OTTAWA—Canada’s spies would be given a sweeping new mandate under the Conservative government’s proposed anti-terrorism law to directly intervene in and “disrupt” emerging terror threats at home and abroad.

The proposed law would give Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents broad powers to address security threats in Canada and on foreign soil.

The civilian spy agency would enjoy police-like powers to “disrupt” communications, pay their targets visits to deter criminal action, and obtain judicial authorization for any measures they believe necessary to protect national security — even at the expense of Canadians’ civil rights or domestic laws.

“With its new mandate, CSIS could take measures, at home and abroad, to disrupt threats when it had reasonable ground to believe there was a threat to the security of Canada,” a document outlining the changes states.

Bill C-51, tabled in Parliament on Friday, is believed to be the largest overhaul of Canada’s security laws since the initial response to 9/11.

The bill would lower evidentiary thresholds for police to obtain terrorism peace bonds and put people under recognizance, increase information sharing between government agencies in national security investigations, and make it illegal to promote specific or general attacks against Canada or Canadians.

While the bill is framed as addressing terrorism, and specifically jihadist terrorism, the new powers for CSIS can be directed at any perceived threat to national security.

But in Richmond Hill Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the new powers were necessary in order to stop terrorist plots.

“Jihadist terrorism is one of the most dangerous enemies that our world has ever faced,” Harper said to an audience of Conservative supporters.

“Plots have become more frequent and more dangerous, including here in Canada.”

While Harper said Canadian security agencies have been able to foil “many” plots, he said police and spies need “additional tools and greater co-ordination” to tackle a terrorist threat that continues to evolve.

Other measures in the proposed law include expanded no-fly list to keep would-be terrorists from flying overseas, making it a crime to promote terrorism, and allow the courts to remove on-line material from Canadian web sites.

It will also enable increased information sharing between security agencies and government departments, a move that has Privacy Commissioner Daniel Therrien worried about the “breadth” of the new measures.

“It is not clear that this would be a proportional measure that respects the privacy rights of Canadians,” he said in a statement.

The changes for CSIS mark a “seismic shift” for the agency, said Ray Boisvert, who served as its former assistant director of intelligence.

The current role of CSIS is to gather intelligence that then gets passed to agencies such as the RCMP or the Canada Border Services Agency to act on, which can mean delays.

“Now, in this kind of threat environment, nobody has time for that . . . this cuts to the chase,” Boisvert, president of I-Sec Integrated Strategies, said in an interview.

“You can do this stuff at pretty low level and still have a pretty good impact.”

CSIS director Michel Coulombe said the agency welcomed the new legislation.

“Unlike most threats of 30 years ago, these threats can escalate and endanger public safety with little or no warning. The goal of terrorists is not to steal intelligence in the countries they target but to kill people. It is no longer appropriate simply to detect and analyze the threat; there needs to be a capacity to counter it,” he said in a statement.

The changes take the agency back to its roots within the RCMP, when in addition to intelligence, the security force had an enforcement mandate. CSIS was split from the RCMP in the early 1980s after a federal commission recommended intelligence gathering and police work should be kept separate.

The proposed measures would allow CSIS to take a broad range of actions without judicial oversight, but would require the approval of a federal judge “whenever proposed threat disruption contravene Charter rights,” according to documents outlining the changes.

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It’s not yet clear how far CSIS will be allowed to go when it comes to these new, 120-day “disruption” warrants. Documents suggest the spy agency can provide “counter-messaging” to extremist propaganda, as well as disrupting mobile phones and electronic messaging.

CSIS agents would be able to intervene when they believe a Canadian was moving toward radical ideologies. The agents “could meet with the individual to advise him they know what he was planning to do,” the documents state, “and what the consequences of taking further action would be.”

Spies could also intercept shipments that include material that could be used in a terrorist attack, and reroute them. Agents could also hijack shipments of technology and tamper with them, in order to prevent them from being weaponized.

The bill would also lower the evidentiary threshold for police agencies such as the RCMP to obtain recognizance orders or terrorism peace bonds for suspects.

Sukanya Pillay of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association said the lower thresholds, combined with a blurring of the lines between intelligence and evidence, are among her early concerns.

“Intelligence is indispensible in countering terrorism, but the collection of intelligence inherently occurs at lower standards than those of evidentiary threshold,” Pillay said Friday. “So now what we have is this conversion taking place where warrants are being issued presumably on the basis of intelligence, not evidence. And there’s some concern there.”

Harper downplayed concerns about the potential infringement on Canadians’ privacy and freedoms.

“Just about all of the key powers that are being announced today are subject to judicial review and judicial authorization in most cases, so there is substantial oversight,” Harper said.

“We do not buy the argument that every time you protect Canadians, you take away their liberties.”

The Liberals and New Democrats fired back that the Conservatives don’t have a monopoly on ensuring the safety of Canadians.

“Keep Canadians safe is a priority for everyone in Parliament,” NDP MP Paul Dewar told reporters.

But the prime minister’s tone and what Dewar branded a “campaign-style” event to unveil legislation on Friday already has oppositions charging that the Conservatives are keen to play politics on the issue of security issue in the run-up to the October election.

“I find it hard to believe that they are trying to use national security as a wedge issue,” Liberal MP Wayne Easter said in an interview. “This is an issue that we are all concerned about.”

Liberals and New Democrats said Friday they were reviewing the legislation but both called for “robust” parliamentary hearings to review the proposed changes.

With files from Tonda MacCharles

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