How many of you have seen the movie "Rendition" so far? Robert Fisk seems to think that this movie shows events "almost identical" to what happened to Maher Arar. Though there are similarities, I think that may be overstating the case.
While it may be true that Maher Arar and the fictional Anwar El-Ibrahimi were both Engineers, picked up by the American government and sent away for torture, there are quite a few differences as well.
For one, Maher Arar is Syrian-born and the fictional Anwar El-Ibrahimi is Egyptian-born. For another, Maher Arar’s second child was born 7 months before he was detained. For another, there were no phone calls to Maher Arar’s house involving bomb plots. For another, Maher Arar is a pacifist. But, most importantly, Isabella is no Monia Mazigh! It takes a special woman to be persistent without freaking out - and they have Isabella freaking out in the trailer.
Did Isabella ever contact her Congress person or any Congressperson?
Maher Arar was picked up in September 2002 and sent away to be tortured. Maher Arar’s name was first mentioned in Question Period (Parliament) on October 21 2002. Tunisia is where Monia’s family is from:
Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Mr. Speaker, on September 26 Canadian citizen Maher Arar was detained and imprisoned in New York by the U.S. government while in transit from Tunisia to Canada.
With no legal counsel present, Mr. Arar was subjected to secret interrogations and then deported, not back to Canada, which he requested, but to Syria. According to the Syrian government he never arrived.
Where is Maher Arar?
Hon. Bill Graham (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, we remain extremely concerned about the case of Mr. Arar. I have raised this issue with American authorities, with the ambassador and at the highest levels, to register our concern with the fact that Mr. Arar is a Canadian citizen and should have been treated as a Canadian citizen.
Our concern at this time is to find Mr. Arar and allow his family to enter into contact with him. This government is sparing no efforts whatsoever, and in fact we are exercising all our efforts to ensure that we are able to do that.
Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Mr. Speaker, Canadians are not looking for concern, they are looking for answers. Maybe we need to issue a travel advisory telling people it is not safe to go to the U.S. these days.
What Mr. Arar’s family wants to know and what Canadians want to know is whether the minister demanded the Americans’ evidence that in fact they deported him to Syria. We want to know what route he took. We want to know what flight he was on. We want to know who accompanied him. We want to know if he arrived in Syria.
Did the foreign affairs minister get answers to those questions and, if not, why not?
Hon. Bill Graham (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, we have inquired of Syrian authorities and other authorities in that region to ascertain the presence of Mr. Arar. We have so far not been able to find an answer to our questions but that does not mean we are not making all efforts to do so. It is unreasonable for the hon. member to suggest that we are not making all efforts necessary to protect the life of a Canadian citizen who was abroad.
I saw this fiim, and loved it. I think it was just broadly based on Arar's story, besides the man in the film was a citizen of the US, which I don't want to spoil it for anyone (so if you haven't seen it, don't read any further).
But didn't you think it was strange that he was able to return to his home in Chicago after he was "set free"? Obviously that part was fictional because they never would have let him back in the country in real life.
So it is one of those times when real life is even more frightening and stranger than the fictional film.
Besides, this film certainly leaves no doubts about the torture of waterboarding, unless that was downplayed as well.
"Yeehaw" is not a foreign policy!
Posts: 875 | Location: The Emerald City | Registered: 02 January 2007
meljomur, that is my point exactly, Anwar El-Ibrahimi's situation was completely different BECAUSE the fictional Anwar was an American making the issues different. In the case of the fictional Anwar, the focus would be solely on whether or not he was guilty and whether the risk of torturing an innocent man outweighs the risk of hundreds dying from a terrorist bomb. Those were not the central issues being debated in Canada.
There are three other high profile Canadians in Maher Arar's situation:
Abdullah Almalki - engineer who started an electronics component export business with his wife, born in Syria http://www.abdullahalmalki.ca/
Muayyed Nureddin - geologist and former school principal, born in Iraq
Ahmad El Maati - truck driver, born in Kuwait
While Maher Arar was tortured severely (and Abdullah Almalki even more severely), neither were subject to waterboarding.
Engineers from certain countries were targeted because being an Engineer gave one a certain skill-set that the US considered potentially dangerous. If one wanted to created a stereotypical rendition victim, making him an engineer would certainly fit the profile.
The similarities between Anwar El-Ibrahimi and Maher Arar is more because of the fact that there are things in common with all rendition victims, than anything specific to the Maher Arar case.
And Hollywood has to have its happy ending - so, all of a sudden Anwar gets his old life back and suffers no ill effects.
I am curious as to whether Anwar El-Ibrahimi met his wife at University - like Abdullah Almalki (Khuzaimah Kalifah) and Maher Arar (Monia Mazigh) did.
Canada does not have the CIA or the FBI - we have CSIS and the RCMP.
Maher Arar was detained at a New York stop over between Tunisia and Montreal on September 26, 2002.
On November 8, 2003 journalist Juliet O'Neill printed an article about Maher Arar in the Ottawa Citizen. O'Neill refuses to name her source. First her garbage was searched and her conversations monitored. On January 21 2004 O'Neill’s house is raided and her notes and computer are confiscated by the RCMP with the charge that she leaked state secrets. The leaked information that Juliet O'Neill presented in her article as fact turned out to be some of the things that Maher Arar falsely confessed to under torture.
I am sure there was nothing like that in Anwar's story. Hollywood stories tend not to have that comedy of errors as those who make the mistake try to cover up their asterixes even if it means tarnishing the reputation of innocents.
I wish I wasn't so allergic to air freshioner - last time I attempted to go to a movie I spent the next day coming off what seemed like a very bad trip. I always have to wait until movies come out on video and rent or buy them. Since I can't guarantee that I won't be sick when I finally get to watch a movie, I don't care if the plot is spoiled.
Posts: 771 | Location: Winnipeg | Registered: 06 September 2001
The thing is, I can imagine there are many people in this country who have "disappeared", that we have no idea about.
I for one do NOT believe Jose Padilla is an isolated incident, but I bet there are many many more.
I have said it before, I think it would be horrible to be an arab living in the US right now.
I hope the Canadian government will put pressure on the US government to return these citizens, so they can be given a fair trial, which apparently is not allowed in this country.
"Yeehaw" is not a foreign policy!
Posts: 875 | Location: The Emerald City | Registered: 02 January 2007
The thing is, I can imagine there are many people in this country who have "disappeared", that we have no idea about.
meljomur, that is the problem, the Canada government only had the ability to pressure the American government on behalf of Canadians (and Stephen Harper's Conservatives are not too willing to do so). You heard that Canada has recently reversed its policy concerning lobbying on behalf of Canadians on America's death row? The Opposition parties consider it the first step towards Canada adopting the Death Penalty.
Alexa would probably steer American inquiries to where they can get help, if she was contacted, though.
There was a story at the CBC about rendition in the US a few years back (you can write and see if the CBC can find it for you but, otherwise, I don't know how to find it in a search). Seems many of the families of those detained were afraid to speak out because they were afraid that what happened to their family member would happen to them. Remember that between Arar's detainment and release, the war in Iraq started. It was a bad time for Muslims (or Sikhs mistaken for Muslims) to speak out.
Note that both Arar and Almalki have web pages and that Arar says each time that he is speaking out so that what happened to him won't happened to others. The hope is that any one with missing family members will contact Arar's webpage and be directed to who might be able to help them.
Also note that Almalki was detained before Arar was and released after Arar was - in fact, until Arar made the statement as to what happened to him where he said that he bumped into Almalki, Almalki's family did not know where he was.
That must be hard for families not knowing if their loved ones are dead or alive, not knowing who to turn to and not knowing who they can trust.
Do I have your permission to post the Maher Arar story according to Hansard? Hansard is the official transcript of what goes on in the House of Commons during Question Period (it is where the Opposition asks questions of the Government).
I don't know if anything similar exists for Congress, but the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State and the President are not Congresspersons so they don't face questions in Congress.
Note that I did a search with the term "Arar" so will miss some instances where Arar was alluded to but not named specifically.
Posts: 771 | Location: Winnipeg | Registered: 06 September 2001
I just got back from seeing the movie. From my perspective, it was easy to see that it was a Hollywood version of Reality. For one thing, the interrogators were actually too gentle with Anwar. What we saw was a couple body blows at the beginning, clautrophobic confinement, one short spell of waterboarding, and electroshocking to the body in general.
Back in Viet Nam, I saw some sadism-diguised-as-interrogations. I came to understand the "art" of physical persuasion. The idea is that the interrogator builds to a crescendo. The reason being that having delivered a particularly painful passage, anything less than that thereafter is anti-climatic. The idea is to get the subject to fear what comes next.
In the movie, Anwar protests his innocence at the beginning, but then he stubbornly clams up. Uh-uh. An innocent man talks freely at the beginning and then will start to babble at the least provocation. He knows he doesn't _deserve_ what's happening to him, and until he understands that the pain will continue to get worse until the interrogators hear what they want to hear, he will seriously protest his innocence. At a certain threshold of pain, the subject will conclude that what happens to him for confessing to something he didn't do will NOT be worse than what will happen to him next. That's when he will start to tell tales about his guilt.
Interrogators understand that sequence. When the subject gets to babbling incoherently, saying the first thing that comes to his mind, THAT is when Truth will appear; either that the man is truly innocent and knows no details about what he is accused of, or he does know details that fit the accusation.
Unfortunately, from the interrogator's perspective, he can NOT trust that what he hears at the beginning is true. A man telling the truth and a clever liar can sound identical. So it becomes necessary to break the subject's will to filter what comes out of his mouth. THAT condition won't appear until the subject has sustained so much pain, he literally can no longer think straight.
Thereafter, the government has to deal with the consequences of having subjected pointedly innocent people to the ordeal. The easiest solution for avoiding the negative fallout is to make sure that they only worked on guilty suspects -- even if they were NOT guilty. (You can do that when you're in a position to manufacture and plant "evidence".)
[Jeez. I know waaayyy too much about this s***. I sincerely hope the nightmares don't start up again. Took more than a decade to abate after Viet Nam.]
--------------------------------- "Life isn't worth living until you know what's worth dying for."
"Choose wisely."
Posts: 937 | Location: San Rafael, CA, USA | Registered: 17 July 2007
Where you held captive in Vietnam? I guess I didn't realize this, it certainly makes me feel very silly indeed for even attempting to discuss these issues, when I have never, ever known anything close to war, and imprisonment, and torture.
It must be very difficult to watch a film like that if you have seen it in real life.
Wow, you must just laugh (well maybe not exactly) at these members here who say that torture is exceptable, when of course they have no idea (which I guess is the same for me, except that I think it is totally sick).
"Yeehaw" is not a foreign policy!
Posts: 875 | Location: The Emerald City | Registered: 02 January 2007
No. I was on a field op that involved a sweep through an area that had been under the control of a NVA regiment. It was a joint US/ARVN operation, with the US troops as spearhead with three ARVN battalions in support. As we cleared areas, any villagers gathered up were turned over to the ARVN for "interrogation". From the ARVN's perspective, by not having fought to the death with their bare hands when the NVA moved into area, the villagers were effectively traitors. The interrogations turned out to be execution-by-torture. I happened to be present at one of the villages that was cleared by us when the ARVN Intelligence officer turned the villagers over to the HQ company that had the squad of interrogators. As a "guest" of our _ally_, I was not allowed to excuse myself as the ARVN Intel major (who outranked me) invited me to see "what the ARVN does to traitorous enemy sympathizers".
I can definitively say that those were the most horrific three hours out of a life that spans a half-century. I wouldn't have cared if every single one of those people had been VC bomb-wielding terrorists; they didn't deserve what happened to them. As it is, they were actually nothing more than farmers that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had they known what their own "democratically elected government" had in store for them, I'm sure they _would_ have fought the NVA with their bare hands and died in the process. It would have definitely been a cleaner and quicker death than what the ARVN subjected them to.
As a footnote, I'd like to add that I had never foreseen the day when the US started to move us down a path that leads to what I saw that day. Resurrecting these memories is the price I'm willing to pay to do what I can to push us away from that path. I consider it a minimal penance for having done _nothing_ to stop the atrocity that day. Even then, "I was just following orders" did NOTHING to help absolve my sense of guilt.
--------------------------------- "Life isn't worth living until you know what's worth dying for."
"Choose wisely."
Posts: 937 | Location: San Rafael, CA, USA | Registered: 17 July 2007
meljomur, I will take that as a yes. Just that it takes up space. If you aren't interested, just jump over it - they will be the posts with colour.
quote:
I consider it a minimal penance for having done _nothing_ to stop the atrocity that day. Even then, "I was just following orders" did NOTHING to help absolve my sense of guilt.
What could you have done? You were a young kid. You did not know how to stop it from happening (which is why you did not act). You were in a war zone and if you tried to save the villagers you would have had no safe place to go - all three sides would figure you for an enemy - and you did not know how to get home. You were totally dependent on these people.
If you told them to stop and tried to protect the person being interrogated, you would have been restrained, put in the stockade and they would have continued doing what they did any way. Do you have any idea why that jerk wanted you to see this? To see what would have happened even if you were not there to witness it - even if you were somewhere else building a well?
That said, I wonder if being a racist protects some people from developing PTSD.
quote:
For one thing, the interrogators were actually too gentle with Anwar.
They did not want to traumatize the viewers, but, by downplaying the Anwar's suffering, are they not, in fact, turning it into pornography?
You also notice the blond wife - whose tears and heartbreak the audience can identify with.
quote:
Uh-uh. An innocent man talks freely at the beginning and then will start to babble at the least provocation. He knows he doesn't _deserve_ what's happening to him, and until he understands that the pain will continue to get worse until the interrogators hear what they want to hear, ...
Sounds like Maher Arar's statement to me what you just said. From your own account, none of the people you saw tortured to death during those three hours had information to give - what they were trying to guess was what the torturer wanted to hear so that they could hand it over to the person. The truth wasn't working so they were willing to try anything.
I guess if lies don't work, they might try the truth (theoretically), but you only witness those for whom the truth did not work.
quote:
As a footnote, I'd like to add that I had never foreseen the day when the US started to move us down a path that leads to what I saw that day.
After what happened to David Orlikow's wife, my trust of the CIA has never been that high. All she had was a mild bit of post partum depression, and Ewen Cameron was considered to be the best in his field at the time. When the Orlikows decided to fight the CIA, David Orlikow's party stood behind him and it was a topic of Question Period. Seems that all the scandals involving the US come to light because of Canada - or a good portion of them.
The first time I had ever heard about George W Bush was when he was still Governor of Texas and Joyce Milgaard came down to Texas. Bush was really rude to her - and that showed me what kind of man he was:
Joyce Milgaard's son David spent 23 years in jail for a rape and murder he did not commit.
Do you think I was a jerk of I told you about A Few Bad Apples? This one soldier saw his buddy blown to bits. He was told that it was known that this prisoner was in deep with the bad guys and that if he could not make this prisoner talk that it would be on his head if more of his buddies got blown to bits:
Of course not! One has to have a fairly gentle view of torture if one figures that posting ultra sound images of fetuses on line will turn anyone over the age of 30 into a Pro Liver.
Rendition and time lines:
Maher Arar was detained at a New York stop over between Tunisia and Montreal on September 26, 2002.
The war in Iraq started on March 20, 2003.
Maher Arar was released on October 5, 2003.
Posts: 771 | Location: Winnipeg | Registered: 06 September 2001
Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): Mr. Speaker, we have been debating this bill, the half-brother of the twins, Bill C-42 and Bill C-55, for a few hours now.
A few years ago, a Quebec performer that you surely know, Richard Séguin, had his own version of this excellent Bob Dylan song called Times they are a changin'. Indeed, times are changing. And since September 11, 2001, many are saying that nothing is the same any more, that our world is changing. The case of Maher Arar, this Canadian citizen of Syrian descent who was deported from the U.S. to Syria without any justification, is proof that things are no longer the same since September 11.
We could also mention the fact that the people targeted by our American neighbours because of their country of origin can no longer travel without worry. There is no doubt that, while the world is changing, most of the time for the better, in this case it is for the worse.
Not long ago, we had the opportunity to speak to a certain bill on public safety. That was Bill C-42. The criticism was harsh, for a good reason. The government proposed a makeshift solution to a new problem in a changing context. Had it passed this Bill C-42, Parliament would have accepted that the most fundamental of civil rights and liberties be sacrificed on the altar of the constant fight, as we were told, against terrorism. But the cost was much too high and, in the end, reason prevailed and Bill C-42 was returned to where it came from, probably some computer's random access memory. We were naive enough to believe that the government had understood the essence of our criticism. But no.
Instead of showing some understanding of our views, the government used a ploy, but we did not fall for it. The new Bill C-55 was the twin brother of Bill C-42, even though it was born a few weeks later. Absolutely. For the second time, we would debate a bill on public safety. Unfortunately, the minister's imagination quickly revealed its limits. We were not fooled. This is why, for the second time, we opposed the idea of interfering with the rights and freedoms that form the basis of any democratic society that acts in accordance with its principles. Fortunately, when Parliament was prorogued, Bill C-55 died on the Order Paper.
But the more things change, the more they stay the same, and today we are debating Bill C-17, the half-brother of the other two. How times change. This bill is the offspring of a blended family or, in this case, a family which, actually, is divided into two clans.
Before mentioning the common features of Bill C-42, Bill C-55 and their half-brother, Bill C-17, I want to congratulate all the hon. members who strongly condemned the infamous controlled access military zones included in the previous two bills. Thanks to the work of citizens, civil society groups and people who care about fundamental rights, we managed to convince the government to listen to reason. The government had no choice but to see the obvious. It could no longer defend the indefensible. Logic should also help the government party, if only on certain occasions. This is why we should acknowledge this gesture of openness in the face of criticism. This shows that there is a constructive opposition in this chamber, an opposition that listens to the people.
Should we stop being vigilant now that controlled access military zones are not included in the new Bill C-17? Absolutely not. We must see that the decisions being made today respect the balance between the three branches in our society, namely the executive, legislative and judiciary branches.
In its current form, Bill C-17 poses a threat to the balance between the executive and the legislative branches, since it includes specific provisions allowing ministers and officials to make interim orders.
While there are some differences in the monitoring of interim orders as compared with the provisions of the old Bill C-42, the absence of a preliminary check to ensure compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the enabling legislation poses a problem.
We can see clearly, when we read Bill C-17, that interim orders are exempt from the application of section 3 of the Statutory Instruments Act. As you know, an order is considered to be a statutory instrument; therefore, it should undergo a preliminary check by the Clerk of the Privy Council. His role is precisely to ensure that the proposed regulations do not, and I quote:
“--trespass unduly on existing rights and freedoms and is not, in any case, inconsistent with the purposes and provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights.”
So we should ask ourselves the following question: if the purpose is not to trespass unduly on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, why are we exempting the interim orders from the proper examination that would prove they are in compliance with the charter? By chance, would the government have the secret intention of transgressing the most basic rules of our free and democratic society by infringing on the fundamental rights of those individuals who form that society?
We do not question the importance of preventing all possible terrorist acts, and we do not question the necessity of equipping ourselves all the tools we need to expose those who would threaten the security of the citizens.
We even tabled, in the fall of 2001, a motion requesting that the government implement all the necessary measures for us to reach our goal of giving 0.7% of our GDP for international aid. The reason was simple and still is: in order to fight against terrorism, we must fight against its main cause, and that is the extreme poverty of hundreds of millions of people.
If we all agree that it is important to eliminate the conditions that breed terrorism, we also agree that we must fight against those who would come to our borders with the intent of committing terrorist acts. Once again, however, this cannot be done at any cost.
One price we must refuse to pay is waiving the right to privacy. In the past, we made choices. We made the choice to live in a constitutional state instead of a police state. We must be careful not to open the door to this style of governance where police are everywhere, always checking what everyone is doing. Would any of us blindly agree to have personal information relating to us processed and used for purposes other than those related to the fight against terrorism? Should the simple fact of taking a plane warrant the RCMP and CSIS having a record on a person? No. That has been made abundantly clear in the debates on Bill C-55, both by members of this House and by the privacy commissioner.
It is interesting to know what the privacy commission thinks of Bill C-17. First, it would appear that his concerns about the defunct Bill C-55 were ignored, the ministers and top government officials having failed, so far, to provide him with an appropriate response. This is why he is now calling on Parliament to ensure his concerns finally receive the attention they deserve.
What is so worrisome in terms of privacy in Bill C-17? About clause 4.82 of the bill, which does not place appropriate limits on the powers of the RCMP, the commissioner says, and I quote: “But my concern is that the RCMP would also be expressly empowered to use this information to seek out persons wanted on warrants for Criminal Code offences that have nothing to do with terrorism, transportation security or national security.”
What we must guard against is the risk of creating a precedent that would eventually open the door to increased police control over various areas of our daily lives. For example, if we allowed special powers intended primarily to protect national security and to counter terrorism to be made available to the RCMP with respect to air passengers, who is to say that this special situation will not be extended to rail, bus or metro passengers? If, for example, a suicide bomber were to blow himself up on a crowded train, would we go so far as to flag train travellers and use this same opportunity to look for people with outstanding warrants? There is always a tendency to be overzealous. There is always a point of no return when it comes to overzealousness, a point beyond which we must not go for fear of destroying the fragile equilibrium required to maintain a free and democratic society.
The commissioner also raises another point that we must not lose sight of. The right to anonymity with regard to the state is a crucial privacy right. With Bill C-17, that right to anonymity will be set aside the moment we are unwise enough to set foot aboard a plane. If it were set out in the act that personal information can be used only in the case of persons representing a true threat to national security, we could feel a bit reassured, but that is not the case. Obviously, the right to privacy will be meaningless as soon as Bill C-17 comes into force if the government maintains its position. We have confidence, Mr. Speaker, that you will not have to reserve passage on a ship in order to visit your girlfriend overseas.
The members of the Bloc Quebecois are here to serve the interests of the public, and so they will fight energetically to see that the right to privacy is respected. We share the privacy commissioner's view that there are some major changes needed in Bill C-17.
Privacy is one of our basic rights. We are entitled to expect information on us to be used sparingly, at the very least. For the government to confer upon itself the right to collect information on air travellers is one thing, but the right to exchange and distribute that information is quite another.
As hon. members may be aware, I have been on the citizenship and immigration committee for close to two years. The recent headlines leave no doubt as to the concerns raised by what our powerful neighbours to the south have been doing. If the government is trying to be subtle, as subtle as an elephant doing a polka on the clerk's table would be, that must not make us let down our guard in the least. First, we have to realize that the public safety bill, just like several other bills, amends a number of pieces of legislation to keep them in sync with today's reality. Part 5 of Bill C-17 amends the Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act, as follows:
“(snipped)”
Similar provisions in part 5 allow the minister to enter into arrangements. But what change does this amendment make, besides the ability to make arrangements? It adds the words “including the collection, use and disclosure of information”. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration Act would be amended to specifically allow the minister to collect information, to use it without indicating for what purpose it is used, and to disclose it without indicating what information can be released and to whom it can be disclosed.
In fact, Bill C-17 would give the minister the right to disclose the information to the whole world. Not only that, but it would allow the minister to disclose and release the information but does not provide a detailed framework for such activities. That is what I call increasing ministerial authority without proper monitoring.
As we have said before, maintaining a balance is crucial to a healthy society and the risks of a faux pas are too high.
Let us use a concrete example. The current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is about to conclude an agreement with the United States on safe third countries. Even though this agreement worries us on several fronts, because NGO's oppose it strongly and the UNHCR is questioning the content of the agreement, the government seems determined to go ahead with it. The fact that this agreement will be implemented despite the concerns and protests from civil society is not very surprising. We can just imagine what the situation would be like if Bill C-17 were in force.
We already know that U.S. legislation on immigration and refugee protection is more restrictive than in Canada, to wit the recent revelations on how our neighbours to the south treat people born in certain countries.
With the new powers that the bill would give the minister, he could be authorized to disclose to U.S. authorities information on applications for refugee status made in Canada. Do we have the right to authorize the release of personal information like this? What will happen with the information collected by the minister? One thing is clear, as soon as information is shared with another party, we lose control of it.
In addition to not knowing how the minister might use the information, it is impossible to find out what might happen to it once it was disclosed to a third party. Imagine the results. There is no way of finding out how the information might be used, any more than it is possible to find out the facts. How, then, can we control the dissemination of this information? It is naive, idealistic and even rash to believe that we could control a situation when we have not established sufficient limits.
That is not the extent of it, either. People may think that is enough already. Well no, not quite. Part 11 of Bill C-17 contains a few surprises. It contains, once again, changes to immigration. Indeed, it involves an amendment that would allow for the information collected from airlines to be used to implement any accord or agreement between the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and another party. What exactly is going on in the government? Does it feel so generous that is has to share personal information with everyone? Is it planning to set up a one-stop shop to disclose all of the information on new immigrants? Just take a number.
This is not right. We must be consistent with our principles. If we say that we have decided to live under the rule of law, we cannot allow insidious attacks on democracy to weaken what is meant by privacy protection.
Here is one last element, as if that were not enough. A new clause has been added to specify that the provisions for the collection, retention, disposal and disclosure of information, as well as any disclosure of information for the purposes of national security, the defence of Canada or the conduct of international affairs will be provided for through regulations. That is just wonderful. By specifying that regulations concerning these various elements will have to be tabled before each house of Parliament, perhaps the government thought that we would be easily fooled. To pull this off, the government will need to do much better than that.
Let me remind this government that, under the Immigration Act, once proposed regulations are tabled before Parliament, they may be passed without subsequent changes being tabled once again in the House.
To give a good illustration of what this means, it is as though you and I reached a contract that would bind us indefinitely - how horrible - but only I would have the power to change it as I saw fit, without your approval. Would you sign such a contract? Certainly not, and nor would we.
The government cannot always defend the indefensible. The same goes for the protection of privacy. But I am reminded of something that the philosopher Khalil Gibran wrote in Sand and Foam, and I dedicate it particularly to my colleagues in the government. He said, and I quote:
“Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights.”
I hope that this will be instructive for our colleagues. It is true that the times are changing. Let us only hope that the party in office will finally understand that it must adapt to change by offering us appropriate solutions instead of constantly offering us the same options, month after month, session after session.
Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis (Winnipeg North Centre, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to participate in the debate on second reading of Bill C-18, the citizenship of Canada act.
Like all other members who have spoken this morning, I too feel a sense of tremendous emotion when I attend a citizenship ceremony in my constituency. Perhaps it is one of the most meaningful and memorable occasions for us as members of Parliament. To join with new Canadians when they take the citizenship oath of Canada and to repeat the oath ourselves is truly a moving experience and a reminder of the great freedoms, rights and privileges of this nation Canada.
This is a very important debate for the House. This legislation is very important. Canadian citizenship is the highest right we as a democratic nation can confer upon those living within our borders. These rights and responsibilities define the egalitarian and democratic values that we hold. No one has legal or political rights extending beyond citizenship. A citizen's right to vote and the right to run for political office are our fundamental democratic rights.
In that context, given that tremendous feeling we have about citizenship, the rules for defining citizenship are very important. They run right to the heart of who we are as a nation.
(snipped)
Canada's multicultural citizenship, our multicultural heritage, is unique and is very important. It has become a defining characteristic of our nation in the eyes of the world.
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I want to put this in the context of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since its passage, the charter has become instrumental in enforcing citizenship rights. It is our obligation to ensure that this standard is rigorously applied, especially to something as fundamental as a citizenship act.
The wake of the tragic September 11 events has presented the most significant challenge to our rights and freedoms as citizens in recent years. There are those who would react to this horror by severely restricting the very rights and freedoms that this terror aims to destroy.
We must guard the balance between security and freedom carefully in this defining legislation. In our view it is unacceptable that some Canadian citizens are being singled out for discriminatory treatment. The rise in the occurrence of racially or religiously motivated hate crimes is profoundly disturbing. We know the stories. We have been dealing with this in the House over the last couple of days. Some Canadian citizens have experienced discriminatory treatment abroad, particularly in the United States, due to profiling practices.
The recent case of Maher Arar, a 32-year-old Canadian citizen arrested during a stopover at New York's Kennedy airport on September 26 as he was travelling to Montreal from Tunisia and deported to Syria, brought home just how fragile our citizenship rights have become. That the confidence in Canadian citizenship has weakened to the point that one of our foremost authors, Rohinton Mistry, who was born in India, felt compelled to cancel engagements in the United States because of continued harassment by United States airport security authorities is unacceptable.
It is critical that this legislation is consistent with Canadian values that are enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, often taken for granted by those who are born here and acquire those rights as their birthright.
Just as changes to our view of citizenship have acted as markers of our social progress, citizenship has also provided the focus for several of the most shameful incidents throughout our history, occasions wherein we as a nation have failed to rise above our bigotries of the moment, some racial and some gender.
In that context we ought to acknowledge the work that has been done inside and outside the House to seek recognition for Ukrainian Canadians who were interned and who were considered enemy aliens. I want to acknowledge the work of the member for Dauphin - Swan River who has a bill before the House to seek official recognition and restitution. It is important for us in this regard to acknowledge the work of those who are struggling to achieve recognition and restitution among the Chinese community and to deal appropriately in this place with the Chinese immigration head tax and the Chinese exclusion act. These two incidents in our past still haunt us. They must be addressed and deserve to be considered in the context of this debate about citizenship.
As we consider changes to the Citizenship Act, they remind us that we must be vigilant to keep our vision and ideals at the highest level and to resist the ever present pressures to backslide or settle to lesser, divisive and exclusionary alternatives. At the time, assigning the restricting of citizenship rights to certain citizens or to deny citizenship altogether to certain identifiable groups may have been acceptable to the majority. Women had to engage in an incredible struggle to attain the right to vote. First nations only won the right to vote in 1960.
These and many other affronts to our current norms were promoted as reasonable by contemporary authorities. Race based immigration policies have only been formally dropped in recent years. Some Canadians contend that lingering vestiges of that bias may still be systemically embedded in our current policy. These issues are not ancient history.
As we examine Bill C-18, the Canadian Citizenship Act, our first question must be, does the bill meet the test? Is this the best we can do to express ourselves to set the parameters for defining Canada in the year 2002?
One key objective of the bill before us is to encourage those eligible to be citizens to in fact take the final steps to become citizens. We must acknowledge that in that process our full knowledge and sense of what it means to be Canadian, respecting the rights and freedoms of all people within the borders and boundaries of this country, must be respected.
We have just completed a lengthy parliamentary discussion and debate to finalize the new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. The government's stated objective in introducing that legislation was to increase Canada's openness to immigrants. The House of Commons citizenship and immigration committee reviewed that legislation and also put a considerable amount of work into studying this in its report, “Competing for Immigrants”.
I am pleased to see today that the minister has tabled a response to the committee's report, “Competing for Immigrants”. I want to register at this time some concerns about the failure of the government to address the main issue of many in our committee, and those who appeared before our committee, about setting a tone, establishing a vision. This included encouraging immigrants to come to this land, not closing the door to legitimate aspirants, or putting in place double standards that clearly are disincentives to those looking at Canada as a country of choice and emphasizing a renewed multiculturalism.
What we have looked for, and still look for, from the government both in terms of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and now the Citizenship Act, is a proactive strategy that encourages people from all walks of life to choose Canada, not one that puts in place a double standard in terms of people within this land nor differentiates between people for who are Canadians by birth and people who are here as landed immigrants or are refugees seeking protection. We want a proactive strategy to promote positive race and ethnic relations to strengthen respect for diversity in tandem with a clear and immediate response to any racially or religiously motivated hatred, and we know from recent events that is more important than ever.
Both the minister and the Prime Minister have stated that the future of Canada's prosperity depends on our success in attracting immigrants. Last July the Prime Minister, in a prelude to the dredging job done in the throne speech on resurrecting broken Liberal promises, reaffirmed the government's 1993 commitment to a 1% immigration target.
We just got the annual report for immigration for 2002. Where are we? We are not close to the 1% target established by the government as a desirable goal for immigration. It is certainly below the levels anticipated for this year. What happened to that dream? What happened to the vision?
We have some significant concerns with the legislation, in the context of the issues that I addressed, with respect to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and to our traditions as a nation that assures due process is always in play. We acknowledge the work by the government to move the matter of revocation of citizenship from ministerial and cabinet decision making and discretion to the Federal Court of Canada. However we also note that many discretionary powers still remain with the minister, and vague wording applies in terms of criteria to be applied.
I want to reference, as many others have and will continue to do, the discretion to annul citizenship for false representation or to refuse citizenship based on the following words, “flagrant and serious disregard for the principles and values underlying a free and democratic society”. As parliamentarians we deserve clarification of those words. We deserve to push as hard as we can for the government to recognize the need always for due process including the right to appeal and the right to have information to defend oneself in the face of accusations.
I also want to note for parliamentarians our concerns with respect to the abolishment of citizenship judges. One would assume that we would favour objective set criteria for determining citizenship, as we are, but we also know that we lose a great deal when it comes to the role of citizenship judges in showing some flexibility and understanding of extenuating human conditions. We know that by moving the process from judges to bureaucrats we may have a more clearly defined set of rules but we will possibly lose some humanitarian approaches in terms of extenuating circumstances that cannot be ignored and must be addressed. Our concern is to hear from the government how those considerations will be met and how people in real life circumstances will have their needs addressed.
Mr. Dick Proctor (Palliser, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and take part in the debate on Bill C-18. First, I want to make some general comments and then I want to refer to a couple of specific examples in the riding of Palliser that could have a general application to a number of other members of Parliament from across the country.
There are several predominant concerns evident in the bill. It is an effective response to the issue of war criminals and perpetrators of human rights abuses who seek shelter behind Canadian citizenship. It is important to close loopholes and to close the doors to organized criminal activity. We must meet the level of security expectations in the post-September 11 atmosphere. Our caucus does not challenge these objectives.
We intend to ensure however that others are not unfairly denied citizenship for lack of due process or inadvertent error. We intend to ensure that there is one Canadian citizen with one set of rights and that Canadian citizenship is encouraged for all in an equal way.
As with the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, there is much government talk of openness and welcoming, but we see here a bill that creates some barriers to the realizations of those worthy goals.
Overall Bill C-18 is similar to its predecessor, Bill C-63. There have been some improvements made in response to previous criticisms but there are also areas of concern that remain unaltered. Contrary to the spirit of clause 12, and we heard this in the House today during question period on the equality of rights and responsibilities of all citizens, there remains the inequitable treatment of citizens born here and those who have acquired citizenship at a later date. In addition to the language requirement and tests which are not applied to born citizens, the bill would permit the revocation of citizenship within five years but only for naturalized citizens.
The residency requirement may still be considered too stringent by some.
The language requirement and not being able to use an interpreter remains a proposal. Knowledge of one official language may indeed be a worthy objective in the settlement and integration of citizens, however in practice it may present a barrier to some otherwise qualified applicants. Those would include: older family members, homeworkers and refugees who may have been traumatized in a previous country.
Canadian citizenship is the highest right that we, as a democratic nation, can confer upon those living within our borders. These rights and responsibilities define the egalitarian and democratic values that we hold. No one has legal or political rights extending beyond citizenship. A citizen's right to vote and run for political office are our basic and fundamental democratic rights. The rules for defining citizenship run right to the heart of who we collectively are as a nation.
Canada's multicultural citizenship, our multicultural heritage, is unique and has become a defining characteristic of our nation in the eyes of the world. Certainly in my lifetime, the evolution of Canadian citizenship truly reflects our evolution as a society from our ethnocentric past to our multicultural present and future.
Since its passage the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has become instrumental in enforcing citizenship rights. We must ensure that this standard is rigorously applied, especially to something as fundamental as the citizenship act.
The wake of September 11 has presented the most significant challenge in recent years to our rights and freedoms as citizens. There are those who, in reaction to the horror, would severely restrict the rights and freedoms that this terror aims to destroy. We must carefully guard the balance between security and freedom in this defining legislation.
We believe it is unacceptable for some Canadian citizens to be singled out for discriminatory treatment. The rise in the occurrence of racially or religiously motivated hate crimes is profoundly disturbing.
We have raised in this caucus, for example, the recent case of Maher Arar, a 32-year-old Canadian citizen arrested during a stopover at New York's Kennedy airport in late September. He was travelling to Montreal from Tunisia. He was promptly deported by American authorities to Syria. That brought home just how fragile our citizenship rights have become in this electrically charged era that we are in.
Similarly, we have the well-known author, Rohinton Mistry, who was born in India. He has cancelled a speaking tour in the Untied States because he fears continuing harassment by U.S. airport security authorities. We find that regrettable and unacceptable.
Canada continues to rely on immigration. We have completed a parliamentary discussion and debate to finalize the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
The government's stated objective is to increase Canada's openness to immigrants. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, earlier this year, reported and studied on that. Everybody on both sides of the House acknowledged that the future of Canada's prosperity depended on our success in attracting immigrants.
I want to speak about a couple of specific instances that have occurred in recent months in the community of Regina. By way of introduction the community offices that I have in both Moose Jaw and Regina probably have more immigration cases than any other category of cases that come before the capable staff who work in those offices. I am sure that is not a unique situation and that other members of Parliament would find that they have a similar intensity on this issue of immigration and trying to get people here on visitors' visas and the like.
The two specific cases that I want to indicate to the House are quite different, but both are troubling.
One involves a gentleman named Charlie Smoke, who is a native North American. He says that he was born in Ontario but does not have a social insurance number. He currently resides in Regina. He was working a few years ago at an inner city school, the Kitchener school. However the only way that he could be employed and on the workforce was to have a social insurance number, so he used his wife's number to qualify for work at the school.
He had never denied that he used his wife's social insurance number. He did not use it for fraudulent purposes or anything else. That was the only way that he could work in a school that had a high proportion of aboriginal students, and he was doing good work at that school.
However, on June 19, 2001, Mr. Smoke was visited by Citizenship and Immigration. His troubles began then and have continued ever since. Mr. Smoke asserts that the Canadian government's harassment is a continuation of colonial practices that have robbed indigenous peoples of their self-determination by usurping their land thus destroying their livelihoods and denying their self-identity.
The Canadian immigration department alleges that Mr. Smoke was actually born and raised in South Dakota and has come to Canada since then. The department tried to deport him last year but the Americans would not accept him when he was taken to the border crossing, so he was brought back. He was out on bail, which was posted for him last year.
He recently had his social insurance case dismissed. However he continues to struggle against the harassment by Human Resources Development Canada and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration officials in Regina. One wonders where this will end for Mr. Smoke. He is out on a speaking tour these days. There is a growing awareness of the issue of an aboriginal person who insists that the borders between Canada and the United States should not impact upon this individual or upon aboriginal peoples who were here long before those frontier lines were drawn. That is, in essence, the case of Charlie Smoke.
The other case involves a person of Algerian descent. His first name is Ahmed. He came to Canada in 1995 and sought refugee status from Algeria. He was in Toronto for a couple of years. He moved to Calgary where he married a Canadian woman and subsequently moved to the city of Regina where he continued to work for four years. He worked in a couple of upscale Regina restaurants as a cook and, like Mr. Smoke, never ran afoul of any of Canada's laws. His application for landed immigrant status on humanitarian and compassionate grounds was rejected.
In recent months he was brought in to see immigration officials to have his case reviewed. Immigration officials visited him at his home and insisted that his marriage was not bona fide, but a marriage of convenience.
I became involved in this case and spoke directly with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. I was told by the minister that the department would be looking at Ahmed's case specifically. What I did not know was that on the very day the minister told me that when he was in Regina, Ahmed was brought in to the Canada immigration office in Regina. He was fingerprinted and cautioned, and told that the next time he would be picked up and probably detained while awaiting an extradition order.
He was so traumatized by this that Ahmed subsequently left the city of Regina. He continues to live in Canada. His place of residence now is the city of Montreal, although I do not know that for sure. He has committed no crime. His crime was that he wanted to apply for Canadian citizenship and to continue to reside and work in the city of Regina.
There continues to be harassment toward both Ahmed and Mr. Smoke with regard to citizenship. It raises the matter that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration has correctly identified, that we have many people in this country who choose to come to Canada, who were not born in Canada, but choose to settle in the major cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. There are many Reginas and Moose Jaws across the country, places that need and would love to have increased population.
Here are people, Mr. Smoke and Ahmed, who have made contributions to their communities, have never had difficulty with the law except as it pertains to their citizenship rights, but certainly have never run afoul of the law in terms of any charges being laid. Yet they are being pushed away and rejected.
I agree with the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that we need to find some way to bring people like these to less populated communities.
Saskatchewan has a population of just under one million citizens. It was just about that in the 1930s. The population of Saskatchewan has been steady for 70 or 80 years now around that basis. I think everyone in the province would like to see Saskatchewan grow and not remain stagnant. However it will grow only with an older white population. It will grow only with the assistance of a different outlook on immigration and by trying to direct some traffic to less populated communities. That is what we have been trying to seek in these cases.
It is terrific that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration convened a meeting last month involving his counterparts in the provinces and territories. It is absolutely astounding, practically incomprehensible that it was the first such meeting in 107 years. It speaks to the need for the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments to work together on this and see if we cannot develop some ways that people can be designated to come to other locations than our major Canadian cities. That is the concern we have.
To go back to the case of Ahmed, I am pleased that the minister is looking at the situation of a similar Algerian family that sought refuge in a church in Montreal. He says that he will deal with that. The indications are that the government is in the process of dealing with that. I am taking him at his word that whatever applies in the province of Quebec will also apply in the other provinces and territories and in the case of the Ahmed, who approached our office, that he will feel sufficiently protected to return to Regina and have his case heard there. Obviously he is at large in the province of Quebec and presumably would be unable to work there given the decision he made to leave Regina because of the threat of imprisonment and deportation to Algeria.
I think the government has badly misread the Algerian situation. It has argued that it is safe for people from Algeria to be returned to that country. Obviously the Algerians who are in Canada do not agree with the assessment. That is why they are seeking refuge in churches and leaving the Reginas to go to larger centres to disappear while this is being sorted out.
I encourage the government to look at this, deal with it and deal with it in a fair way that allows people like Ahmed, who has made a contribution in the City of Regina and wishes to continue to make a contribution in our community and our province, to have the right to do so.
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