For those worried about an increasingly intrusive state, Canada’s Supreme Court has served notice — in one key area at least — that it has no further plans to clip the government’s wings.

The top court ruled Wednesday that the so-called security certificate system, under which Ottawa can detain non-citizens and determine their fate before a secret tribunal, is legal and constitutional.

Since, through an earlier ruling, the Supreme Court had more or less designed the current security certificate system, the 8-0 decision was not surprising.

Yet for Mohamed Harkat, an Algerian refugee who has been under some form of detention for 12 of his 19 years in Canada, it was a bitter blow.

The justices ruled that a lower court judge acted properly when he found that Harkat is a terrorist sleeper agent who should be deported.

The only hope left for the former pizza delivery man is an oblique reference in Wednesday’s decision suggesting that he might be able to challenge any deportation order on the grounds that he faces torture or death in Algeria.

“The constitutionality of his deportation in such circumstances is not before us in the present appeal,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote.

Canada has long had in place a mechanism by which the government can deport foreigners deemed security risks. In the Cold War, it was used against suspected Communist spies.

But after 9/11, the system of detaining non-citizens was expanded to give the federal government more leeway.

This was part of the dramatic growth in Western countries of what has been called the surveillance state.

Convinced that enemies lurked everywhere, nervous politicians expanded the powers of the country’s security services in order to prevent terror attacks.

And indeed, there were plots — including one to set off bombs in downtown Toronto.

Interestingly, that so-called Toronto 18 plot was stymied through standard intelligence and police work.

Still, the pressure to give the state more surveillance and detention powers continued. Most Canadians didn’t care when these special powers were levelled at non-citizens such as Harkat.

There was more dismay when it was revealed that the RCMP had wrongly targeted Canadian citizen Maher Arar, an operation that resulted in his imprisonment and torture in Syria.

But now Ottawa is targeting almost everyone.

A new bill before the Commons would give telecom and Internet companies carte blanche to voluntarily turn over subscriber information requested by the government for any purpose. Under Bill C-13, the companies would be relieved of any legal or financial liability.

The bill is ostensibly aimed at cyberbullying.

It comes in the wake of federal privacy commissioner Chantal Bernier’s revelation that federal authorities already routinely ask for — and receive — user data from telecom and Internet companies. In 2011 alone, there were 1.2 million data requests.

Bernier has also revealed that federal agencies, including security services, routinely monitor social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Treasury Board President Tony Clement’s implausible explanation is that the government just wants to know how its programs are going over with the public.

And we know, thanks to testimony before a Senate committee, that the Communications Security Establishment, which is mandated to eavesdrop on foreigners, routinely collects metadata about Canadians — all without judicial authorization.

As Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian wrote last year, meta-data snooping is not minor. It can “facilitate the state’s power to instantaneously create a detailed digital profile of the life of anyone swept up.”

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What does all of this have to do with suspected terrorist Harkat? Think of it this way: The surveillance state always starts out small. It begins by targeting those who have the fewest allies, and then it expands its reach — slowly and carefully — for reasons that always sound plausible.

For a while, the courts push back. But they too reach their limits. And then — bingo — suddenly you’re in place you’d never thought you’d be.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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