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Canada is not at war with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Of course not. It’s a police action. A law-enforcement and public-safety issue, to address a pernicious threat, one being met with utmost seriousness by the federal government, which has applied a range of remedies across the span of policy, without resorting to fear-mongering that would … where was I?

“A war is something that can be won by one side or the other and there is no path for ISIL to actually win against the West,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the CBC Wednesday. “They want to destabilize, they want to strike fear. They need to be stamped out.” Stamped out! Excellent wording, that. Foreign Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion calls it a fight. This is progress.

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But they’re both wrong, demonstrably and clearly wrong, in saying it’s not war. It is precisely that.

Let’s dispense first with the too-easy cliché that Trudeau and his Liberals are “soft on terror.” They’re not. No government in its right mind would be or could be, given events. This is why, as reported by the Ottawa Citizen’s Ian MacLeod, it is moving on several fronts behind the scenes to block terrorists before they strike again in Canada, including via information-sharing enabled by the former government’s Bill C-51. Good. That much is reassuring.