Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats are tiptoeing toward a position on the government’s anti-terror bill.

By all indications, they will vote against Bill C-51. Mulcair signalled that again this week when he compared the sweeping security bill to Ottawa’s use of the War Measures Act in 1970.

That’s when most (but not all) New Democrat MPs voted against then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s decision to suspend civil rights across Canada in order to deal with two political kidnappings in Quebec.

Then, as now, the NDP was divided. In 1970, four members of Tommy Douglas’ 22-person caucus broke with their leader and voted in favour of using the draconian law to fight terrorism.

But 15 others bought Douglas’ argument that individual MPs have a responsibility to ensure that “basic human rights are not destroyed in a wave of hysteria.”

Over the years, the NDP leader’s decision to take a stance that was, at the time, deeply unpopular has become a point of pride for the party.

Which is why Mulcair’s deliberate reference to the War Measures Act debate is instructive.

The only question now, it seems, is how New Democrats will frame their opposition to Bill C-51.

The easiest critique the NDP can make is lack of oversight. The bill would give government agencies such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service vast new powers. But it would provide no new independent oversight.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals have focused on this particular deficiency (although they say they will vote for the bill anyway).

Up to now the New Democrats, too, have ignored the content of the bill and concentrated only on oversight.

Why the pussyfooting? Polls suggest that the idea of giving security forces broad new powers to fight Islamic terrorism is popular. With an election in the offing, neither opposition party wants to be on the wrong side of the voters.

But there is also pressure on Mulcair from within his party to take a tougher stand against Bill C-51.

That spilled into public view this week in a Globe and Mail essay penned by two NDP icons, Roy Romanow and Ed Broadbent.

Romanow, a former Saskatchewan attorney general and premier, was intimately involved in the negotiations of the 1980s that resulted in a charter of rights being written into Canada’s Constitution.

Broadbent was federal NDP leader at the time and a strong proponent of the charter.

He was also part of Douglas’ 1970 NDP caucus that voted against using the War Measures Act.

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Their essay is a damning indictment of Bill C-51. The terror bill is so flawed, they say, that it must be defeated or withdrawn in its entirety.

They point out that it gives security agencies too much power to detain suspects without charge. They say it returns Canada to the days when the country’s spies spent much of their time playing dirty tricks against real or imagined threats.

They note that the bill’s definition of what constitutes a threat to national security is so broad that it “could include just about anything.”

Terrorism, they write, is “designed to provoke governments into making drastic mistakes.” Bill C-51, they imply, is one such drastic mistake.

The elements of the Romanow-Broadbent critique are not new. Legal and constitutional experts have already underlined fatal weaknesses in the bill.

A new analysis published online Thursday by law professors Kent Roach (University of Toronto) and Craig Forcese (University of Ottawa) points out that under Bill C-51, CSIS could, in certain situations, secretly drain money from the bank accounts of environmental groups planning an unlicensed protest against the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

But with the exception of Green Party leader Elizabeth May, opposition MPs — including New Democrats — have chosen to avoid these kinds of substantive critiques.

Instead they have focused only on oversight.

Parliamentarians are due back Monday from their Valentine’s week break. The Liberals have already decided to back Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s sinister new security bill. With luck we shall see how the NDP chooses to articulate its position.

Perhaps Broadbent and Romanow have stiffened some spines.

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

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