{"id":48436,"date":"2015-05-08T13:51:08","date_gmt":"2015-05-08T05:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=48436"},"modified":"2015-05-08T13:51:08","modified_gmt":"2015-05-08T05:51:08","slug":"with-support-from-liberals-conservatives-pass-controversial-anti-terror-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/05\/08\/with-support-from-liberals-conservatives-pass-controversial-anti-terror-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"With support from Liberals, Conservatives pass controversial anti terror bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"House<\/a>
House of Commons (www.parl.gc.ca)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OTTAWA — The federal government’s controversial new anti-terrorism bill has won the approval of the House of Commons.<\/p>\n

The Anti-Terrorism Act, also known as Bill C-51, easily passed third reading by a margin of 183 to 96, thanks to the Conservative government’s majority and the promised support of the third-party Liberals.<\/p>\n

The legislation gives the Canadian Security Intelligence Service more power to thwart suspected terrorist plots — not just gather information about them.<\/p>\n

It also increases the exchange of federal security information, broadens no-fly list powers and creates a new criminal offence of encouraging someone to carry out a terrorist attack.<\/p>\n

In addition, the bill makes it easier for the RCMP to obtain a peace bond to restrict the movements of suspects and extend the amount of time they can be kept in preventative detention.<\/p>\n

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said the legislation is required to allow “swift action to combat jihadi terrorism and protect Canadians and their families.”<\/p>\n

“(The Anti-terrorism Act) will provide our police forces with the tools they need to protect Canadians against serious and evolving threats from terrorist organizations like ISIS,” Blaney said in a release Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

Opponents of the bill have denounced the idea of allowing CSIS to go beyond gathering information to actively derailing suspected schemes.<\/p>\n

A range of interests — civil libertarians, environmental groups and the federal privacy commissioner — have expressed grave concerns about the information-sharing provisions, saying they could open the door to abuses.<\/p>\n

Prior to the vote, the Opposition New Democrats voted noisily — and in vain — in favour of proposed amendments that they say would have added a level of oversight and stronger privacy protections, among other things.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s national security adviser told the Senate national security committee last week that the agency’s new powers are not as scary as their critics contend.<\/p>\n

The new disruption powers could permit CSIS to thwart travel plans, cancel bank transactions and covertly interfere with radical websites.<\/p>\n

The bill says CSIS needs “reasonable grounds to believe” a security threat exists before taking measures to disrupt it.<\/p>\n

It requires CSIS to get a court order whenever its proposed disruption violates the charter of rights or breaches Canadian law in any way.<\/p>\n

As recently as this past weekend, Harper plugged the anti-terror bill in a speech to Canadian troops in Kuwait, telling them that it will give security agencies greater powers to thwart terrorist plans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA — The federal government’s controversial new anti-terrorism bill has won the approval of the House of Commons. The Anti-Terrorism …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":44550,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1482,18,483],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking","category-news-ca","category-politics","mauthors-the-canadian-press1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}