Canadian MPs actually show some backbone on terror

Canada’s parliament has just voted to repeal an anti-terrorism law passed in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Even more impressive, they did it in the face of a scare campaign from their government which attempted to paint them as ‘soft on terror.’

As reported in the Canadian Globe and Mail:

Last night, a majority of MPs in the House signalled that they think those fears can no longer justify giving police and the courts extraordinary powers to arrest people and force them to testify in suspected terrorism cases.

The laws in question allowed for detention without charge and removed the right to silence in relation to terrorism offences. Sound familiar to Australians? It should.

One of the key reasons for the vote seems to be that the laws have not been used since September 11, despite a number of successful anti-terrorism operations in Canada. In mid-2005 our own Attorney-General’s department remarked that:

…ASIO has used its new questioning power but it has not used the detention power.

The expanded powers in the ASIO Act have indeed barely been used since they were granted. Even before the most significant expansion, in 2003, ASIO had barely used its existing powers to combat terrorism. Nevertheless, they’re still sitting there on the books, just waiting for the right combination of hysteria, circumstance and executive intention to bring them into play.

The Canadian vote follows a recent Canadian Supreme Court ruling that a law allowing for the indefinite detention of foreign terrorism suspects violated Canada’s bill of rights, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Of course, the Australian Parliament voted to retain our own laws granting security agencies similar extraordinary powers last year. In addition, we have no bill of rights, and no prospect of getting one any time soon. And our MPs are, at least to date, utterly unprepared to stand up and be counted when there’s a risk they might be perceived as soft on terror.