A rchive Date
[ 20-11-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
|
[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/clancy.html
Halfway scary
By ROY CLANCY - Calgary Sun
November 20, 2002 Half of us don't know our rights from our wrongs.
That was the startling result of a recent poll that found 52% of Canadians surveyed could not name a single right to which they are guaranteed under the Federal Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In another era this might be funny, in a perplexing kind of way, along the lines of more Canadians knowing the name of the U.S. president than the prime minister of Canada.
Now, in an age where draconian laws are routinely proposed to counter the dark shadow of the terrorist threat hanging over our heads, it is downright scary. "It's worrisome, really worrisome," Jean Fremont, dean of law at the University of Montreal, told the Canadian Press.
"It worries me," he said, "because there is so much talk today about national security, about the reform of criminal law. And what the poll shows is that Canadians are not aware of their rights."
(As an aside, it should be pointed out that Albertans fared best in this poll. Only 44% of us couldn't name a single right, compared to a whopping 62% in B.C. and 50% in Ontario.)
Fremont is not the only one who should be worried. If more than half of Canadians don't even know what our rights are, how can we possibly defend them against politicians and bureaucrats often more interested in taking the path of least resistance when crafting the new security laws.
Guarding our rights is the more complicated and more expensive route - and besides, the power brokers can claim they are just going along with our wishes.
The same Leger poll revealed that 53% of respondents agreed that "within the context of terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. 2001," the federal government should be allowed to pass laws that infringe on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In a way, that makes perfect sense. Why balk at laws that protect your freedom, when you're not even sure what those freedoms are? Of course, those men and women we honoured last week on Remembrance Day understood with crystal clarity. When their rights were threatened, they defended them with their own blood. Now, a mere half-century later, we're prepared to hand them away without even a whimper.
As a result, we witness an astounding scenario where politicians dismiss outright the worries of rights watchdogs such as federal Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski. He fears the provisions of Ottawa's new anti-terrorism bill could "open the door to practises similar to those in societies where police routinely board trains, establish roadblocks, or stop people on the street to check identification papers in search of anyone of interest to the state."
You'd think Radwanski's warning would raise alarm bells, but the privacy commissioner gets little respect.
"The goal is to strike the right balance between privacy for Canadians and the collective sense of security," said Transport Minister David Collenette, as he tabled the bill. Even the Alliance accused Radwanski of "overstating the situation."
Just yesterday, we learned the federal government has created a computer database to hold digitized facial images of the 10 million Canadians who have passports. And Immigration Minister Denis Coderre is pushing the idea of issuing Canadians identity cards featuring biometric scanning of fingerprints or the retinas of the eye. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, suggest the advocates of these intrusive measures.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Radwanski claims he would never stand in the way of appropriate security measures, even if these involved some limitation on privacy. However, he said he is concerned that anti-terrorism not be used as a Trojan Horse or excuse to expand the powers of police or the state to intrude on our lives and privacy for reasons that have nothing to do with security.
Radwanski is uttering a message that we ignore at our own peril. Democracy is a fragile thing. History has shown that the rights of citizens in a democracy are rarely grabbed in one fell swoop, but are gradually chipped away.
In the end, the citizenry has few tools left with which to defend itself against the final indignities imposed by oppressive governments which invariably claim they are acting in the public good.
Then again, if so many of us care so little about our rights that we cannot even identify one of them, perhaps that's the kind of society we deserve.
Letters to the editor should be sent to callet@sunpub.com Clancy can be reached at 250-4235
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|