C-51 Committee Evidence, Cont'd

Greetings thwapanatics! (That's my new term for my readers. "thwap-fanatics" = "thwapanatics"! I'm going to stop using that term as of now.) When last we left my look at the Bill C-51 testimony at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, Steven Blaney, the current no-talent loser that harper has dredged-up to fill a cabinet post was just finishing tell everyone that he, and other harpercon scum were "witnesses and victims" of Martin Zehauf-Bibeau's attack. (Nobody from the opposition benches was there apparently.) Piling-on the irrelevance, Blaney mentioned that three other people agree that Martin-Zehauf's act was "terrorist inspired." I agree. And "The Amityville Horror" was also billed as being based on true events. His act was also based on anger over Canadian interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. (Blaney pointedly ignores this fact.) Having attempted to link this monstrosity of a bill to Zehauf-Bibeau's attack, Blaney continues ...

That is why I am here today with Minister MacKay to present Bill C-51. This bill includes measures to combat terrorism and will provide additional tools to our law enforcement agencies, intelligence services and organizations that follow up on and oversee our intelligence services.

Our anti-terrorism act, Bill C-51, is ensuring a better protection of our rights and freedoms. 

"Better"? Better than what?

This bill brings more tools for law enforcement and security agencies to tackle radicalization and track terrorists,

Does this include giving CSIS and the RCMP resources to call for an end to Canadian military interventions in Muslim countries? More important, does it include provisions for oversight and accountability that will prevent harassing Canadian citizens, telling the intelligence services of torturing countries that they're high-level terrorist operatives, getting them subjected to torture and while they're being tortured, CSIS is feeding questions to the torturers to ask on Canada's behalf? Will it prevent putting innocent immigrants under indefinite detention based on secret evidence and (often) simple incompetence and delusion? Forget about the sufferings of the victims of these stupid policies! Just think about the waste of public security resources pursuing innocent men and the revenue going to compensation claims that could have gone to public security!

and dramatically increases judicial oversight and review mechanisms to protect our rights and freedoms and the privacy of all Canadians.

 Oh! There it is! "Dramatically increased"? Awesome!

    Mr. Chair, the reality is that the international jihadist movement has declared war on Canada and most countries around the world. 

What a stupid man Blaney is. It's like I'm reading Spy Stories For Boys.

Canada and Canadians are being targeted by jihadist terrorists simply because these terrorists hate our society and hate our values. 

Oh my FUCKING God! He went there! I dealt with this bloody bullshit in yesterday's post. That is a fucking deliberate, stupid lie. Everything else you say will be contaminated by it, you stupid, lying fuck!

This is why our government has put forward measures that protect Canadians against jihadist terrorists who seek to destroy the very principles that make Canada the best country in the world in which to live.

Blaney, you miserable, ignorant slut; I do NOT like the ideals and aspirations of Islamic terrorists. I have no doubt that if they conquered this land, I would not like what they'd do to it. But they can't conquer this country with their cars, their hunting-rifles, their pressure cookers or the tonnes of fertilizer the RCMP buys for them. And that fact has NOTHING to do with your insane policies. And the fact of the matter is that the Conservative Party of Canada is seeking to destroy the very principles that make Canada (one of the) best countries in the world in which to live. And you're doing it right now with this police-state bill. Asshole!

    That is also why Canada is not sitting on the sidelines, as some would have us do, and is instead joining our allies in supporting the international coalition in the fight against the evil ISIL, the terrorist organization Islamic State.

Which was fostered by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and encouraged by the CIA and which spread so easily into Western Iraq thanks to the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government's unpopular, sectarian policies, blah, blah, blah-fucking-blah. Canada' joining the international coalition in Iraq is one of the causes of the

We saw it in Saint-Jean and even here in Ottawa. We also saw it in Paris, in Sydney, Australia, and in Copenhagen. The threat is complex and diffuse. 

Yes. And you don't understand it, even while you're perpetuating it.

It is our duty to take action to protect Canadians while protecting our rights and freedoms.

A tall order indeed!

    Violent international extremist groups, like the Islamic state and Al-Qaeda and its branches, represent a serious threat for Canada. That is why we must adapt and strengthen our capacity to protect our country and its people.

[English]

    Because there is no liberty without security.

[Translation]

    In order for freedom to flourish, security is crucial.

[English]

Well, so far it appears that Blaney is adept at stringing meaningless words and phrases together (in both languages!). Perhaps that talent is why harper plucked him from the obscurity of the back-benches after a series of resignations.

    These principles protecting security while maintaining liberty are at the heart of our Conservative government's approach to national security. 

No they're not.

 Canadians expect that if one branch of government is aware of a threat to their security, then this information would be shared with other branches of government to protect Canadians, not new information, but existing collected information. 

So, if words have meaning, after the passage of C-51, if the RCMP has "new information" about possible terrorists, they won't share it with any other branches of government. Right? What?

The security of Canada information sharing act, the first part of Bill C-51, is a response to the Air India commission and to many other requests. Mr. Chair, we are doing it to better protect Canadians. The legislation has adequate safeguards built in to protect the privacy of Canadians. We are not interested in giving privileges to the rights of terrorists over the rights of Canadians.

Still babbling. Is there ANYONE interested in placing the rights of terrorists over the rights of Canadians? It's people like Blaney who routinely conflate the rights of citizens as being the rights of criminals and terrorists. Whether he's deliberately, or accidentally making this mistake is inconsequential. Either way, he's unfit for his position.

[Translation]

    As we have heard, this piece of legislation will give the legal capacity to all the government departments and agencies to share information on activities that undermine the security of Canada, in a proactive manner or in response to requests from designated federal institutions with a mandate or responsibilities related to national security. The people in my riding are asking me why we have not done this until now.

They obviously haven't heard about the nice way we shared information with the CIA and the Syrians and the Sudanese government! Share and share alike has been the SOP for a while now. In researching for this paragraph, I came across what is a less rambling, more coherent critique of Blaney's whole shtick which I recommend you all read. (The essay also states that moron MacKay's performance was much more impressive than Blaney's. I can't wait to get to it. It would be hard for it to be any worse though.) Here's an important quote from the link:

To cite one example: It was astonishing to see Minister Blaney suggest that C-51’s information-sharing provisions are responsive to Justice John Major’s recommendations in the Air India inquiry. Indisputably, Justice Major favoured security information-sharing to stave off anti-terror risks – something also true of the earlier Arar Commission (which was about abusive information-sharing).
Boiled to its essence, Air India’s solution was mandatory information-sharing by CSIS to RCMP, and a new mechanism above these services that would decide the eternal question of whether information should be prioritized for intelligence or criminal evidence purposes.
Rather than doing any of this, C-51 opens the floodgates to permissive information-sharing on a vast range of issues going well beyond any existing concept of national security — but without compelling CSIS actually to cough up the crown jewels to the RCMP.

Now back to Blaney's testimony ...

    By definition, under the new legislation, an activity that undermines the security of Canada means any activity that undermines the sovereignty, the territorial integrity of Canada, or the lives and the security of the people of Canada. 

Does that include deregulating freight rail traffic? Proposing a "fire-wall" around Alberta? Under-funding public health care? Getting involved in stupid wars that create enemies for Canada? 

Do you have any idea how ridiculous you are Mr. Blaney? (Of course you don't. If you did, you'd be weeping piteously to yourself every morning, afraid to go our and face the world.)

Many observers have commented on this definition. This morning, I would like to point out that it refers strictly to the sharing of already existing information between federal agencies and organizations. Clearly, it does not relate to the mandate of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Clearly, activities that undermine Canada's sovereignty and territorial integrity, or which undermine Canadians' lives and security have nothing to to do with the mandate of CSIS. What? And I've already disposed of your use of the words "already existing information" as being incoherent.

    The second measure proposed by the bill has to do with the Secure Air Travel Act. This legislation would provide a legal framework to define the ministerial powers under the passenger protect program and to broaden the mandate of this program in order to identify, enumerate and mitigate threats posed by two categories of individuals.

    The first category, which includes those suspected of posing a threat to transportation security, is already in place. The second category has not been set up yet. Yet our need for it is great. Those who try to go abroad in order to support terrorist activities are not covered by the legislation. Right now, we cannot prevent them from getting on a plane even though we have reasons to believe that their intent in so doing is to commit a terrorist act.

Okay. Apparently the Secure Air Travel Act is Part II of Bill C-51. Right now, we have the Aeronautics Act, (That link is to a good review of Part II by the way.) wherein the minister of public safety can put people on a Specified Persons List and tell the minister of transport not to allow them to fly board airplanes in Canada. So, there's a first category of people not allowed to board a plane in Canada, and that's people who might try to blow-up the plane or something. Bill C-51 wants to create a second category, where people who want to fly a plane to a place where they'll commit a terrorist act can also be prevented from boarding a plane. Given the fact that some people have been prevented from international travel by Citizenship and Immigration revoking their passports, Blaney must be talking about someone trying to get on a domestic flight to blow-up something in Ottawa or Moosonee or something.

(By the way; note the cooperation and sharing between Public Safety, Transport and Citizenship and Immigration, contrary to Blaney's impression that CSIS agents are being traumatized by having all this information vital to Canadians' safety that they're unable to share with anyone.)

The question is what constitutes "reasonable grounds to suspect someone might be facilitating terrorism" when the government has such elastic definitions of "terrorism" and "facilitate." Do we want a country where a lame-brain like Steven Blaney can say: "I think that person might be going to give a speech to a BDS rally. I'll put that person on a no-fly list because BDS is terrorism and speaking in its support is facilitating terrorism"?

    Once again, Mr. Chair, it is quite clear.

This would put an additional tool in the tool box for our national security agencies when they are combatting the threat of individuals travelling abroad to engage in criminal activities. The act would authorize the Canada Border Services Agency to collect information related to air travellers coming to or living in Canada and to screen them against the list. Having Government of Canada law enforcement officials rather than airline workers screen passengers against the list would better protect the security and privacy of Canadians.

[Translation]

Tell that to Maher Arar. Seriously.

     The bill will also enable individuals on the list who have been prevented from travelling under the program to make a request to be withdrawn from the list. The bill provides for an appeal mechanism. In fact, any person on the list could appeal to the Federal Court. 

That is in the bill. I expect the committee will ask him about it.

    The third measure we are proposing will provide the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) with a new mandate to reduce threats to the security of Canada. It's about time.

[English]

I'll say! Wait! What have they been doing all this time?

    Currently CSIS can detect security threats but is unable to take action unlike most allies are doing. With the new threat disruption mandate, CSIS would be authorized to take direct action to disrupt threats to the security of Canada at home and abroad like most of our allies, such as Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, France, United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. It's about time, Mr. Chair. For instance, CSIS could interfere with terrorists' travel plans or financial transactions, and even intercept weapons to prevent terrorist use. 

This link deals with some of Blaney's assertions here. 

Minister Blaney also continued to imply that, in not permitting our covert security intelligence agency to do disruption, we are laggards among the allies. The list of countries we have failed to emulate appears to be somewhat shorter than that provided by the minister during Commons testimony. This is wise, since no one has yet been able to confirm that the countries on that original roster actually have domestic security intelligence services empowered to violate their country’s law and constitutional rules (at least to the extent proposed by C-51).
This too casts doubt on the minister’s assertion that we are better than other countries, because we will require warrants prior to law-breaking. Again, this is only meaningful if other countries actually allow law breaking. And in fact, some do — for foreign operations. And so one is left with the distinct impression that the minister is advocating a system for CSIS foreign and domestic operations inspired by the lawlessness some allied states permit only for international operations.

CSIS did not have these powers to disrupt because CSIS was formed by the Mulroney government after the McDonald Commission Report that said that the RCMP, when it had both domestic surveillance and police powers, abused those powers for political reasons. CSIS was created by removing the RCMP's spying apparatus and creating a new agency. I've understood that there's long been jealousy and animosity between the two institutions. Also, that the refusal/inability to share information contributed to the failure to prevent the Air India bombing.  Here's hoping there will be detailed investigation of Blaney later in the evidence.

    It is important to note that this mandate is tied to the existing definition of “threats to the security of Canada” that can be found in section 2 of the CSIS Act. This definition has been in place for 30 years and has formed the basis for CSIS' primary intelligence collection mandate since its inception and would be applied the same to the threat disruption mandate.

[Translation]

    With this new mandate, Bill C-51 sets rigorous limits and establishes a warrant mechanism for threat disruption. To my knowledge, we are the only country in the world to add this judicial oversight to the threat reduction mechanism. If the measures proposed might contravene a right guaranteed by the charter or another Canadian law, a Federal Court judge would have to authorize them in advance.

Again, let's remember the inconvenient facts of CSIS's serial fuck-ups and their tragic consequences while Blaney is jerking himself off here. Also remember Saudi and CIA support for terrorist extremists. Also remember that aside from actual murders by people who appear to have genuine mental problems, the rather non-existent extent of the terrorist threat in Canada.

    Bill C-51 also sets out new review requirements for the Security Intelligence Review Committee. We are giving this review committee the legal mandate to oversee CSIS' activities in order to increase responsibility, transparency and respect for the rights of Canadians.

Well, we'll see about that.

    Finally, the fourth proposed measure seeks to amend division 9 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. This would allow the government to use and protect classified information as part of immigration procedures, including security certificate cases before the Federal Court and applications for non-disclosure before the Immigration and Refugee Board. Those amendments would ensure the rigorous protection of classified information and would ensure that the proceedings are fair. That would also enable us to ensure that the discretion of the judge is retained in this case and that the special advocate or amicus curiae role is retained in order to protect the interests of non-citizens at in camera meetings.

Given that the whole security certificates thing has been a sick farce, none of that gives me the slightest bit of encouragement. Here's Dr. Dawg on the subject:

The issue here, at least for me, is process. Are we as Canadians satisfied with a judicial hearing that denies the right of an accused to face his accusers in court, or even know what the case against him is? Where CSIS has destroyed evidence and withheld other, exculpatory, evidence? Not to mention the over-reliance on a now-discredited source (Abu Zubaydah)? This might make a good plotline for a latter-day Kafka, but it has no place in a Canadian court.

Keep that in mind as you reflect upon Blaney's self-serving blathering.

Before I conclude my remarks today and hand the microphone to my honourable colleague, I would like to address three key misconceptions that have been put forward by members of the opposition, as well as so-called experts.

    The leader of the NDP has alleged that the legislation before us today means that legitimate dissent and protests would now be considered threats to Canadian security. These allegations are completely false, and frankly, ridiculous. Section 2 of the CSIS Act, which outlines exactly what is considered a threat to the security of Canada, is not being amended in any way by the new anti-terrorism legislation...again, sharing of information, threat disruption.

I'd ask Blaney to sit down and have a chat with Alison at Creekside, but I don't want to subject that fine lady to such an experience.

    Mr. Chair, we reject the argument that every time we talk about security our freedoms are threatened. 

Idiot. That's not the argument. The argument is that you fucking authoritarian "conservatives" use security to threaten our freedoms. That it's a deliberate plan of yours to criminalize dissent and perpetuate an Orwellian state of constant hostility and fear.

Indeed, we believe the opposite. Canadians understand that their freedom and security go hand in hand.

Whereas anyone who criticizes your proposed legislation believes that terrorists should be ignored by our security apparatus, and travel freely. Also, convicted child molesters should be free to sit on benches near playgrounds as long as they're minding their own business. And criminal gangs should be free to conduct their slayings and shootings in peace. Strawman much Blaney?

 The fundamental fact is that our police and national security agencies are working to protect our rights and our freedoms and it is the jihadi terrorists who endanger our security and who would take away our freedoms.

Except for the fucking fundamental fucking fact that Canadian citizens have already suffered imprisonment and torture because of the incompetence and racism of our police and our national security agencies. And the fucking fact that you don't understand the causes of terrorism. And the fucking fact that you blow-up the threat of terrorism (which your policies help to cause) into a danger greater than it is (and greater than your own policies in other areas are).

    Further, the leader of the NDP made allegations that I feel as Minister of Public Safety are unacceptable, because he said that CSIS, the security intelligence, has broken the law. This is an insult to the men and women who are protecting Canadians on a daily basis, who are risking their lives in unsafe places, 

Gawd! What a whining asshole! If they were spying on peaceful citizens' groups then they broke the law. Suck it up buttercup!

Mr. Chairman. For 30 years there has been the report of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which has always provided the certificate demonstrating that they complied with our Canadian law.

Ahem. From the link:

Recall that in her final report as IG in 2012, Plunkett informed the federal government that CSIS often flouts its own policies and makes “numerous” errors in reporting on intelligence matters which undermine the spy service’s credibility and reputation.

She also noted that, despite the IG’s small staff (eight people) and budget (a paltry $1 million) “it is the only independent, impartial resource available to the (Public Safety) Minister to support his responsibility and accountability for an organization which works in secret but has been given highly intrusive powers.”

...

With the IG gone, that left SIRC as the only agency that occasionally takes a glance over the shoulders of our spies. But, as Plunkett rightly points out, SIRC’s mandate does not include oversight of CSIS — nor is it much of a review agency.
SIRC is a limp, ineffectual body that, from time to time, administers complaints about CSIS it receives from the public. Its five-member part-time executive committee — the current committee has been short one member for ages — meets a few times every other month, and tends to be comprised of ex-politicians looking for something to do with their spare time.

SIRC’s acting chair is Deborah Grey, the former Reform Party MP who — ironically — once agreed with her ex-boss, Preston Manning, when he denounced SIRC in the House of Commons as a useless dumping ground for surplus government hacks.

Now back to the lies of Steven Blaney ...

I ask the member to bring coherent arguments, but not insult those who are protecting us. I ask him to apologize and to keep the debate among politicians focused on facts, truth, and reality. 

That's rich. 

    Furthermore, some commentators have said that the scope of the definition of “activity that undermines the security of Canada” is too broad, and that the language used is too vague for security legislation. Well, this definition should not be read in isolation. Proposed section 5 of the security of Canada information sharing act further restricts what information can be shared by requiring that information be shared only if it is relevant to the national security jurisdiction or responsibility of the recipient. The definition was intended to cover any information that is relevant to the security of Canada. 

It's already been determined that Blaney misinterprets and mischaracterizes rulings, regulations and legislation. All this will hopefully be taken up by the Committee.

    I'm glad we have here the leader of the Green Party, who has said that the provisions to protect lawful advocacy, protest, and dissent do not go far enough. I would invite the member to further read the legislation carefully. The act clearly states that the definition of “activity that undermines the security of Canada” does not include lawful advocacy, protest, dissent, or artistic expression. 

We'll see ...

    It should be noted that the carve-out is for greater certainty, and is intended to reflect the fact that these activities are not intended to be captured by this legislation. Once again, Mr. Chair, the information that is to be captured by this legislation, solely for sharing purposes, with no new information, has to undermine the security of Canada. “Lawful” is intended to be read narrowly and to exclude legitimate forms of protest that are not contrary to the Criminal Code. In other words, not having a municipal permit for a protest would not lead to an otherwise lawful protest being captured by this legislation.

Again; you're an incompetent and a liar. We'll see.

    Similarly, some have said that allowing CSIS to disrupt threats to national security would trample on the rights of legitimate protestors. Once again this is untrue, inaccurate and false. Under the legislation before us today, the threshold for CSIS to engage in disruption is reached if there are reasonable grounds to believe that a particular activity constitutes a threat to the security of Canada. This is the same definition that has been used for the last 30 years. Previously, CSIS did not have disruption powers, allowing them only to collect and retain information to the extent that is strictly necessary. 

But you've already sent innocent people to be tortured! Our police forces are already spying on peaceful environmentalists! You're already spying on our cellphone conversations and internet activities! And just now, you dim-wit, you said that the legislation encompasses threats to Canadians lives and security. A reasonable suspicion of a possible threat to Canadians' security is a pretty flimsy premise to incarcerate someone.

    Security is essential to maintaining our democratic rights and freedoms, and the anti-terrorism act seeks to do exactly that. I hope that all members will support this legislation, with the trust and confidence that we are taking the appropriate measures to protect Canadians and our freedoms and rights.

     Personally, Mr. Chair, I believe that if we were to stand still and not do anything to face this evolving threat, it would be morally irresponsible and immoral.

Ugh. Sickening. I'm glad his opening remarks are almost over.

It is our duty to avoid losing human lives because of bureaucratic silos. We can fix this. Canadians would be unforgiving should we fail to fix this dysfunctional information sharing system. We are probably one of the few countries that is not doing so. Better protecting the rights and freedoms of Canadians while tackling the threat of terrorism is exactly what Bill C-51 is accomplishing. To do so, we have worked in close conjunction with the Minister of Justice and his department, and I am pleased to let him make his remarks.

    Thank you.

I suppose we should be grateful that Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki and Muayyed Nureddin and Ahmed Al Mahti and Abousfian Abdelrazik were not tortured to death because of "information sharing" between CSIS and the CIA. Because that would have made you last stupid outburst really awkward.

You know people, I'm not dissing on Blaney for his inability to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. I wouldn't have put myself into his position in the first place. I'm not so deluded and stupid as to have spewed that drivel that he did. I wouldn't have anything to do with Conservative Party scum because I'm not an anti-democratic, thieving moron.

C-51 Committee Evidence

This is what I'll do until I get bored I guess.

The Chair (Mr. Daryl Kramp (Prince Edward—Hastings, CPC)):

     We will call this meeting to order.

    I would ask the media present to slip out now with the cameras. Thank you very much.

    Welcome, colleagues, to meeting number 53 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

    Today, under the orders of the day and pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, February 23, 2015, we are looking at Bill C-51, an act to enact the security of Canada information sharing act and the secure air travel act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and to make related and consequential amendments to other acts.

    Appearing as witnesses today, we have the Honourable Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and the Honourable Peter Gordon MacKay, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.

    We have from the Department of Justice, William F. Pentney, deputy minister of justice and deputy attorney general of Canada, and Donald K. Piragoff, senior assistant deputy minister, policy sector.

    We also have from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, François Guimont, deputy minister. From the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, we have Michel Coulombe, director. From the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we have Bob Paulson, commissioner.

    On a point of order, Mr. Garrison.

And Garrison of the NDP has a good question:

Mr. Randall Garrison (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, NDP):

    Mr. Chair, I appreciate the officials who are here, but we seem to be missing one official this morning, and that's the Privacy Commissioner, who is an officer of Parliament. I would ask for unanimous consent of the committee to move the following motion: That the clerk be directed to schedule one additional one-hour meeting of this committee to allow the Privacy Commissioner, Daniel Therrien, to appear before the committee.

Right. Because as I understand it, on this important bill detailing the increased powers to our domestic spying agency, the harpercons refused to allow the Privacy Commission to testify. Democratically-minded people of average intelligence could draw some conclusions from that.

The Chair:

    It is a point of order, sir, and you have the floor, but you generally cannot move a motion while you have the floor on a point of order.

Mr. Randall Garrison:

    Mr. Chair, I think I could do so with the unanimous consent of the committee, so once again, I'll ask for unanimous consent of the committee to move the motion.

 

This is theatre of course. The harpercons stole a majority and they did it for a reason.

The Chair:

    Mr. Garrison has asked for unanimous consent. I'm looking around the room. Does Mr. Garrison have unanimous consent to move the motion?

    Some hon. members: Agreed.

    Some hon. members: No.

What'd I tell you?

Now what?

 The Chair: We will now go to our witnesses. We will have our ministers speak briefly, which will give us an opportunity to discuss the bill.

    We will start off with Mr. Blaney.

Hon. Steven Blaney (Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness):

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    I will be giving my presentation in both official languages. I invite my colleagues to use the excellent service provided by our interpreters if they wish to do so.

The Chair:

    Mr. Easter, on a point of order.

Hon. Wayne Easter (Malpeque, Lib.):

    Mr. Chair, I am coming back to a point of order that I've raised a number of times. Commissioner Paulson was before this committee and he brought written text with him. The ministers have the full staff of all the departments. There is no reason in the world why, for an important bill like this, the ministers cannot provide this committee with their written remarks in both official languages. I see no reason why they cannot do it. I think it's unacceptable.

The Chair:

    Ms. Ablonczy.

Hon. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, CPC):

    Mr. Chair, Mr. Easter was a minister of the crown. Mr. Easter appeared before committee in that capacity five times, once before a Senate committee. I believe the record will show that not once did he provide a written statement to committee. He's completely without credibility in raising this and I just wish he would stop it.

Well, I have no idea what that was about. It would have been nice if the MP's had written notes to work from. But was Wayne Easter the wrong guy to make the request? If so, he must have known his attempt would have been dismissed that way.

The Chair:

    Thank you very much. The points have been made by both sides. The chair considers them argumentative and at this point we're not going to discuss it further.

     Mr. Blaney, you have the floor again.

Hon. Steven Blaney:

    Mr. Chair, as you know, I am very proud to speak French, which is my mother tongue. I will be pleased to do part of my speech in English.

    I am happy to be here this morning to set the record straight on certain points. 

Asshole.

I am very proud to be here with my colleague and friend, the Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, whom I respect deeply. 

I think I might puke. MacKay is another asshole. And a moron.

We prepared this bill with him. We are proud to be here to protect the rights of Canadians.

But that's not what this bill is about, is it?

Let me first address the video produced by the criminal who attacked this very Parliament building and murdered Corporal Nathan Cirillo, which you viewed this past Friday.

 The Petit Larousse definition is clear and it is used by Commissioner Paulson, the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, or even President François Hollande, who described the act committed here as “terrorist-inspired”. It was an act of violence, a dramatic gesture driven by ideology.

    Clearly, every time I appear here, I remember that I was here that day with Minister MacKay and several colleagues from the government caucus. We were witnesses to and victims of this attack. I had the opportunity to meet with all the members of the committee to tell them that we must remain vigilant and confident, and to take the necessary measures, while protecting the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and privacy to effectively fight the evolving terrorist threat. This is my primary duty as Minister of Public Safety.

That, ladies and gentlemen, appears to be the extent of Blaney's addressing of the video of Zehaf-Bibeau. Zehaf-Bibeau's case would have been better addressed by drug decriminalization, addiction treatment and mental health care. None of these options are going to be considered by the harpercons. In fact, they would be pointedly rejected and countered with their exact opposites; harsher drug laws, closing down of addiction treatment services and slashing of federal contributions to health care. 

And what are we talking about here? "Terrorism"? I repeat as long as it's necessary, that the worst terrorist atrocity in Canada occurred way back in 1985. We existed quite happily since 1985 up until the post-September 11th, 2001 terrorism began to afflict Canada. That's over 15 years of getting on quite well without legislation such as this. 

Since 2001, CSIS and/or the RCMP have broken the infamous "Toronto 18" (some of whom were teenaged boys who went to jail because the religious fitness camp they signed-up for was, unbeknownst to them, "associated" with terrorism, and all of whom would have had nothing to do with anything were it not for the coke-addicted RCMP informant who stirred them up), the "Canada Day Bombers" (two recovering heroin addicts who had recently converted to Islam so successfully that they were kicked out of their local mosque, and who, from the transcripts from their trial, appear unable to organize a piss-up in a brewery except with the coaching, encouragement and assistance from the RCMP officer posing as their mentor). 

They also got five (that I know of) Canadian citizens subjected to torture in Egypt, Syria and the Sudan. Supposedly all these men were suspected of being big-time terrorist operatives. But it's kind of hard to torture people for up to TWO YEARS and not extract ANYTHING from them if they really were terrorist operatives. (And, when you consider the fact that Omar Khadr was talked into stating that he'd seen Maher Arar at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan, and Ezra Levant - a bigger terrorist than any of those tortured guys - crowed about that, only for surveillance evidence to show that Arar had been in Ottawa at the time, ... it seems inarguable that these fellow citizens of our country, Canada, are innocent.)

To be fair, over a decade after 2001, and after our occupation of Afghanistan, and after over a decade of rampaging Islamophobic bigotry, including state harassment of Muslims and Arabs, and after over a decade of US-American depredations in the Middle East, which then-president bush II referred to as "a crusade" and in which one US general bragged that the USA won because "my God was bigger than their God," and decades of western support for Israel's abuse of the Palestinians, ... a few individuals have begun to act-out in the name of Islam. 

We should add to the above contributors to "radicalization" of Muslims in Canada, the direct financial support to radical, fundamentalist Islam of US-ally Saudi Arabia. The direct political support to armed Sunni-fundamentalist groups by US-ally Saudi Arabia. And the opportunities for further expansion for these radical groups by the USA, using them as proxies in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. I mean, if we're going to talk about the great struggle of our time, ... isn't it fucking weird how they're so much the product of a major US ally, and a beneficiary of US foreign policy?

I'll make a post, wherein I'll explain that GBWT means "Great Bullshit War on Terror" and I'll just use the acronym from then on.

Anyhoo, ... yes, since 2001, besides uncovering two dubious conspiracies, subjecting (at least) five innocent Canadians to torture, employing security certificates against numerous immigrants with evidently no terrorist connections, there has also been what appears to be a genuine plot by two Muslim men to blow-up a VIA train, the crazed attack by a homeless former crack-head (that resulted in the tragic death of Nathan Cirillo), and a second tragedy when another recent convert to Islam used his car to strike-down and kill Patrice Vincent.

Now, what do all of these genuine plots and attacks have in common? The answer is Canadian government (especially harper government) support for interventions in Muslim countries.

Martin Couture-Rouleau:

"So he was really mad that Canada actually supported the American bombing of [ISIS] in Syria and Iraq so I think that was the main motive in killing that Canadian soldier."

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau: 

Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau tied his attack on Cpl. Nathan Cirillo to Canadian Forces missions in Afghanistan and Iraq in a cellphone video he recorded ahead of the fatal shooting on Oct. 22, 2014.

The VIA Train Bomb Plotters:

On the first day of the trial, Crown lawyer Croft Michaelson said the pair made up a terrorist group operating in Canada in 2012.
“Mr. Esseghaier and Mr. Jaser, motivated by Islamic extremism, agreed that they would murder persons to instil fear in the community,” Michaelson said in his opening remarks.
“They did this so that Canadians and Americans would remove their troops from Muslim lands.”
Esseghaier, a Tunisian national who was doing doctoral research on nanosensors in Quebec, travelled to Iran in early 2012 and met with people who were, in his words, “carrying out Jihad for the sake of Allah,” Michaelson said.
“Mr. Esseghaier returned to Canada intent on establishing a terrorist cell to facilitate and carry out terrorist acts in Canada,” he said.
Jaser, a permanent resident of Palestinian descent, got involved with Esseghaier and wanted to “conduct multiple missions so people in Canada would realize they would not be safe until they left the lands overseas,” Michaelson said.

Now, you can argue about the merits of our post-2001 interventions. You can argue about the Israel-Palestine conflict and Canada's position on that topic. You can argue as to whether we should allow our foreign policies to be partially based on terrorist responses to them. But what you CANNOT do, is argue that our recent foreign policies have not inspired these attacks. What you CANNOT do is do what our shit-for-brains, unelected scum-bag of a prime minister, stephen harper has done, which is to blither that Canada is being attacked for being Canada. 

Canadians, he said, "are targeted by these terrorists for no other reason than that we are Canadians. They want to harm us because they hate our society and the values it represents."

No harper. NO. That's FALSE. It is not true. It is a lie. You are lying. 

And my stating this simple fact does not meant that I'm caving-in to the terrorists. I am not running off to hide in a closet and abandoning everyone else LIKE YOU DID. 

If we are going to have a conversation about terrorism in Canada, then let it be an honest one. Let it be one based on the facts.

You'll notice, I've departed some ways from Steven Blaney's testimony to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. But in some ways, I haven't. I think that if we're going to listen to this man's stupid yammerings, it is important that we understand what we're talking about. The threat he claims he's responding to. The self-serving claims from himself, the idiot Peter MacKay and the whole harpercon gang of scuzz-balls, about how they're trying to "keep Canadians safe" with their STASI legislation. The fact of the matter is that the "thinking" behind Bill C-51 is so divorced from reality, so irrelevant with regards to the facts, that a restatement of what has really been going on is crucial. Hence this digression from Blaney's bullshit.

I'll pick this up tomorrow. Read my comments about the bullshit of harper's claims about wanting to keep us safe here in the meantime.  

So It Ain't Just Me?

Via my FaceBook existence, a "friend" recommends a review by Naomi Klein of Steve Fraser’s The Age of Acquiescence: The Life and Death of American Resistance to Organized Wealth and Power in the NYT's Review of Books. Read it with me and see if you can't find similarities to my constant carping and bitching and internet whining for decades now!

Fraser, a labor historian, argues that deepening economic hardship for the many, combined with “insatiable lust for excess” for the few, qualifies our era as a second Gilded Age. But while contemporary wealth stratification shares much with the age of the robber barons, the popular response does not.

As Fraser forcefully shows, during the first Gilded Age — which he defines loosely as the years between the end of the Civil War and the market crash of 1929 — American elites were threatened with more than embarrassing statistics. Rather, a “broad and multifaceted resistance” fought for and won substantially higher wages, better workplace conditions, progressive taxation and, ultimately, the modern welfare state (even as they dreamed of much more).

...

What ­fueled the resistance to the first Gilded Age, he argues, was the fact that many Americans had a recent memory of a different kind of economic system, whether in America or back in Europe. Many at the forefront of the resistance were actively fighting to protect a way of life, whether it was the family farm that was being lost to predatory creditors or small-scale artisanal businesses being wiped out by industrial capitalism. Having known something different from their grim present, they were capable of imagining — and fighting for — a radically better future.

It is this imaginative capacity that is missing from our second Gilded Age, a theme to which Fraser returns again and again in the latter half of the book. The latest inequality chasm has opened up at a time when there is no popular memory — in the United States, at least — of another kind of economic system. Whereas the activists and agitators of the first Gilded Age straddled two worlds, we find ourselves fully within capitalism’s matrix. So while we can demand slight improvements to our current conditions, we have a great deal of trouble believing in something else entirely.

Klein faults Fraser for spending too much time detailing the myths of modern capitalism that sustain its hegemony in contemporary culture, and not enough time proposing solutions of his own, or of giving voice to the leaders of current protest movements:

This need not have been the case. Fraser spares only a few short paragraphs for those movements that are attempting to overcome the obstacles he documents — student-debt resisters, fast-food and Walmart workers fighting for a living wage, regional campaigns to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour or the various creative attempts to organize vulnerable immigrant workers. We hear absolutely nothing directly from the leaders of these contemporary movements, all of whom are struggling daily with the questions at the heart of this book.

I'd like to venture forth with a slice of personal philosophy. If Fraser is neglecting the current crop of activists, it might be because they seem so insignificant in the present context, and, also, lacking in thorough-going analysis of the problems and what's required.

Student-debt resisters: On the face of it, they want their loans forgiven or at least reduced, and they want lower tuitions. How much of this is based on a rejection of, or challenge to, the overall status-quo? 

Campaigns to raise the minimum wage: On the face of it, they accept the premise of wage employment and state regulation of these employment relations.

Organizing immigrant workers: On the face of it, this doesn't explicitly challenge capitalism either. 

How many of the movements today, Occupy, environmentalism, peace, feminism, accept the liberal-capitalist status-quo in its entirety and only imagine that "fairness" and "justice" can be introduced to it if only elites are educated, or shamed, into acknowledging the need for them?

But if Fraser sees today's protest movements as insufficient and insignificant, I would suggest that the same was true for much of the protest movements of the past. Things were worse for a greater majority of people (at least within the core, industrialized countries) than is the case for the majority in these societies at present. Therefore the movements were larger and more militant. But how many Luddites had an analysis beyond their own issues and experiences? (And I don't mean this to be condescending. It would be entirely understanding if people living without access to information and without having had travel opportunities to anywhere beyond fifty miles of where they'd been born, would be ignorant of wider forces and larger contexts. It's also possible that there was a rich and sophisticated oral culture of understanding of the European culture and resistance to it among the poor.)

How many Eastern European sojourners consciously embraced the anarchist principles of the IWW? How many members of communist trade unions had read and agreed with Marx and Engels? How many people went to the radicals for assistance with their own problems and ignored them for most of the rest of the time? (In poor neighbourhoods in US cities during the Great Depression, when landlords came to evict tenants, the local communists would send members to put furniture back into apartments and face-down the landlords employees, or even local sheriffs. "Kids! Go get the Reds!" mothers would shout when the eviction squads showed up.)

We celebrate this "culture of resistance" from the peasant rebellions, the Diggers and the Levelers, the Luddites, the slave revolts, the union movements, the French Revolution, Russia, China, Cuba, the Zapatistas, 1848, etc., etc., ... but how much influence did they actually have? Perhaps they're important evidence of the human struggle for justice throughout the ages, but they might also be that and nothing more.

Because, as Thomas Piketty recently argued, it appears that the only time that the level of social inequality was genuinely reduced in the capitalist countries was in the aftermath of the self-inflicted crises of the great wars and the great depression. 

It's true that there was a vibrant labour movement pushing for mass unionization, but how much did they depend upon contributing factors. The electoral appeal of pro-union policies helped produce relatively pro-union politicians, the Labour Party in Great Britain and FDR administration that produced the Wagner Act in the USA, especially. Together with the need for full production for World War II, and the political-economists' realization that mass production in peacetime required mass consumption from an affluent majority, produced the great compromise from 1945-1973.

In at least a small way, both Klein and Fraser attribute too much to the protest movements of the pre- and post-1945 eras. They were and are important, but they were not, are not, and will not, be sufficient to challenge the power of capitalism.

I have argued that we have inherited from the struggles for human rights and freedoms, including from the so-called "bourgeois" revolutions, important tools for our ultimate emancipation. I do not, I have NEVER, imagined that we have genuine democracy or that capitalism under social democracy is the best we can hope to achieve. But I think it's the height of incoherence, I think it's astonishingly stupid, to believe, as many radicals do, that it's all a ridiculous sham, and that only total refusal and total destruction of all that is, will be what is necessary to bring on the promised land. 

I think that the mewling liberals, social democrats, centre-leftists of all stripes, are wrong in thinking that we can construct a more humane capitalism, and I think the radicals are wrong and deluded in believing we will have a genuine revolution and that afterwards, we can construct a society more in line with our ideas in some ad hoc fashion. (Just as Marxist-Leninists were wrong in thinking there was a blueprint for revolution that needed to be followed, and could be followed.)

We should cherish our quasi-democratic inheritance. Respect it and work to make it a genuine democracy. And part of this is the expansion of human rights of workers within their workplaces via "Workers as Citizens." Because it is the power of private wealth that contaminates our democracies and prevents their further development. Inserting human rights into workplaces will, in the end, eviscerate this unjust concentration of wealth and power. And this is all to be achieved via the present quasi-democratic system that we have now and that most people either believe in, or can imagine no alternative to.

Of course, gentle readers, you're free to continue beseeching the powerful to treat people better, or expressing your rage by breaking a store window somewhere, ... but I just don't see much resulting from the continuation of such nonsense.

That Oil Spill

I got nothing to say about it that Alison at Creekside didn't already say, except that the brilliance of closing coast guard stations and marine traffic control centers, in a place where you plan on increasing oil tanker traffic is just typical harpercon thinking, through and through.

Closing necessary services to afford useless tax-cuts for the wealthy? That's been standard operating procedure in Canada for decades now.

But just stack this up beside making veterans with amputated limbs fill out forms every year saying their conditions haven't changed, ... heck, put it down with the illegal wars, complicity in torture, STASI-North, contempt of Parliament, election fraud, Patrick Brazeau, the useless census, ... the F-35, shameless racism, ... on and on it goes with this pack of scum and their nit-wit, deluded followers.

harper Can't Do Anything

More and more embarrassing stuff is going to emerge during the Duffy trial.

This is going to be the drip, drip, drip of scandal and sleaze that will really hamper harper's attempt to steal the next election.

harper couldn't call an election sooner. Oil prices were in the basement and he couldn't even produce a budget. he was just going to have to hope that everything fixed itself by October. Place all his hopes for political resurrection on his wars in Iraq and Syria. Unfortunately for him, it seems a majority of Canadians aren't enamoured of the idea of more open-ended contributions to yet another conflict with dreadful allies and no coherent outcome.

And so, the mighty stephen harper, the arrogant, cynical, lying psychopath, is being forced to endure what must, for him, be unendurable. his whole sleazy political life is being put on display and there's nothing he can do about it. People are angrily responding to one display of cynicism and corruption after another, and harper will try to go on foreign trips to escape having to comment himself, but that won't matter come October.

You can bet that for a guy who wants to always be in control, this is torture. For a guy who can't stand having to face up to reality, this is excruciating. How long can an emotionally fragile, not-too-bright, irredeemable coward stand this strain? How long before he cracks-up?

Do you think he'll resign? Force the party to go to the polls under Jason Kenney? (Or something?)

Weep for us harper! Weep into that pillow big guy!

(Note: The above image was by far the most interesting image result from a search for "drip of scandal.")

Have You Ever Met Anyone Truly Scared The "Islamicists" Will Take Over?

Remember how a lot of US-Americans in the 1950's genuinely thought that Kremlin-controlled commies were going to try to take over their country?

How much more laughable is it for people to believe that Muslim fundamentalists are going to try to take over their countries?

Sure, it's rational to be afraid of random bombs. But the death-toll from their terrorism doesn't even approach the numbers killed by neo-liberalism!

I really don't understand how some people can be so stupid.

Duffy: They're All Guilty As Sin

So, ... the Duffy trial.

Yep.

There's no question but that Duffy saw the Senate position as a reward for a lifetime in politics and that both he and harper thought that he'd be able to pretend to be a citizen of PEI so as to represent the Island in the Senate, and do party fund-raising while charging it all to the taxpayers as Senatorial duties.

It was hubris.

Of the two of them, Duffy had the less reason to be worried. He was counting on the idea that harper was so powerful that petty little rules weren't going to be an issue. harper had evaded responsibility for bigger crimes, who was going to worry about Mike Duffy being just another patronage appointment to the Senate (an institution filled with cronies on the take)?

stephen harper, on the other hand, should have known better. he was the head honcho. he would have been the guy who'd know whether or not any problems could be taken care of. Maybe he honestly thought that he could appoint high-profile celebrity hacks (and an immature, substance-abusing guy with impulse-control problems) to represent provinces they didn't live in and get them to fund-raise for the Conservative Party on the publics' dime without anyone being able to do anything about it.

But it's like Sun Tzu says: "Victorious generals win first, and then go to war. While defeated generals go to war first and then seek to win." If harper wasn't 100% sure that he could break the law and get away with it, he shouldn't have broken the law.

But, as is his wont, harper did break the law. And then we saw his true level of incapacity didn't we. Used to getting away with lies and non-answers in the House of Commons, harper would blather that he'd looked at Pamela Wallin's expenses and found them to be reasonable. Then, a Senate audit finds out that they were outrageous (the opposite of "reasonable"). harper is forced to lapse into embarrassed, craven silence.

With Duffy on the other hand, harper just slinks away and gets the party to tell his former ally to take it on the chin. Can't really call Duffy a former friend, because nobody really likes stephen harper. But he was an ally. An ally who harper had told was golden. Untouchable. An ally who was benefiting harper through his valuable fund-raising for the party. And harper treated Duffy like he was dog-shit on his shoe.

You know, sometimes its embarrassing, in a colonial kind of way, to know that US-American journalists and celebrities make seven-figure salaries and live in fucking mansions, and then you see a Canadian celebrity-journalist like Duffy, a man who's career spanned decades, owns a big, but otherwise non-descript house in the Ottawa suburbs and he has a little cottage in PEI. But then, it's also a good thing that so many of our elites aren't mega-rich, completely out-of-touch asshole like Tom Friedman or David Gregory. At the very least, it makes them vulnerable.

The party that Duffy was raising money for was prepared to give back $30,000 to get the guy who raised it for them out of trouble. But they balked at $90,000. If the Conservative Party, with all its resources was troubled by $90,000, imagine how Duffy felt! And imagine how he felt about that arrogant, uncaring asshole stephen harper! The man responsible for this mess!

You can bet that Duffy made a huge stink about this. He didn't have ninety-thousand fucking dollars! If he was going to go down for this you can damn-well bet he was going to take everyone else down with him!

Enter genuine millionaire, Nigel Wright, at the time harper's Chief of Staff at the PMO. Wright neither knows, nor likes Duffy. Imagine the conversations that went into getting him to pony-up the $90,000 out of his personal bank account to bail Duffy out.

This whole thing was to buy Duffy's silence to cover up the fraud that was his claiming his fund-raising expenses as being related to his duties as the non-resident Senator from PEI. This is obvious. Everyone knows this. Just like everyone knows that harper knows all about this.  Because harper is not that smart a guy and his lies have been so brazen. he's contradicted himself on several occasions.

Andrew Coyne:

The prime minister, on the other hand, will be crestfallen that he will in all likelihood not be called as a witness, inasmuch as this would have provided him with the first opportunity he has had to tell his side of the story — not counting the hundreds of questions he has avoided directly answering in the House or the dozens of press conferences he has never held.

Were he to have the honour of testifying under oath, however, I am confident he would clear up the many questions surrounding his own knowledge of the affair: what Mr. Wright could have meant in February of 2013 when he emailed the other participants in Operation Clusterduff that the PM was “good to go” with their plan, at that time to have the party repay Sen. Duffy; or what Mr. Wright could have meant in May of that year when he told the prime minister’s spokesman that Mr. Harper knew, albeit “in broad terms only,” that he had personally repaid Mr. Duffy’s expenses; both of which remain a puzzle, since the prime minister has vehemently denied knowing one iota of either plan.

The prime minister might also then have the chance to explain why his initial response, when the story broke, was to say he had full confidence in his chief of staff; why he nevertheless agreed, a few days later, to accept his resignation; why that story changed, some weeks after that, to him having fired Mr. Wright; or why he later stopped saying that. He might even be able to explain why, when he repeatedly told Parliament that Mr. Wright acted alone, none of the more than a dozen party and PMO staff now known to have been in on the plan thought to inform him of his error.

Andrew Coyne again:

And he [harper] is most certainly not responsible for the clandestine campaign, involving officials in his office, the chairman of the Conservative Fund Canada, and several leading Conservative senators, to repay Senator Duffy’s falsely claimed expenses on his behalf and conceal his misdeeds from the public. He is not responsible for his spokesman’s statements, even after the plot had been exposed, praising Mr. Duffy for “doing the right thing” and vouching confidence in his chief of staff, Nigel Wright.

On the other hand, he is responsible, by his own account, for telling Mr. Duffy to repay his expenses, though he had for months denied having any involvement with the file, and he was briefly responsible for “dismissing” Mr. Wright, though he had earlier claimed he resigned, and though he now seems unwilling to say which version is operable.

harper would like to have avoided this trial. But the nice thing about limits on power and the rule of law is that not even the prime minister is powerful enough to completely evade these things. harper couldn't call an election. he already has a majority and it doesn't matter. The trial is going on.

And all the breezy, nonsensical, contradictory stories that stephen harper stupidly tried to get away with in Parliament (aided and abetted by the anti-democratic scum-bag, Speaker Scheer) will be tested in court.

The larger point though, is this: How brazen will our elites be in displaying their contempt for the rule of law? How shameless will harpercon supporters be in rationalizing harper's incoherent, contradictory excuses for his behaviour?

I mean, we've already seen that the RCMP is shameless enough to charge Duffy with accepting a bribe, but Family Compact golden-boy, who paid the bribe isn't charged with anything. We've all seen various competent and functioning human beings stating with straight faces that the residency requirement regulations for Senators are arcane and confusing. We've got all the emails from the PMO and the Senate Internal Economy Committee saying they'd all agree to go easy on Duffy's audit. We've got the evidence of harpercon hacks trying to influence the auditors themselves.  This is open-and-shut.

But the majority of Canada's elites and media and the voting public has shown themselves incapable of processing the significance of harper's abuse of prorogation, his attack on the principle of responsible government, his demonstrated, inarguable contempt for Parliament, his disregard for financial accountability and his deliberate violation of electoral integrity.

Ours is a sick system. Like some form of deadly terminal stage case of cynicism and apathy. "Outrage" is a word that's tossed around too cheaply. You're clearly not "outraged" if you sit at home and grumble. Will the spitting on the law, on the rules, on the supposed principles that they claim to stand for, and which they will inevitably do to try to escape the blame and the consequences for this sordid mess, trigger genuine outrage in this country?

Let's find out.