BILL C-36: A HORROR STORY READY FOR REPLAY

by Jane Gaffin

Bill C-36 is a done deal.

It passed Parliament 191 to 47 on November 28 and will be rubber-stamped by the Liberal-majority Senate to be presented to Canadians like a head on a platter in the new year.

This is a terrifying piece of legislation.

Deceptively wallpapered over as a method to catch terrorists, the hefty, 183-page people-control law holds promise to trample on privacy and civil rights.

It was hastily concocted under the guise of protecting national security and calming a jittery population who wants to feel "safe". Sorry, this bill shouldn't make anybody feel safe. It was shoved through Parliament without exhaustive debate and carries no provisions for periodic reviews to correct the inevitable glitches.

The question should be: Was Bill C-36 really necessary? The government already has churned out tons of blood-curdling people-control laws through the parliamentary mill to suit every occasion.

The police are said to have rounded up scores of suspects already and C-36 hasn't even been proclaimed law yet. (Same with the U.S. before its anti-terrorist bill was passed.)

So what was the point?

Some politicians tried to justify the anti-terrorist bill by telling CBC radio interviewers: "if you think Canada's is bad you should look at what the Americans did."

Good idea, especially since both countries seem to have wantonly amputated their memories about what happens when a paranoid government overreacts in the heat of protecting national security. The U.S. government ruined the lives of thousands of innocents when the world was on the brink of the Cold War. National security trumps civil rights and freedoms every time, often without just cause. One nasty piece of business was guilt-by-association, which has been repeated in C-36. A person can be guilty of subversion with no way to prove innocence, simply by knowing another person who belongs to the same organization, but knows nothing about the other's personal life or extraneous activities.

The same scenario played out during the Age of Suspicion. The era followed the Second World War, in which Canada had joined Great Britain, the U.S. and Russia to fight on one side against Germany, Italy and Japan. The war ended in August 1945. Within a month, friendships shifted, Russia, a former ally, became a formidable foe. A Russian cipher clerk, working in a sensitive job in the Soviet embassy in Ottawa, blew the whistle on a spy network operating in the nation's capital and Montreal. He had a motive for his actions insofar as his tenure was nearly finished in Canada. And he didn't relish returning to his oppressive police-state homeland.

He presented proof to the Ottawa police that spies were passing national secrets to Soviet agents, who transmitted the information to officials in Moscow. A federal affair, the Mounties granted the Russian and his family political asylum and protection from the Soviet thugs who were tracking the traitor.

News filtered to U.S. President Harry Truman. Though history has been kind to the 33rd president, his administration didn't seem to know how to find the authenic communist spies, so turned vulturously on its own people. In the name of national security, Americans were encouraged to squeal on friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbours under the patriotic pretense of squeezing potential demons out of the woodwork. Meanwhile, the Communists had tramped across Europe and taken Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and, later, Czechoslovakia into the Soviet family. "Evil has already travelled around the world," as Sir Winston Churchill once said, "while truth is still pulling on its boots."

The Communists marched and the U.S. was hand-wringing. The enemy had just divided the Soviet Union from the Western World by clanging down the "Iron Curtain", a term coined by Mr. Churchill. Yet the method employed to stop the Reds from seizing North America was to unleash secret agents on two million innocent federal government employees and the half million applicants who sought government jobs every year.

Ordinary people were hunted down like hard-boiled criminals. Any tidbit of negative information would spark a full-fledged investigation into the person's background.

Any imagined "subversive" activity conjured in the state's mind was sufficient grounds for dismissal. A federal employee did not have to be--or have ever been--a member in a "questionable" organization to receive a pink slip.

He could be guilty by association. He only had to know someone who was or had been a member of what might be deemed by authorities as a "questionable" organization. The axed employee was not told what he was alleged to have done wrong because there was nothing to tell. Since the accused did not know who the informant was, he had no way to defend himself. He was fighting feathers.

When the victim was pinpointed and neighbours questioned by security officers, the whole family was automatically ostracized by society. Everybody was fearful to associate with any person the government linked to Communist activities.

The accused could never find other work and would end up in the streets. Even movie stars, entertainers, secretaries and kindergarten teachers were targeted and blacklisted from working.

The nearly 3,000 who were hauled embarrassingly before the courts met with a kangaroo-style justice in which the deck was stacked against them. Another 10,000 were questioned and three million screened. The crassly hypocritical period of history has been compared to the Salem witch hunts of 1692. The whole scenario looked worse than the communist-style government for which the Americans pompously rebuked the Soviets for endorsing.

During this nightmarish time in America, democracy was asleep at the switch. The Constitution and Bill of Rights offered no protection. Governments view civil rights differently during national emergencies. It was a period that instilled great fear and confusion in the people. The country was having an anxiety attack.

After all was said and done, not one spy was exposed. By deduction, the public could accept that the tireless and ruthless efforts of the undercover agents had maybe scared off the enemies of the state. But the demons weren't scared off. They had been covered up by corrupt authorities working within the bureaucratic system. It provided the international espionage rings a chance to whisk off to Russia with nuclear information and other confidential loot, such as U.S. money-printing plates, stolen from under the president's nose in Washington, D.C. And, had the Russian defector not blown the whistle in Ottawa, the spies probably would never have been apprehended and brought to trial several years later.

Until then, the public's attention had been diverted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's nailing of kindergarten teachers and youths for fraternizing with the enemy. Compassionate young people had conducted benefit drives and sent food and warm clothing to the Russians during the war when Russia was an ally. Afterward, it was not a valid self-defence. This dark period of history has no option but to repeat itself on Canadian turf. C-36 will give licence for undercover agents to investigate, interrogate and abuse a whole bunch of innocents whose lives will be ruined. And, like the U.S. government didn't find a "Red Under Every Bed", Canada won't ferret out a single terrorist who couldn't have been found, detained and arraigned by using some other piece of legislation already on the books.

The Canadian Criminal Code--the Bible of the law-enforcement business--comes quickly to mind as a broad-sweeping document useful for nabbing law-abiding citizens. Why not terrorists? But the only consolation left to Canadians now would be if some of the masterminders and supporters of C-36 end up the first victims snared in their own machinations....just to give the rest of society a dress rehearsal as to exactly how this abusive law is REALLY going to work--or not work.

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