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COMMENTARY
October 4, 2001
Strange affinities
While it has hardly been noticed around the world Canada's response to the events of Sept. 11 is among the great mysteries. The behaviour of governments throughout Europe and the Middle East can be explained or rather I think I can explain them one by one; the American response is the simplest and most straightforward. But I cannot plausibly explain the response of my own government to foreigners nor can I fully understand it myself. At the centre of the mystery is the prime minister Jean Chretien. It is impossible to believe his political instincts are less than sound given his long survival in power. But it is also impossible to ignore polls which have shown that the vast majority of Canadians reacted to the attack on the U.S. in much the same way Americans did. They would have welcomed and supported strong words and immediate commitments from the Canadian government. In the words of Richard Holbrooke the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. on PBS News Hour last week There is a special problem with Canada, because under NAFTA we have a single economic unit but we have different security areas, different security regulations, and that border, the $410 billion of two-way trade, is either going to have to be closed, which would wreck the economies, or we're going to have to have a common security perimeter and that is a unique sub plot of enormous concern. It is worth reading that quotation several times to appreciate the gravity of our situation. The demand for this common security perimeter has now been enunciated by several premiers and many leading businessmen. It is one of several proposed steps which enjoy broad sweeping support in public opinion compared with which concerns over sovereignty are no longer an issue. Yet the prime minister has been at pains to rule it out. The constituency for immediate action to begin rebuilding our tattered and embarrassing security and defence establishments is likewise huge. There is no serious resistance to an emergency review of our immigration and refugee procedures or of our need for exit controls in light of the security threat. The polls show Canadians have a good understanding of what is at stake and at risk. There is a wide appreciation of the ease with which potential terrorists may enter this county and of the likelihood that many hundred are already "sleeping" here. And there is no indication in any poll I have seen that we actually fear to take action. But the only action that has been taken is derisory. Civil defence preparations are now getting into gear but the initiative has been taken by quasi- or non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross. On the crucial issues involving direct security threats all proposed legislation is tepid or worse and no police action is contemplated. Largely meaningless procedural reforms have been proposed to immigration for instance but even these cannot come into force until next spring at the earliest. There is no intention to invoke the "Notwithstanding" clause in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to fix our entry-point problems now; nor to begin the search for the many thousands of potentially dangerous illegals known to have slipped through our sieve. Instead the heavy rhetoric is directed at the people who ask the awkward questions. On such issues as terrorist fundraising and money laundering Mr. Chretien and the finance minister Paul Martin are merely following the lead of United Nations resolutions. Guatemala has done as much. On the police front it would appear that we are acting on requests from the FBI across the border without taking our own initiatives. No interest has been shown in tackling the real problems of CSIS and other security forces: that they are desperately short-staffed and reeling from cumulative budget cuts; that many of their best people have been retired early or driven out in disgust over the lack of political will to make arrests and prosecutions. (The CSIS budget has been successively slashed to one-third of what it was when the agency began in the early 1980s.) Even the appointment of John Manley to chair a cabinet sub-committee on security took three weeks to happen and it is by no means clear that decisions taken there will carry any weight in the prime minister's office. Everything is presented as a long haul. True legislation is being drafted or redrafted by the attorney-general's office that may well impact on civil liberties but will only slightly assist the struggle against terrorism. An open season will be declared for wiretaps Internet monitoring tracing cellphone calls and so forth. But as Lorne Gunter has argued powerfully in the Edmonton Journal this will radically enhance the state's capacity to invade our privacy without changing government attitudes in any way. "They can be armed with all the new powerful tools lawmakers can dream up but without so much as a basic understanding of the proper uses of those tools they are more likely to end up using them against the domestic opponents of political correctness as they are on our enemies operating clandestinely among us." Mr. Chretien has consistently down-played the evidence of mortal danger before everyone's eyes. He has consistently played up minor concerns such as "racial profiling" as if we were a nation of scarcely containable bigots. Faced with hard urgent questions he continues to mutter about our "core values" and seek applause lines in Parliament and elsewhere about Canada's commitment to "multiculturalism" and the like whereas none of this is in question. For our open society is not the issue the threat to it is. Three of his last four major addresses were made to Liberal fundraising dinners; there has been no credible address to the nation. Instead of dealing pro-actively with known Canadian security threats our government keeps repeating an offer to lend the Americans some CF-18s long after the Bush administration made clear it does not need them. The defence minister Art Eggleton continues to claim that our military defences are in order in defiance of every independent qualified assessment. Not one head has rolled not even Hedy Fry's after she sat placidly listening to Sunera Thobani's subsidized rant against the whole Western world in Ottawa on Monday. By comparison radical steps have been taken to enhance domestic security across Europe as well as in the States. Germany which like Canada has suffered the embarrassment of exposure as a leading terrorist safe haven has acted swiftly on every availing front. The German police have been arresting and detaining many suspects against whom they were reticent to move in the past. The German government -- a Social Democrat and Green coalition to the left of our own functioning in a society every bit as sensitive about civil liberties -- has recognized the urgency of preventive measures. They act because they must and quickly; because they understand the gravity of the threat not only to the U.S. but to Germany. So here is the mystery: Why can't we move? Does our government really believe we are out of the line of fire? Given huge levels of public support for immediate and decisive action given the Liberals' proven responsiveness to public opinion in the past why do they hesitate? Does the government does the prime minister actually know something that we don't know? David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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