Canada's Slide Towards A Police State

Canada's Slide Towards A Police State

I'd like to use a short-hand word like "fascism" to label Canada's attacks on the rule of law, but "fascism" has a historical context that is only appropriate to label several 20th century European examples of the use of arbitrary state power and the abandonment or lack of a true rule of law. In any event, how many Canadians know who Hitler, Mussolini and General Franco were and what they represented? So the term "police state" may be more appropriate. Another possible applicable term is "totalitarianism", but the word can't be found in many older versions of common dictionaries, and most people would not gain an immediately clear idea of the concept from that word. So, "police state", with its implications of the arbitrary use of state power and the lack of a rule of law protecting civil rights, is the most appropriate short-hand term I can use.

All too often in the last twenty years or so I have seen a strong tendency towards governmental, police and prosecutorial decisions being improperly influenced by interest-group demands and considerations to the detriment of individual civil rights. Canada's hate crimes laws are a telling example of this. The interest group most catered to in this case is the B'Nai Brith. Likewise, some of the changes in sexual assault laws, such as the doing away with the need for corroboration of an accuser's story when assessing the credibility of evidence of sexual assault, illustrates this tendency. The interest group most catered to in this case is the feminist lobby. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association strongly advised the government that the advocacy of harm to identifiable groups or persons was already made criminal by various sections of the Criminal Code and that a broadened set of new laws was unnecessary and harmful to the rule of law. They were ignored, solely in the interests of appeasing vocal lobby groups.

The Keegstra and Zundel cases are concrete examples of policies adopted to appease noisy interest groups overriding civil rights and the rule of law. This is especially flagrant in Zundel's case, where, despite an extra-ordinary long residence in Canada, and no crime having been committed by Zundel, he was deported on the basis of secret evidence and procedures outside of the rule of law by the actions of the secret police (CSIS) and the government. Don't get me wrong - Zundel is a foolish man who spouted wrong-headed notions about the Nazi Holocaust (there is no evidence that he did anything else). However, being a fool is not reasonable grounds for arbitrary arrest, detention, and deportation under any lawyer's or knowledgeable layman's understanding of the rule of law.

What is this rule of law? It is, according to Canada's Constitution, the collection of so-called "fundamental rights", including - a) not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned; b) to be promptly informed upon arrest or detention of the reasons therefor; and c) to have the validity of an arrest or detention to be determined by way of habeus corpus and to be released if the detention is not lawful. Every one of these rights has been ignored and denied in Zundel's case.

The introduction of the Gun Control Act incorporating police-state powers of warrantless home invasion and arbitrary search and seizure is another example of the government denying and abandoning the rule of law. The Charter, once again, provides that arbitrary search and seizure is unlawful. The feminist lobby was once again a significant factor in influencing the Liberal Government to enact such a law.

The Charter of Rights also enshrines the rights to a fair trial once criminal charges have been laid. But can a trial such as was accorded Officer Popowich and other Martinsville, Saskatchewan, accused in the notorious sex-abuse case, be considered a fair trial? Doesn't a fair trial imply, not only a fair and impartial decision by the presiding judge, but fairness and the absence of a witch-hunt mentality on the part of the police, the prosecutors and other professionals involved? Almost everyone involved, except the judge, appeared to have been swept up in the poisonous environment created by man-hating feminists over the past 30 years. This environment included testimony before our courts by psychologists and social workers that "children never lie" about important matters (contrary to most parents' child-rearing experience), as well as testimony that "recovered memory" (purportedly memories hidden for decades in the dark recesses of one's mind) can be valid and sufficient to convict a man of sexual assault. Shamefully, some otherwise sensible judges accepted this nonsense. Recent research and scientific studies have demonstrated that such claims were wrong-headed and not based on reliable or demonstrable evidence or valid scientific studies.

Governments have a duty and responsibility to make every effort to ensure that such abuses of the judicial system do not happen, but in Saskatchewan, nothing was done and, indeed, the government refused or was reluctant to take any remedial action even when the abuses came to light.

I write this after reading George Jonas' recent article in The National Post entitled "Hooray for the rule of law". He cites the recent decision of Mr. Justice Josephson acquitting the Air India Bombing accused as upholding the rule of law, and cited a quote from the decision: "Justice is not achieved if persons are convicted on anything less that the requisite standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt." The main thrust of Mr. Jonas' article seems to be that such a notion needs to be affirmed over and over again because it is so often ignored.