The Views of Canadian Scholars on the Impact of the Anti-Terrorism Act

11. REG WHITAKER Department of Political Science, University of Victoria (continued)

11.3 How should our country respond to these trends and threats? Please feel free to include measures at any level, such as social, economic, political, or legal or a combination of these levels.

Given the lower direct threat level in Canada than the US, and given the range of non-terrorist public safety threats facing Canada, emulation of the US Homeland Security model with its rigorous focus on terrorism is probably not a wise policy direction. The creation by the Martin government of a new super-ministry of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness under the direction of the Deputy Prime Minister, with its all-threats emphasis, is most definitely a step in the right direction. The Canadian parliamentary system of government permits greater flexibility in restructuring the administration than does the American system of the separation of powers. The federal government appears ready to take advantage of this to build a comprehensive public safety framework appropriate to various threat contexts. Particularly important here is the development of a central threat assessment capacity to evaluate and prioritize potential threats, whether terrorist or non-terrorist, for the purpose of rationally allocating resources. Homeland Security in the US appears to a degree to have become hostage to pressures from private sector entrepreneurs with security technologies to sell and vested interests in promoting threat perceptions that validate expenditure in areas they are contracting in - a 'security/industrial complex' that operates in a manner not unlike the military/industrial complex that has existed since the beginning of the Cold War era and has distorted intelligence estimates of foreign threats for decades. Such interests and pressures do exist in Canada as well, and thus it is imperative that the government arm itself with the capacity to set its security agenda with as broad a base of inputs as possible and an analytical capacity to rationally prioritize requirements independent of vested interests.

Cooperation with the US is obviously essential, whether the issue revolves around anti-terrorist security measures or crisis management of integrated power grids. However, cooperation comes at a cost, mainly a cost to Canadian sovereignty and to Canadian conceptions of our national interest, where these depart, even in small measure, from US conceptions of their national interest. The Arar inquiry points to one serious level of Canadian concern with intelligence cooperation that may jeopardize Canadian citizens' human rights. Another is the demand from various influential quarters that Canada 'harmonize' its immigration and refugee policies, among others, with the US, as the price of economic security for Canada. Given the disproportion in power, harmonization clearly means Canada adopting US policies and US standards, even where these may conflict sharply with Canadian values and practices, and with the Canadian Charter of Rights.

Yet another area of concern for Canada is the effect of American interpretations of the terrorist threat on Canadian foreign policy. Official US anti-terrorist doctrine does not accept the distinction between negotiable and non-negotiable terrorism that I made in answer to Question 2. The US-led War on Terrorism is premised on the notion that all forms of terrorism form a seamless web, which must be aggressively countered and defeated by force in all instances.

This has led to a close meshing of American with Israeli policy towards Palestinian national aspirations, which constitutes in my view the greatest single long-term weakness in the global war on terrorism, locking the West into a stance that alienates large sections of the Arab and Muslim world, and generates new recruits to Islamist extremist organizations. There are also considerable domestic pressures exerted on the Canadian government to align its policies in the Middle East with Israel and the US, the strength of which was demonstrated during the controversies over the listing of terrorist entities under C-36.

In broader terms, the Canadian emphasis on a human security agenda is appropriate to deal with the underlying conditions that give rise to negotiable forms of terrorism, and resolving violent regional conflicts through negotiation fits the Canadian preference for multilateral diplomacy and peace-building. It is probably true that an emphasis on the root causes of the extreme non-negotiable forms of terrorism may be misplaced in dealing with behaviour that has by now cut itself loose from its root causes and has become self-perpetuating. But the failure of the US to make the distinction between the two forms of terrorism is in the long run self-defeating. It has also led to a worldwide corrosion of human rights protection as extreme measures are countenanced, and repressive regimes are given approval, and even support, by the US, in the name of fighting terrorism. These trends run directly counter to basic principles of Canadian foreign policy.

The potential conflict was sharply highlighted by Canada's independent course over the Iraq war. US doctrine insisted upon a connection between Al Qaida and the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, and a threat from Iraq's alleged WMDs, either directly or through transfer to Al Qaida. Imposed regime change was declared a key anti-terrorist measure that would justify unilateral intervention if necessary. Canada disagreed with this argument, as did many critics, inside and outside the US, who saw the Iraq war as a diversion from the war on terrorism.

The later revelation that Iraq possessed no WMDs and had no connection to Al Qaida has cast considerable doubt on the credibility of intelligence to demonstrate a basis for the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive unilateral strikes against potential threats before they materialize. The tension here between the American and Canadian views of the terrorist threat should not be minimized, nor can it be glossed over. There is very good reason to believe that the American focus on so-called 'rogue states' is seriously skewing the appropriate focus on global terrorist threats without borders. Canada should not acquiesce in this hijacking of the anti-terrorist program, but it neither can nor should pull out of collective security arrangements. The trick for Canada is to continue to contribute to the elements of the campaign with which it agrees, while reserving its independence in areas where it disagrees. This is a difficult path to negotiate, but Canada does seem to have done so with some skill in the Iraq war, while contributing to the Kabul security force. It is notable that threats of economic retaliation have failed to materialize. Lessons for Canada's narrow margin of autonomy should be clear.

It is difficult to envisage how Canadian counter terrorism policy can diverge significantly from the American model, given the close integration and the level of Canadian intelligence dependency. We have however carved out some degree of autonomy by refusing to emulate some of the more extreme American repressive measures as they impact on both resident non-citizens and Canadian citizens. In this context, the contrast between the USA PATRIOT Act and C-36 is instructive, with Canada following a more restrained course of acquiring and using new and intrusive powers. Nor did Canada follow the American post 9/11 example of large-scale detentions of suspect aliens without charges and without counsel, which was not only in violation of human rights and exacerbated interethnic hostilities, but has turned out to be of highly dubious value as a counter-terrorist measure. It is important that Canada continue to follow its own, more moderate path, especially in light of the greatly troubled relations between the Arab and Muslim communities in the US and the majority that has resulted from aggressive ethnic and religious profiling as a security and law enforcement tool. Ethnic profiling is to some degree impossible to avoid altogether in a war against a form of terrorism with certain national, ethnic, and religious roots, and it would be false to suggest that Canada has avoided all the pitfalls of profiling (the quickly unravelled Project Thread that targeted almost two dozen Pakistani men is a sorry example of misused profiling). But the government has not for the most part heightened multicultural tensions, as unfortunately seems to be the case in the US, and this course should be maintained, despite pressures from the US and from supporters of American-style profiling in Canada to tighten up allegedly 'lax' Canadian standards (despite the derisory record of such measures actually catching real terrorists in the US).

One measure that Canada should aggressively pursue to lessen some of the unwelcome external pressures is to beef up Canadian foreign intelligence capacity. There have been more resources put into this area post 9/11. The new Public Safety ministry and the naming of a national security adviser to the Prime Minister are encouraging steps. The idea floated from time to time that a new foreign intelligence agency should be created may not be viable at this time, in terms of cost, and in terms of the timeframe to get a new agency up and running effectively. CSIS is playing an expanding role abroad in tracking terrorism, as are other agencies like the CSE, and the RCMP from a law enforcement perspective. Putting these and other potential intelligence gathering bodies to work in a coordinated fashion to provide the government of Canada with enhanced made-in-Canada global terrorist threat assessments is, I believe, a highly important step. This would not only provide more intelligence from a Canadian national perspective, but it would also enhance Canadian exchange value in intelligence sharing with our allies, thus augmenting the quality of intelligence gained by Canada in exchange. This is an issue of Canadian 'information sovereignty', the strengthening of which should be seen as a positive contribution to the common struggle against terrorism.

The much discussed decline of adequate funding for the Canadian military is also a deficiency that needs addressing. The better that Canada can fulfill a peacekeeping role as part of multilateral anti-terrorist measures, the more we can maintain the requisite degree of autonomy and sovereignty in anti-terrorist policy.

A final recommendation, and again one that the new Martin government seems to have taken under advisement: the structures of accountability, oversight, and review should be strengthened, coordinated and made more comprehensive. The public has a profound stake in protection against terrorist attacks, and in public safety understood more generally. But government has a responsibility to be as transparent as is practically possible to make the war against terrorism a democratic enterprise with broad informed support. Canadians require that their governments provide safety and security, but they also require that this is done in an accountable, not arbitrary and oppressive, manner. I would particularly applaud the government's initiative to establish a parliamentary committee on national security with access to secret information, and to make the opposition leaders in Parliament Privy Councillors for the purpose of sharing privileged material in the Arar Inquiry.