Why are so many Canadians anxious about the Canadian government’s proposed “Anti-Terrorism Act”? Can’t they get a grip?

Yes, more Canadians die from lightning than from terrorism.

Yes, the government is about to give its controversial security and intelligence agencies a blank cheque to operate without effective accountability.

And yes, as whistleblower Edward Snowden said last month to a Ryerson University audience, “Canadian intelligence has one of the weakest oversight frameworks of any western intelligence agency in the world.”

So what’s the problem?

If our own domestic agencies try to sell innocent fellow Canadians down the river — remember the case of Canadian Maher Arar, who spent a year being beaten and tortured in Syria on the basis of false information provided to the American CIA by Canada — there are apparently still individual agents within the CIA who will try to protect our interests.

Oh, what a relief it is.

That astonishing scenario emerged this week from a remarkable interview with former CIA agent John Kiriakou. He told Alexander Panetta, Washington correspondent for The Canadian Press, that several CIA colleagues argued at the time that Arar was innocent: “(They said) this is the wrong guy, this is a mistake ... He hasn’t done anything.”

But their CIA supervisor overruled them. In 2002, Arar was grabbed during a New York airport layover and flown to a Syrian prison where he was tortured for a year. With little enthusiasm from the Canadian government at the time, he was eventually released without charge. In 2006, a Canadian commission of inquiry completely cleared Arar of any links to terrorism, and he received $10.5 million from the federal government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper also apologized to Arar for Canada’s role in his ordeal.

What connection does Arar’s story have with the current debate over Canada’s anti-terrorism act?

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Well, imagine if — because of the new act — the Canadian government had the power to block his return to Canada in spite of Arar’s innocence.

Or imagine if more innocent “Maher Arars” became caught up in the secretive, unaccountable world of today’s Harper-inspired, partisan “war on terror.”

That prospect is now real. As a result of the proposed anti-terrorism act, government agencies would have sweeping new powers to share “intelligence” — read: rumours — not only within the Canadian government, but with foreign governments and private companies. And this would all be done in secret, with virtually no oversight.

Security and intelligence experts have criticized the bill for not complying with basic privacy rights. And they have cited weak mechanisms to ensure accuracy of the information being shared, which was the failing at the heart of the Arar case.

In this shadowy new world, once something is “said” can it be easily “unsaid” when proven untrue? As Arar’s long journey for justice shows, the answer is no.

In his interview with CP, Kiriakou was surprised at how weak the accountability of Canada’s intelligence agencies was in the proposed act: “That’s shocking to me ... I think people need to know what the government is doing in their name ... It’s the only way you can keep people honest. When everything is in the shadows, people tend to push the envelope more than is appropriate.”

Kiriakou is under house arrest in Virginia after a two-year prison sentence for revealing information about the CIA. He was the CIA’s head of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks. He became the first CIA employee to publicly challenge the use of torture.

In his interview, he criticized the U.S. role in sending Arar to Syria, and he said this was a view widely shared among his colleagues: “I can tell you that a lot of people inside the CIA objected to this.” But their supervisor, he said, disagreed: “She was certain we had the right guy.”

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Ironically, one of the key recommendations of the 2006 Canadian Arar commission of inquiry was to strengthen oversight of Canada’s security and intelligence agencies. The Canadian government has never implemented that recommendation. Now, it is planning to give those agencies far more power.

As Kiriakou put it in his interview: “You’re kidding me.”

Tony Burman, former head of CBC News and Al Jazeera English, teaches journalism at Ryerson University. Reach him @TonyBurman or at tony.burman@gmail.com .

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