Terror law returns
2013Ric Ekapuk 2013-05Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 9 →
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Following the tragic events in Boston last month, the Stephen Harper Conservative gov ernment wasted no time regressing to the para noid security-state mode of the early post 9/11 years. Within days of the bombings, it passed the Combatting Terrorism Act, which revives similar legislation in effect from late 2001 to 2007.
This means that residents of Canada will once again be vulnerable to highly controversial ex panded police powers, including secret tribunals and “preventative” arrest. Authorities may now detain anyone “associated” with terrorism for up to three days, without being charged, and then place conditions on him/her for one year.
Someone who refuses to accept the condi tions could face jail time. People also may be compelled to attend secret hearings and answer questions—again, without being charged with a crime, and at the risk of being jailed for up to a year if they refuse.
On the same day as the final House of Com mons debate on the bill, with timing that was almost too perfect, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that it had arrested two men in connection with a plot to bomb a VIA rail train in Ontario. In the ensuing hysteria, with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews ominously warning that “terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada,” the bill easily passed into law.
The third-place Liberal Party supported the Conservatives in voting for the bill, which was logical since it was the Liberals who passed its previous incarnation in 2001. However, the Of ficial Opposition New Democratic Party stood firmly against the measure. The NDP Critic for Democratic and Parliamentary Reform, Toronto Danforth MP Craig Scott, summed it up quite suc cinctly: “The government is on record as wishing to permit conditions to be imposed on perfectly innocent people. Failure to comply can lead to 12 months imprisonment. Is that a regime we want in our country?”
Socialists demand the immediate repeal of the Combatting Terrorism Act, and call for a whole new approach to combatting terrorism, both for eign and home-grown, which would include an end to wars of aggression overseas, measures to end the economic and social marginalization of minority communities at home, and support for popular movements fighting oppressive regimes everywhere. n
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Barnard College Eco-socialist Conference — Tony Savino / Socialist Action (Left) Haitian workers carry scarce food supplies over the Dominican Republic border. tion of rank-and-file movements that could ultimately overthrow the labor bureaucrats who remain tied hand and foot to the Demo cratic Party. It would entail breaking with the Democrats and the formation of a new class-struggle Labor Party, one that that would fight without compromise in the in terests of the workers.
Let’s remember that this crisis is global. The planet faces massive environmental shifts in weather, coastal flooding, crop failure, and starvation—as well as capital ist war—as the corporate bloodsuckers at tempt to extract every penny from the mis ery of workers and poor farmers around the world. The need for worker international ism has never been greater!
In October, I traveled to Haiti and visited with sweatshop workers in Port au Prince organized by Batay Ouvriye (Workers Struggle). Haitian workers slave in inter national textile assembly plants for $3.50 a day. As Haiti’s U.S. puppet President Mi chael Martelly says,” Haiti is open for busi ness!” Enforcing this hell on earth is a U.S.led UN occupation that has killed without mercy and, as two scientific studies have