The politics of Canada’s new anti-terror bill are indeterminate. Polls suggest that voters like the Conservative government’s hard line on terror. But will that mood hold until the election is called?

And if it does, will voters cast their ballots solely on the basis of a party’s approach to terrorism?

No one knows the answer to these questions. My guess (and it is just that) is that the usual factors — pocketbook issues, desire for change and that indefinable thing called leadership — will be more important in a general election.

Regardless of the politics around this issue, however, the real importance of the anti-terror bill lies in its contents.

Does Bill C-51 go too far in its proposals to give security agencies expanded powers? Do we really yearn to return to the days when Canada’s spies committed illegal acts in the name of national security?

Do we want the government freely sharing all the information it has on us with not just every domestic security agency but with foreign ones as well?

Finally, is any of this necessary? Are current laws insufficient?

The evidence indicates they are not. The bomb plot connected to the so-called Toronto 18 was uncovered through standard police and intelligence work. So, too, was the alleged plot, now before the courts, to blow up Via Rail trains.

It has been argued that a provision of Bill C-51 making it easier to issue peace bonds against terror suspects could have prevented last fall’s hit-and-run attack on Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent. But would it have done so?

Not necessarily, says Kent Roach, a University of Toronto law professor. Writing on the National Newswatch website, Roach points out that peace-bond requirements — such as reporting weekly to police — won’t stop a determined terrorist.

In the Vincent case, it might have been useful to have more information on the killer’s state of mind. But this in turn would have required standard police work, which costs money.

So far, the experts are lining up against the bill. Roach and Craig Forcese, a University of Ottawa law professor, have been politely devastating in their critiques of the Conservative government’s proposals.

In the Globe and Mail this week, five former Supreme Court justices and four former prime ministers signed an open letter calling for better oversight of the country’s increasingly powerful security agencies — a measure notably lacking in Bill C-51.

Former New Democratic Party leader Ed Broadbent and former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow have publicly slammed the bill, saying it should be defeated in Parliament. Constitutional lawyers Clay Ruby and Nader Hasan say it is irredeemably defective and probably contrary to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In the Commons, the main opposition parties have finally taken stands. That of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is eloquently illogical. He says the bill is seriously flawed in that it fails to provide sufficient oversight of the country’s powerful security agencies. But then he says his Liberals will vote for it anyway.

By contrast, the New Democrats have joined the Greens to oppose Bill C-51 in its entirety.

It took them a while. But Tom Mulcair and his New Democrats are now levelling their oratorical guns at substantive issues — the vagueness in the bill as to what actions would constitute threats against the security of Canada; the meaning of the ban against advocating terrorism “in general,” the inexplicable decision to put CSIS back into the dirty-tricks game.

Presumably this means that if the New Democrats were to win power in the next election they would repeal the measures set out in this bill.

Because that is what they may have to do if they want to roll back a proposed law that Mulcair describes, correctly in my view, as “sweeping, dangerously vague and ineffective.”

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In short, this is a bad bill. But unless Harper has an uncharacteristic change of heart, it will pass. The government has enough MPs and senators to ensure that.

That doesn’t mean those alarmed by Bill C-51 need despair. Governments come and go. Public opinion shifts. Statutes can be changed. Politicians respond to political pressure.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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