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Canadian freedoms are being eroded
(By Mark Spooner) Like thieves coming back night after night to pilfer a warehouse while the watchperson is sleeping, our government and its agencies have been steadily making off with the democratic freedoms that once defined what it is to be Canadian. Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine shows us how the calamity that was 9/11 has emboldened enemies of liberty everywhere to enact repressive policies under the guise of fighting terror, but our own government has now played the terror card with such cavalier frequency that it has become nothing more than an ideological taunt thrown in the face of those with whom it disagrees.
Within the last two months, Immigration Minister, Jason Kenney, and the Canada Border Services Agency have refused entry to two outspoken war critics: the Hon. George Galloway, a sitting British Member of Parliament, and Dr. Bill Ayers, a distinguished American professor. The pretext that either should be denied entry because they somehow pose a security threat would be laughable if it wasn’t such an insult to our intelligence. It should be an embarrassment to Canadians across the ideological spectrum.
In the most recent example, the Immigration Minister and the CBSA refused entry into Canada to the outspoken pacifist, Iraq and Afghanistan war critic, and sitting British Member of Parliament, George Galloway. This decision was made on the alleged grounds that he poses a security threat and aided a terrorist organization. In reality, Mr. Galloway’s actions were merely to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza, an area controlled by the democratically elected, it should be stressed, Hamas government.
Galloway’s real crime? Take your pick. Was it being an outspoken critic of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, questioning Canada’s role in the Afghanistan War, or having the temerity to publicly criticize Prime Minister Harper?
Let’s not be fooled by this government’s double-speak. This is about abusing border procedures to score points over ideological opponents, as evidenced by the Immigration Minister’s Director of Communications, Mr. Alykhan Velshi’s recent comments on the British Channel 4 News, “If they [CBCA] have advance notice that Mr Galloway is going to come to Canada to pee on our carpet, we should deny him entry to the home” (Channel 4 News, March 20th, 2009). Far from peeing on our carpet, Mr. Galloway is coming to courageously speak of the lives and deaths, that is to say, the humanity, of those who otherwise get depicted as mere collateral damage. To reduce his voice to a stain on a carpet, is to scream that subjugated others matter little.
And what of the case of Dr. Bill Ayers, the well-respected educator and social justice advocate? Forty years ago, like thousands of others, he was radicalized by his opposition to an undeclared war and prosecuted for misdemeanour offences. Though tens of thousands of US Citizens with police records - including George W. Bush - are free to come and go as they please, Prof. Ayers was picked out for refusal by border officials, despite the fact that since the Vietnam era he has gone on to earn the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar, authored many books, been named Chicago Citizen of the Year (1997), and served on community organizations with Barack Obama.
It is all too easy to allow the state to trample our rights or let others’ rights be trampled in the name of security, whether the boogey monster is today’s so called terrorist, yesterday’s communist, or a bygone era’s anarchists. A true democracy allows its citizens to decide what is pee and what is truth for themselves. When it ceases to allow that basic right, we are all at risk.
Dr. Mark Spooner is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Regina.
Matthew Brett is the Canadian Dimension weblog manager. The views expressed on this blog do not necessarily represent his own. Read more by Matthew Brett.
I don’t know enough about the case of Ayers to comment, but in the instance of Galloway, he is a fundraiser for an organisation identified as a terror group (by the Liberal Party of Canada, I might add). There is no way that someone who is intent on raising money for these groups should be allowed entry into Canada, regardless of what else he might do while here.
Galloway got exactly what he wanted, which was publicity. He had to know he’d be refused entrance, and this exclusion from the country serves his self-promotional goal well. You can bet he draws more audience members wherever he speaks, now that he’d been “banned from Canada.” Controversy always sells well.
#1. Posted by Ian H. in Prince Albert on April 21st 2009 at 12:22pm
Galloway is not a “fundraiser for a terrorist group.” He brought financial aid to the democratically-elected government in Gaza to rebuild the area after being decimated by a brutal Israeli assault. Just to get the actual facts straight.
#2. Posted by Derek Hogue on April 21st 2009 at 1:37pm
The “actual facts” are that Hamas was recognised by the government of Canada (Liberal Party at the time) and continues to be included on the list of groups that promote terror and/or harbour terrorists. The fact that an election took place does not make the government democratic.
#3. Posted by Ian H. in Prince Albert on April 21st 2009 at 6:06pm
Ian H.
He was bringing in much needed humanitarian aid—for this aid to be distributed one must deal with the organisation in power. Would you label or arrest the Red Cross and the Red Crescent as aiding terrorists as well? Come on…
’ Respectfully,
Marc
#4. Posted by Marc Spooner in Regina on April 22nd 2009 at 7:00pm
George Galloway and his aid convoy traveled through Europe to the cheers of onlookers wherever they passed through. The food and medical supplies in the trucks were gathered by a British public horrified by what they were witnessing on their TV screens each night; a ghetto with the gates locked, so no one could escape the daily bombing by air. Not since the second world war has a concentrated urban population been under such sustained imprisonment and attack.
Willfully bombing defenseless civilians in hospitals and schools is the *actual* terrorism, in most people’s books. The fact that Galloway had the guts to run a blockade condemned by the European Union and Amnesty International makes him a hero to millions, not a criminal.
For its own ideological reasons the Harper government will of course label people as it sees fit. But by calling Galloway a terrorist sympathizer I suspect they went too far even by their own lights; some long-time conservatives I know can’t understand why the state is so afraid of a man elected five times to the British House of Commons.
#5. Posted by Evan Thornton in Ottawa on April 22nd 2009 at 8:13pm
Oh, so you’re going with the “Israel is the real terrorist here” argument… nice one! Tell me again, who has broken every ceasefire negotiated between the two groups? Oh yeah, the Palestinian terror groups.
Arguing a strawman might score points with the jet-setting intifada apologists, but the fact of the matter is that Hamas, who Galloway acknowledged he raised money for, have been identified by two successive Canadian governments as a terror sponsoring group. None of your, “But, but, Israel’s a bully” arguments negate that fact.
If the British people are so in love with what Galloway’s doing, let them hear him speak. We don’t need Canadian money being funneled to more mortar attacks on Israeli civilians.
#6. Posted by Ian H. in Prince Albert on April 22nd 2009 at 8:29pm
I do indeed agree that a reasonable application of the word “terror” to the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories would see the Israeli military associated with the vast majority of it, as you might expect when the fourth largest military apparatus in the world lines itself up an “enemy” that seems to mostly consist of young boys throwing stones.
You may be so credulous as to let the the government of the day, beholden as it to pro-Israeli special interests, decide on the appropriate use of a word like terror, but I think you’ll find that most Canadians like to make their own minds up based on the facts at hand.
After all, governments often get it very wrong. Mackenzie King’s cabinet showed shameful cowardice to turn away Jewish refugees from Nazism, but they did it because they were similarly beholden to certain interest groups. In the 1930’s those “special interests” happened to be anti-Semitic. History shows the King government was utterly heartless to do as it did, and I’m in little doubt that our recent governments, by staying blind and deaf to the plight of Palestinians, will be found out as well.
And I’m hardly alone in my estimation of who is to blame for violence in the Middle East, as you yourself admit, even if you do it by lumping me in with some non-existent group you made up in the spot. Strawman, indeed!
But speaking of groups, I note that working-class organizations across Canada are joining up – in their tens of thousands– the Boycott Israel Apartheid campaign for precisely the sort of reasons I touched on in in my previous post; they are appalled by the horrific living conditions endured by Palestinians under the Israeli regime. Go tell your sanitation worker or hospital attendant he or she is really a “jet-setter apologist”, and see how far you get with it.
Best,
Evan
#7. Posted by Evan Thornton in Ottawa on April 22nd 2009 at 11:14pm
Apparently, we now inhabit a parallel “bizarro world” where it’s acceptable for people to blow up supermarkets and dance clubs as long as, on their days off from indiscriminately targeting civilian populations, those responsible also do some charity work. You may as well let Pickton off because he ran a non-profit on his farm.
The sequence of events in Israel goes something like this:
1. After months of fighting, Israel and Palestine agree to a ceasefire.
2. Israel withdraws its military forces from Gaza.
3. Things are okay for a couple of weeks.
4. Rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel, targeting civilians in Ashqelon.
5. Israeli civilians demand that their military defend them from the terror attacks.
6. Israeli tanks roll into Gaza. Somehow the world press makes this Israel’s fault.
Ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
As for the Canadian government’s ideological opposition, as I’ve mentioned previously: two consecutive, ideologically different governments have both found the blame to lie with Palestine. Unless you’re going to trot out the tired old trope of a vast Jewish conspiracy, it seems difficult to argue against the idea that those with the most facts about the situation have seen over and over again the true cause of misery in the Middle East - the Palestinian terror groups, not Israel’s defense of its civilian population.
#8. Posted by Ian H. in Prince Albert on April 23rd 2009 at 9:20am
My question of the day is to the Canadian academic community, which includes all those law schools making all those lawyers. Does the said Canadian academic community really think it can take no position on the imminent arrival of a class A unindicted, war-criminal suspect, Condoleeza Rice. On May 13, Rice is the centerpiece guest of honour who will officially open the School of Public Policy at a $500 a plate dinner. Bush was there shortly before and will be returning to Canada, May 29 when he and Bill Clinton open at the Toronto Convention center. They will reportedly received $200,000 each for two hours of ‘moderated conversation’.
For those interested in paying from $500 to $2500 (which gets you pics with the monsters) it’s from 3:30 to 5:30 PM and ticket sales are brisk they say.
There is something akin to defilement about the ease with which those criminally at item internationally, can pass with such ease into our midst and suck out of our communities these obscene amounts of money. And hardly a word said from quarters that should be declaring themselves on this. Should Canadian Federation of Students not take a position on such things? Someone. Anyone?
As always, the NDP has ducked for cover and run away. Lawyers Against War, was advised by Jack Layton’s office that there would be no further correspondence on this issue of ‘credibly suspected’ criminal incursions contrary to Canadian law as written.
And on the 31st of May, two days later, at Roy Thompson Hall, there’s another gala benefit at which Bush UN Ambassador, the revolting John Bolton, will speak, accompanied by the odious Bushpuppet, Michael Chertoff the Homeland Security Czar. The Benefit is for the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal of which Bob Rae MP is listed as a director. Why all these war criminal visits to Canada you may ask? Because they can. This is like Austria. All interested should implement imaginative and creative unwelcoming ideas. Or contact Canadian Peace Alliance: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
JS
#9. Posted by John Shafer on April 30th 2009 at 1:23am