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.
