Are you now, or have you ever been, a terrorist?

That, in one form or another, is the question being asked over and over by Conservative MPs of expert witnesses called before the Commons standing committee reviewing Bill C-51, the so-called anti-terrorism law.

I spoke before the committee last week. I pointed to the danger in the bill’s much-expanded definition of national security and in its false conflation of peaceful protest with terrorism. I was expecting to be called on to defend our arguments, to cite evidence on how the bill’s sweeping new powers could be used against peaceful advocates for action on climate change.

No one on the government side seemed terribly interested in our argument — but they were very interested in us.

Conservative MP LaVar Payne asked me if I consider myself to be a threat to national security — because, he said, if I’m not a terrorist then why would I worry about an “anti-terrorism” bill? He added that our criticism of C-51 made him “wonder if your organization is a national security threat”. (I never got a chance to respond, since Payne kept talking to run out the clock.)

This was no slip of the tongue. Carmen Cheung, senior counsel for the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, spoke to the committee shortly before me. Her carefully-parsed legal arguments on the threats this bill poses to civil rights without enhancing security were dismissed by Conservative MP Rick Norlock as “rambling” — before he had the gall to ask her if she is “simply fundamentally opposed to taking terrorists off the street”.

More than 100 legal experts have written to parliamentarians to say that this legislation is dangerous — including four former prime ministers, five former Supreme Court judges, the federal Privacy Commissioner, Amnesty International, the Assembly of First Nations and a host of other organizations. Are they all terrorists?

The third witness on our panel was Ron Atkey, who has seen national security operations up close as a former Conservative cabinet minister and as the first chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee. He warned that Bill C-51 is “a constitutional mess” and offered recommendations on how to fix it. It was the Conservative committee members who had invited him to testify — presumably with the expectation that he would support the bill. Oddly enough, they had no questions for him.

You’ve already heard, of course, about what happened to Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, when he testified before the committee. Rather than address his concerns, Conservative MP Diane Ablonczy parroted terrorism allegations linked to Mr. Gardee’s organization — allegations he refuted when they came from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s then-spokesman Jason MacDonald and which are now the subject of a defamation lawsuit. (Ablonczy, of course, was speaking from a zone of Parliamentary privilege, protecting her from slander allegations.) “In order to work together,” Ablonczy said, “there needs to be a satisfaction that, you know, this can’t be a halfhearted battle against terrorism and where do you stand in light of these allegations?”

Mr. Gardee rightly dismissed Ablonczy’s ‘question’ as a cheap smear tactic. It’s worse than that.

The Harper government is employing a very dangerous strategy — stoking the politics of fear and division in order to distract voters from the state of the economy. Harper’s dream of turning Canada into what he has called an “energy superpower” by rapidly expanding tar sands exports has proved to be a bad bet for our economy and a political liability. So as oil prices drop, the Conservatives ratchet up the rhetoric on terror.

Good short-term tactics often make for bad laws. More than 100 legal experts have written to parliamentarians to say that this legislation is dangerous — that it will make it harder to effectively fight terrorism while introducing unprecedented infringements on our rights and privacy. Their concerns have been echoed by four former prime ministers, five former Supreme Court judges, the federal Privacy Commissioner, Amnesty International, the Assembly of First Nations and a host of other organizations. Are they all terrorists?

Still, the hearings go on — driving home the message that Canadians shouldn’t risk asking too many questions about C-51. Meanwhile, Canadians took to the streets in over 70 communities across the country on the weekend to say that they will not sit still while our country is ruled by fear and intolerance.

Canada used to be a global beacon on human rights, environmental consciousness and democracy. I’m confident it’s not too late to get that Canada back.

Joanna Kerr is executive director of Greenpeace Canada

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