Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Quelle Surprise!

So ... the courts have been finding that holding people without charge and without evidence under a "security certificate" is illegal. Apparently, the Conservatives don't really like that too much:

Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan says he fears for the government's ability to fight terrorism in light of "an increasingly complex legal environment" in which judges are no longer deferring to the government in its efforts to deport foreign suspects.

"It raises questions about whether we can protect national security and I can tell you I am concerned," Van Loan told Canwest News Service. "I spend a fair bit of time thinking about it."


Ummm...right. Sure. It doesn't raise any such questions, Peter. It means that like anyone else that the government wishes to detain, there had better be something called evidence ... and that evidence had better be credible.


The Security Certificate program was dicey when it first came out - any law that places a person in a situation where they are detained without due process, access to the right to challenge their detention in a court of law, etc. is inherently on pretty shaky ground. Now that more and more of these cases have been shown to be deeply flawed - filled with uncorroborated evidence from unreliable sources, questionable investigative work on the part of CSIS and goodness knows how much else that we have no idea about - simply because the "evidence" is secret.

The detention of people under such conditions is an abuse of Canadian Law, and in particular the key principles of our Constitution and society. Not one of these "grave threats" has ever been proven to actually be a threat to our country. Canada does not need these kinds of laws - we need our law enforcement and CSIS officials to actually do their jobs in a way that deals with real threats.

Somebody remind me again about how the Con$ are about law and order?

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