Counter-terrorism, besides countering terrorism, is also about being seen to be doing so. Trouble arises when the latter trumps the former. Some leaders take to fanning public fears. The more they scare the public, the better. George W. Bush elevated it to a theatre, through colour-coded threat levels, issued at convenient times, such as in a pre-election period — something former U.S. homeland security chief Tom Ridge admitted after leaving office.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is following a similar script — declaring, ad nauseam, that terrorists may turn up at your door, any day. That being so, he has introduced a sweeping bill restricting free speech, overriding certain privacy rights, expanding police powers, and increasing the surveillance powers of spy agencies to monitor citizens’ communications, with little additional civilian oversight.

Reasonable people can agree to disagree whether the prime minister is emulating some of the worst aspects of non-democratic, authoritarian regimes and creating a surveillance state. Or that in adjusting laws and mandates to better tackle terrorist threats, he’s being mindful of our Charter rights by having police and security agencies go to a judge and get permission before using their new powers.

The real significance of the new bill is that it is Harper’s re-election manifesto.

While the government went through the motion of tabling the bill in Parliament, the real action was the prime minister’s speech at an election-style rally in Richmond Hill, aimed at suburban ridings that the Tories must win if they are to retain their majority.

For the made-for-TV production that had the requisite audience to clap on cue, Justice Minister Peter MacKay was reduced to being the master of ceremonies. His job and that of Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney was as a warm-up act for the star of the show, the prime minister who, it was repeatedly made clear, was standing on guard for Canada.

Don’t be surprised if Harper calls an early spring election — breaking his own fixed election date law (Oct. 19 this year). He did so in 2008, without paying a price.

This time he’s going to be running not against Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau but rather against the jihadists. By my count, he used “jihad,” “jihadism,” “jihadists,” “jihadi terrorism,” “violent jihadism,” “international jihadist movement,” etc., 15 times.

This may be a winning strategy. Harper has already convinced nearly two-thirds of Canadians that we are at war, and that more terrorist attacks are due and, therefore, limiting free speech and closing down websites or censoring social media is just fine, according to a Nanos poll.

This leaves little or no room to ask whether it was not just plain incompetence on the part of police and the security establishment to prevent the murder of two soldiers by two disturbed individuals who were already on police radar.

Both Harper and RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson classified the two isolated killers as agents of foreign terrorist outfits. Paulson said one of the killers left a video that proved so. He promised to release it. He is yet to.

In October, Paulson told a House of Commons committee that there are 130 Canadians abroad who are suspected of terror-related activities. “We have Canadians in Afghanistan, Pakistan, in Yemen, in Lebanon, in the Sahel, in the Maghreb that are involved in terrorist-related activities, but it could be fundraising, it could be propaganda,” not actual killing.

Of the Canadians who’ve returned from their foreign adventures, he said: “I don’t want people to believe we’re talking about 80 returnees who were hard fighters in Iraq and Syria because that is not the picture we have at the moment, although we have some of them.”

So, we are talking of, at best, a few dozen potential terrorists. How difficult can that be to keep an eye on them and nab them, if necessary?

But such questions are now rendered moot, just as similar queries were drowned out under Bush.

The war on terror spawned cultural warfare on Muslims, a growing cottage industry of Islamophobia that ascribes purely Islamic causes to terrorism.

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Barack Obama and, lately, Angela Merkel, Francoise Hollande and David Cameron have repeatedly assured their Muslim citizens of protection from bigots. No such assurance was forthcoming from Harper. Not surprising, given that he systematically boycotts mainstream Muslim organizations, preferring a handful of malleable Muslims who sing the government’s tune and confirm every conceivable stereotype against Muslims.

We must wage war against Muslim terrorists who invoke Islam. But “radical Islam” is but one factor among many. Yet the government’s narrative is different, as seen in the words of Harper and Jason Kenney, who had this to say of the bill:

“Obviously there are some malevolent religious influences that can add to the process of radicalization towards violent extremism, and we have to be extremely mindful of that.” Sure, but what about other “malevolent” influences that can and do add to radicalization — such as Western wars on in Muslim nations?

The prime minister, too, let it slip that terrorist ideas will be vigorously prosecuted, “whether in a basement or a mosque.”

Get ready for a divisive election campaign.

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