By Robert Hiltz, Postmedia News September 7, 2011
Controversial clauses expanding the powers of police to combat terrorism are going to be reintroduced by the Conservative majority government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview with CBC.
Harper said, for the first time since the Tories took control of the House of Commons, that the government plans to bring back measures in the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired in 2007.
"We think those measures are necessary. We think they've been useful," Harper said of the expired parts of the act.
"They're applied rarely, but there are times where they're needed."
The clauses were part of the act, introduced in 2001, and were required to be renewed every three years.
They allowed for preventive detention of suspects for up to 72 hours, granted police the ability to arrest terrorism suspects without a warrant and enabled judges to compel a witness to testify.
In 2007, the Opposition Liberals, led by Stephane Dion, blocked the continuation of the police powers. A small number of Grits, including former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler, abstained from the vote because they sided with the then-minority government. Harper tired to reintroduce the measures at other points during his minority reign, but he was thwarted by parliamentary recesses.
In the interview, Harper said Canada is still under the threat of terrorism.
"The major threat is still Islamicism. There are other threats out there, but that is the one that I can tell you occupies the security apparatus most regularly," he said. "As we've seen in Norway, terrorist threats can come out of the blue. It can come from something completely different, and there are other groups and individuals that if given the chance would engage in terrorism."
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Controversial clauses expanding the powers of police to combat terrorism are going to be reintroduced by the Conservative majority government, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in an interview with CBC.
Harper said, for the first time since the Tories took control of the House of Commons, that the government plans to bring back measures in the Anti-Terrorism Act that expired in 2007.
"We think those measures are necessary. We think they've been useful," Harper said of the expired parts of the act.
"They're applied rarely, but there are times where they're needed."
The clauses were part of the act, introduced in 2001, and were required to be renewed every three years.
They allowed for preventive detention of suspects for up to 72 hours, granted police the ability to arrest terrorism suspects without a warrant and enabled judges to compel a witness to testify.
In 2007, the Opposition Liberals, led by Stephane Dion, blocked the continuation of the police powers. A small number of Grits, including former Liberal justice minister Irwin Cotler, abstained from the vote because they sided with the then-minority government. Harper tired to reintroduce the measures at other points during his minority reign, but he was thwarted by parliamentary recesses.
In the interview, Harper said Canada is still under the threat of terrorism.
"The major threat is still Islamicism. There are other threats out there, but that is the one that I can tell you occupies the security apparatus most regularly," he said. "As we've seen in Norway, terrorist threats can come out of the blue. It can come from something completely different, and there are other groups and individuals that if given the chance would engage in terrorism."
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The last paragraph of the interview might make any anti-terrorism law unconstitutional since Mr Harper refers to "Islamicism" (since there is no such word one might assume he means islamism), to be the major threat. This identifies a highly identifiable group of people which might go against the constitution. Just saying!
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