policy. [...]
Since 9/11, the question of Canadian complicity in torture has bedeviled the Ottawa security intelligence community. Unlike Canada’s closest ally, the United States, Canadian officials have never been implicated directly in the use of torture, but even hints of complicity and cooperation with those who do torture – including, unfortunately, our American allies under the [...]
