With news of a death by friendly fire in Iraq, one can pretty much imagine how this is going to become the fodder of QP over the coming days – much of it likely to be condemnation about a mission where these special operations forces were never supposed to be near the front lines in the first place, and a government that will be urging patience for the outcome of the investigations into just what happened that night when our troops came under fire. To add insult, the Kurdish forces took to their local media to blame the Canadians for the incident, but there are already dissenting reports, saying that their version doesn’t fit with the facts on the ground, including the maxim that “special forces don’t freelance” – hence why the government will be urging calm until an investigation happens. Just don’t hold your breath when it comes to requests not to politicise this death, because we’ve already crossed that line.
Tag Archives: Terrorism
Roundup: What the video tells us
We finally got our look at the Ottawa shooter video yesterday, minus some 18 seconds that the RCMP deemed too sensitive with relation to their investigation. Through the less than a minute, we learnt a few things – he was lucid, he gave motives about our missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and he wanted to attack soldiers in Canada so as to show that we weren’t safe, and that we should get out of countries trying to re-establish religious laws. Okay. As a very smart person on my Twitter feed said, “terrorist boilerplate.” The fact that the autopsy showed none of the usual intoxicants in his system also shows that he wasn’t doing this out of some drug-addled episode, and there seemed to be little indication that he was having a mental health episode either. It really does dismantle some of the hedging about his motivations and does cement it as a terrorism incident – or at the very least, a terrorism-inspired incident. That said, when you pull it apart a little, the fact that what he did say was such boilerplate that you pretty much could go down a checklist as he said them speaks to the whole improvised nature of what went down, and even if he was under the influence of someone else, none of this had the hallmarks of being a well orchestrated or financed incident. More to the point, the RCMP commissioner noted in his comments during the scrums that he really didn’t want this released until after they concluded their investigation, but that he was pretty much forced into it by PCO, which leads to questions about the government trying to orchestrate its timing so as to build the narrative about why C-51 is so necessary and needs to be rammed through the process. Remind everyone that terrorism at home is a clear and present threat, and hope that people will go along with whatever the government offer as a solution, even if it’s not the best one.
Roundup: The illogic of the fear campaign
It’s difficult not to question the logic behind the Conservatives using that supposed threat from al-Shebab against West Edmonton Mall as a party fundraiser/data mining tool, particularly as the blowback starts to affect everyone around it. It defies logic that they tell people to still go shopping there while simultaneously whipping up a panic that they’ll be next on a terrorist hit list – never mind that al-Shebab is pretty marginal as an organisation and has neither the resources nor the reach outside of East Africa, and that by the government whipping up the hysteria around a video by a marginal group like this one, they’re playing right into the terrorists’ game – fomenting terror, no matter what the Conservatives’ objectives are. Meanwhile, merchants suffer – oh, but the fragile economy! – and cheerleader teams are pulling out of the competition being held at said mall, ostensibly because their insurance companies are freaking out (never mind that the very act of cheerleading is more likely to result in death or dismemberment than a terrorist event). If you ask Tim Uppal about it – under whose name this went out – he gives you talking points about the threat of these groups, and as Paula Simons discovered, it’s just talking points rearranged in a different order than his fundraising appeal talking points. Well done there. It’s still too early to tell whether this will in fact blow back on them, but with other conservatives lining up to denounce the move, it’s hard to see how they can continue to justify it without causing even more damage.
Roundup: Deciding on a witness list
We have our preliminary witness list for the C-51 hearings, and lo and behold, none of those four former prime ministers who signed that open letter are on it – and it’s just as well, because if there’s one thing the country doesn’t need, it’s former prime ministers to be arm-chair governing and telling people what to do. Yes, they raised concerns, which is fine, but bringing them to a Commons committee would be little more than an exercise in opposition MPs trying to get them to say how awful the current government is, while the governing party MPs would be doing their best to discount those former prime ministers because of previous scandals, etcetera, etcetera. The only real purpose in having them testify would be for the media circus value, which I’m not sure helps anyone in this situation, and would probably detract from the seriousness of the issues at hand. The same goes for former Supreme Court justices, despite the fact that Justices Arbour and Major are possibilities on the list, though you could maybe convince me about Justice O’Connor – a former Associate Chief Justice of Ontario – to talk about his conclusions from the Arar inquiry, which haven’t yet been addressed. Arar himself is also on the list, as are some former members of SIRC and a few different activists who have concerns of their own, which does the balance the list out so that it’s not just security experts but also those who have civil society concerns. It should be interesting nevertheless, but hopefully they won’t all be crammed onto overstuffed panels where nobody really gets a chance to speak – though that does seem to be the way things go these days.
Roundup: Foolishly demanding Supreme Court intervention
In an attempt to continue to stall having to repay their satellite office expenses, the NDP have taken the incredulous move of demanding that the government refer the matter to the Supreme Court, so that they can decide whether the matter is even justiciable before the NDP’s challenge at the Federal Court goes ahead. Oh, and they’re not going to pay a cent back until they have final say from the courts, and given the pace at which these things happen, it sounds an awful lot like they’re trying to keep putting this off until we’re into the writ period, if not later. More to the point, this is completely crazy and irresponsible because it’s a self-inflected blow to parliamentary sovereignty. Parliament decides its own rules because it’s the body that decides upon the creation of laws in this country, and it has privileges to ensure that it can do so without interference from either the Crown or its agents. What’s worse is how the NDP worded their press release – that they want the Supreme Court “to intervene,” amidst their whinging that this is because the Conservatives and Liberals re being mean to them for partisan reasons – never mind that it was the Clerk who discovered that they broke the rules. The fact that they are wording this in such a way makes it sound like they want the Supreme Court to be the babysitters of Parliament – which is not their job – and furthermore sounds about one step away from them calling on the Queen to intervene for them because they’re not getting their way. It’s political desperation, and it’s a terrible road to start travelling down, to voluntarily start stripping parliament of its privileges because they refuse to own up to their own poor judgement.
@journo_dale @J_Scott_ either the Fed Court has jurisdiction, or not. If they have a strong case at Fed Court, who needs the SCC? And…
— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) February 27, 2015
@journo_dale @J_Scott_ …if they think the Federal Court is going to laugh them out of the room, why won't the SCC do same?
— Rob Silver (@RobSilver) February 27, 2015
https://twitter.com/j_scott_/status/571449661007003649
Roundup: Eight whole meetings
With the C-51 now before the Commons public safety committee, various kinds of shenanigans were played there, the NDP essentially launching a filibuster throughout the day in order to get more time to hear from witnesses, and they did get more time – about eight days, instead of three. They had proposed some 25 hearings, which included over a constituency week so that they could still meet the same deadline the government proposed, but they didn’t bite. It was also suggested that this may have been the government’s plan the whole time – give them a few more days and they’ll seem reasonable. Perhaps, but that didn’t seem to be the case if you listened to the Conservatives on the committee, who seemed to think that talk about rights was somehow an unreasonable thing. Online, people claiming to be from Anonymous are hoping an online campaign will force the government to back down on the bill, the way the government responded to backlash over Vic Toews’ lawful access bill, but I’m not sure they’ll have the same success, especially as the government is fairly confident that they can get the public to go along with the bill by holding the threat of terrorism over them – especially as new stories of people heading over to fight with ISIS become almost daily news at this point. The NDP tried to get in on the online campaign game and tried to get #StandWithRosane to trend – meaning their deputy critic Rosane Doré Lefebvre, leading the filibuster effort. Not surprisingly, it didn’t trend, for fairly obvious reasons, which makes one think that the NDP still hasn’t quite cracked the social media campaign that the election will supposedly be about. Perhaps we can call it a “hashtag fail,” as it were.
.@RosaneDL is fighting for our rights and freedoms right now. Join her. #StandWithRosane #NDP #cdnpoli #C51 pic.twitter.com/ifj82DBbR9
— NDP (@NDP) February 26, 2015
QP: A Multi-Pronged Action Plan™!
Despite it being a Thursday, the leaders of the two main opposition parties were absent for no apparently reason. Way to show up and do your job guys — especially because the Prime Minister was in attendance. Megan Leslie led off asking about the powers listed in C-51, to which Harper boasted about our existing strong oversight, and accused the NDP of attacking our intelligence agencies. Leslie noted that it has been four years since better oversight was promised and not delivered, but Harper largely repeated his answer. Leslie turned to the topic of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and calling a national inquiry, to which Harper touted their “multi-pronged Action Plan™.” Romeo Saganash asked the same again, to which Kellie Leitch responded about the actions they’re taken, and then Saganash noted that C-51 was unconstitutional because it affects the rights of First Nations to protest. Stephen Blaney stated that peaceful dissent was allowed, and they needed to tackle terrorism. Marc Garneau led off for the Liberals, and noted the poor job market. Harper stood up to insist that their Action Plan™ gets results. Ralph Goodale gave it another go in English, insisting that the government has been a failure when it comes to jobs, to which Harper touted their job creation record. Goodale listed off more damning statements about the job market, but Harper insisted that the vast majority of jobs created were full-time, good paying and in the private sector, while Goodale’s budgets were followed by police investigations.
And for the record, the politically-prompted investigation back in 2005 lasted 15 months + resulted in complete vindication (3/3)
— Ralph Goodale (@RalphGoodale) February 26, 2015
Roundup: Review or oversight?
With C-51 now before committee, and the process of hashing out hearing schedules and witness lists begun, the debate continues over its merits. The story about the young Edmonton who went to support ISIS and CSIS didn’t stop her – because they’re not empowered to disrupt – is adding fuel to the fire, while it’s also bringing out a lot of conspiracy theories that are way out there, like ones that state that the terrorism angle is just a smokescreen so that the government can go after environmentalists and First Nations who oppose their resource development projects. (For the record, I have a really hard time seeing that, especially when you start intimating that it’s at the behest of corporations). The question of oversight remains top of mind, particularly as the Liberals are making that the hill they want to die on – or at least fight an election over – to which Philippe Lagassé writes a very interesting piece about the nature of parliamentary oversight committees in comparable Westminster democracies. In particular, these committees and the one that the Liberals have proposed here in Canada is not actually oversight either – it’s a review committee, like SIRC, only broader because it would review all national security agencies as a whole rather than in silos as what little oversight or review mechanisms to do currently (an four years later, talk about better integrating oversight remains just that). More importantly, however, Lagassé notes that opposition parties need to be very careful about how much oversight that they demand parliamentarians have because involving them too much can make them complicit in decisions that they should be holding the government to account for, and by swearing in a group of MPs to secrecy to see the materials, it effectively silences them because they can’t talk about what they know, and it can take such material out of sight and out of mind – as what happened with the Afghan detainee documents. Which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t have more parliamentary review of national security, but we need to be cognisant of its aims and limits.
QP: National security and painting a bridge
Despite it being Wednesday, the Prime Minister was absent from QP, meeting with Bill Gates instead. So when Thomas Mulcair led off asking about how much time the public safety committee would get to study C-51, Stephen Blaney responded by hoping they wouldn’t engage in any dilatory actions at said committee. Mulcair wondered if the PM was trying to hide the bill from scrutiny, to which Blaney accused Mulcair of attacking the credibility of CSIS. Mulcair then listed instances of where the RCMP were in the wrong when he meant to give examples of where CSIS broke the law, before asking about the right of dissent in the bill. Mulcair then moved onto the issue of a Quebec City rail bridge, at which point Lisa Raitt reminded him of CN Rail’s responsibilities. Mulcair then moved onto the topic of a funding cut at Marine Atlantic, to which Raitt pointed out that they were returning to their base level of funding after years of increases for revitalisation. Justin Trudeau was up next, asking what the government intended to do on the doctor-assisted dying issue, to which Robert Goguen moaned about how emotional of an issue it was. Trudeau then moved onto the issue of Keystone XL, and if the PM would put a price on carbon to convince the Americans that we are serious about the climate issue. Greg Rickford gave a couple of non sequiturs to slam Trudeau, and insisted it was not an international issue but a domestic American one. Trudeau called it a diplomatic failure, to which Rickford listed off the size of our energy trade.
Roundup: Hurry or not
It’s a curious thing, this notion of political expediency. When it comes to the issue of national security changes, for which you would think the government would want to take the time to get it right considering not only the Charter implications, but also the potential for major embarrassment to a government should things go wrong *cough*Maher Arar*cough* there should be an impetus for some due diligence. Instead, we’re getting word that they want to limit committee study to three days, because gods forbid that they might have to schedule a few extra committee meetings or sit into July to ensure that things happen. Meanwhile, on an issue such as doctor-assisted dying, where there is a ticking clock looming over them, the government instead prefers to push it off to the next parliament, insisting there’s “plenty of time” and don’t worry, they’re “consulting with Canadians” on the subject, which gives one the sense that they’re going to put pretty much as much effort as they did into the recent prostitution law, which is to say that it was a fairly sham process designed to give them a result that they could use to justify a solution that is unlikely to pass a second Charter challenge. Oh, and because they’ll be in a time crunch when they do get around to presenting a bill, it would allow them to insist that they need to use time allocation to ram though a bill without a lot of actual consultation with experts (assuming that the Conservatives form government again). This method of issues management makes no sense, but they apparently are under the impression that it works for them.