First paragraph (Teaser):

Today was a good day in the senate and a proud day for Canadians. But the battle to stop Bill C-36, the Canada Police State Act, is far from over. We need thousands and thousands of emails from all parts of Canada to arrive in the senators' mailboxes over the next few days protesting this draconian legislation.

Rest of the text:

Senators Stratton, Oliver and Andreychuk Speak Out Against Bill C-36 - Anti-Rights Legislation!

With the Senate Special Committee on Bill C-36 having given their thumbs up, with not a single amendment, to this horrendous bill, debate in the Senate today centered on the underlying issue of trying to find the correct balance between individual rights and state security, without violating fundamental human rights or principles of natural justice. Were the wise words of these Senators enough to do the impossible and turn back the Bill to the House of Commons for radical amendment?

Please help to save Canada from descending into a police state by sending emails to the senators protesting this draconian legislation.

Go to http://www.canadianliberty.bc.ca/ to learn more about Bill C-36 and to obtain a list of the email addresses of the senators and MPs.

Also, please forward this message to all of your friends.

Monday, Dec 10th, Debate Proceedings of the Senate of Canada:

Hon. Terry Stratton rose pursuant to notice of December 5, 2001:

That he will call the attention of the Senate to the fact that even in times of crisis or emergency, certain values and rights are to remain inviolate.

He said: Honourable senators, it gives me great pleasure to rise this evening to speak to the inquiry that I set down last week. I stated then that today I would call the attention of the Senate to the fact that, even in times of crisis or emergency, certain values and rights are to remain inviolate.

The timing of the commencement of the debate on this inquiry is especially noteworthy because, earlier this evening, the Special Committee on Bill C-36 presented its report, reporting Bill C-36, the government's so-called proposed anti-terrorism legislation, back from the committee unamended, except for observations.

When we think of the protection of civil rights or civil liberties, we usually turn our minds to countries that live under oppressive regimes. When we think of the application of the international covenants that protect human rights in the global community, we do not even contemplate how these covenants might be either applicable or relevant in Canada.

However, given Bill C-36 and its companion bill, Bill C-42, still in the House of Commons, it is time for us in Canada to take stock of the protection of civil liberties and the applicability of the various United Nations international covenants.

Our theme tonight, and as we continue the debate, will be that there are some human rights that are so precious that they cannot be derogated from by legislation even in the case of declared emergencies.

Therefore, in this time when we are faced with proposed legislation that could compromise these vital human rights, we must be ever vigilant to ensure they remain inviolate.

Honourable senators, those who speak after me will elaborate on those rights and the protections they affect.

Hon. Donald H. Oliver: Honourable senators, I wish to begin my remarks on this inquiry by thanking Honourable Senator Stratton for calling the attention of the Senate to the issue of human rights around the world. In the scheme of the way things worked on our side of the Senate, I was supposed to put this inquiry down last week, but I was unable to do so because I was attending IPU meetings in New York City. Meeting with members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union from all over the world in New York was, indeed, a very moving event for me.

As honourable senators can imagine, with the devastation of September 11 just a few blocks from where we were meeting and the war in Afghanistan and the hostilities raging in the Middle East, the informal discussions certainly concentrated on the scourge of terrorism that seems to have invaded every aspect of the world we live in today.

Many of the countries present, Canada included, of course, are either updating existing laws that were designed to fight terrorism or are drafting entirely new laws to meet the sophistication of the terrorists at the beginning of the 21st century.

There is a view that if each country passes laws that are tough enough and insulates its borders from immigration or the acceptance of refugees, all will be well, or, at least, the awful acts of September 11 will not be visited upon such country.

Lost in most of this debate is the fact that anarchy and terrorism have always been with us. Lost in this debate, for the most part, is the realization that some human rights or civil liberties are so overarching, as already stated tonight by Senator Stratton, that they should never be diminished by any legislative response to terrorism.

I was particularly touched by a speech given by our Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson, at the awards ceremony for the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression on November 8. The theme of her speech was that people who believe the world changed on September 11 do not know their history, do not know the struggles of people over the centuries to be free, to govern themselves, to have a decent standard of living, and to be free from discrimination and persecution.

The struggle against evil did not begin on September 11, nor will it ever end. In that speech, she quoted from one of history's great freedom fighters, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who said the following:

If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.

But the world does not work that way. The distinction between good and evil cuts across cultures, countries and human beings.

Therefore, it is with a sense of history that we must pause during this time when governments want to be seen to be acting to root out and to punish terrorists and to reflect on the true values of our society as they have been written down over the years. We must remember the rights and freedoms that have been fought for and which, from time to time, have been trampled upon by leaders or governments pursuing their own agendas at the expense of the freedom and rights of others.

The struggle to find the balance between the preservation of our freedoms while still equipping the agents of our government with sufficient tools to effectively combat terrorism has preoccupied all of us in Parliament for the past several weeks. Bill C-36, which is before us, and Bill C-42, which has yet to come to us, limit our rights.

In determining whether the limitations on these rights are proportional to the end being sought or, indeed, are valid at all, we have many international covenants that may be consulted.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights makes it clear, in Article 4, that there are certain rights from which there can be no derogation, certain rights that, no matter what the circumstances, remain inviolate.

Article 4 states:

In time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation and the existence of which is officially proclaimed, the States Parties to the present Covenant may take measures derogating from their obligations under the present Covenant to the extent strictly required by the exigencies of the situation, provided that such measures are not inconsistent with their other obligations under international law and do not involve discrimination solely on the ground of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin.

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Therefore, honourable senators, even in times of public emergency which may strike at the heart of the nation, laws cannot be passed that discriminate on the grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion or social origin. This is the filter through which must pass both Bill C-36 and Bill C-42, as well as any other legislation brought forward by this government that is supposedly aimed at fighting terrorism but which, potentially, limits rights or discriminates on the basis of these protected grounds.

As well, clause 2 of Article 4 states that there can be no derogation from the rights set out in seven articles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The articles that contain these inviolate rights deal with the right to life.

Article 6 (1) states that:

Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.

Article 7 deals with torture. It reads:

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 8 prohibits slavery, slave trade and servitude.

Article 11 states that:

No one shall be imprisoned merely on the ground of inability to fulfill a contractual obligation.

Article 15 condemns retroactive criminal law - making an action criminal which, when originally done, was legal.

Article 16 states that:

Everyone shall have the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

This ensures that, even in times of emergency, a government cannot treat someone as a non-person in law.

Finally in this list of rights that cannot be diminished under any circumstances is Article 18 by which:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

All of the articles that I have quoted contain rights so fundamental that they cannot be diminished, derogated from or taken away, even in times of declared public emergency.

In Canada, we are not living in a state of emergency, even though we are being asked to pass laws that give the police, government agencies and the government itself extraordinary powers. We must also realize, as we have been told, that these extraordinary powers will be with us for a very long time.

As we review Bill C-36, the anti-terrorism bill, this week, and Bill C-42, the public scrutiny bill, in the new year, we must be ever vigilant to ensure that the legislation is not only in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms but also, honourable senators, in conformity with our obligations under international human rights covenants.

Hon. A. Raynell Andreychuk: Honourable senators, 53 years ago today, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Today, being International Human Rights Day, provides us with a timely opportunity to give sober reflection to the state of human rights in our country.

The ongoing challenge of maintaining a just state of law in Canada belongs to all of us who live here. It is the responsibility of every Canadian to fight for the preservation of the rules of law that have been developed since the birth of our nation and to mobilize our greatest resistance against any attempt to undo the gains that we have made thus far. Every one of us must take on this great responsibility in order to ensure that each and every individual counts, and that each and every individual is valued as a human being worthy of dignity in our society and before the courts of Canada.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins, in its preamble, by stating:

Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world...

In this way, the declaration underscores that recognition of the inherent dignity of all human beings, as well as our equal and inalienable rights, is the necessary vehicle that will bring us to a world of freedom, justice and peace.

During this moment of reflection on the state of human rights in Canada, we should ask ourselves where we stand now and what future challenges we will have to meet.

Canada plays an important leadership role in the field of human rights within the international community. As a representative democracy, we have given our leaders the responsibility to ensure that the state respects all rights that we believe to be inviolable. Through such mechanisms and instruments as our Parliament, our courts, our Constitution, civilian agencies that act as watch dogs and the like, we have built a system of checks and balances to ensure the respect of human right in Canada and to ensure that no one is above the law.

We have earned our commendable human rights reputation in Canada in part because we strive to guarantee that every individual who appears before the courts matters. Regardless of who the person is, or where they are from, all have the same rights before the law. The rule of law in Canada ensures that the rights of the minority are not unduly effaced by the will of the majority.

We have matured our criminal justice system over the years in a manner such that the paramount concern of the court is to find the delicate balance of meting out justice while respecting the rights of the accused. We have developed concepts of procedural fairness, due process and fundamental justice, all in an effort to ensure that the rights of the individual are not trammelled by the state when it seeks to redress a harm suffered by society.

In the context of criminal law, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms seeks to protect the individual from irreparable harm caused by actions of the state. Every day we are faced with the ever-present challenge of balancing a variety of competing forces within society. My right to liberty must be weighed against my right to security. Freedom of expression may offend society's right to be free from hate-mongering. The continual friction caused by the competing forces of individual rights and the will of the state is not lost in either the Universal Declaration or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Article 30 of the Universal Declaration states that no group or person can invoke any right of the declaration that would permit any activity or act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set out in its text. The Canadian Charter also recognizes that no right is absolute, and that a balance must be struck among the competing interests between state and citizen. It states in its first section that all Charter rights and freedoms may be derogated from, so long as such derogations can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in the Oakes case, has elaborated a test whereby such interests of society are weighed in relation to the rights of the individual. The balance will tip in favour of society's interests if it can be proved that the law that allows for such derogation meets a pressing and substantial objective, and that the means employed to do so are rationally connected to the problem to be remedied, minimally impair the right that is being infringed and are proportional to the problem at hand.

In Canada, as anywhere else in the world, the health of our human rights depends on a constant diligence to attain a degree of proportionality when evaluating the competing interests of both the individual and the state. The state does not trump the individual. One right does not trump another.

As the members of the global village are drawn increasingly closer together through new technology, more efficient means of transportation and through an increased understanding of distance, new challenges inevitably come to the fore.

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It is natural that we may feel overwhelmed by the new problems we face. In reaction to this, there seems to be a movement afoot in Canada that seeks to loosen the system of checks and balances in order to confront the seemingly overwhelming threats of today. Such a movement must be resisted. We must not be left with the legacy legislatively that legitimizes the exercise of power unfettered and unaccountable.

Where loss of individual rights occurs, it, the authority, must be held to account by scrutiny and vigilance from another body, namely, the legislative branch, or an independent body or the courts. In a democracy, one does not police oneself. The rule of law must incorporate not the use of power absolutely in a given situation, but the use of power fairly and justly on some objective test.

As William Pitt so astutely observed in 1783:

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Any call to barter away certain fundamental human rights in exchange for security must be approached with great trepidation. Heed must be taken to the sober voices of people such as Nadine Strossen, President of the American Civil Liberties Union, who stated that her greatest fear is:

...that too many members of the public will embrace the government's call to give up some freedom in return for greater safety, only to find that they will have lost freedom without gaining safety.

Canadians have every right to seek a greater measure of security; however, we cannot trade away rights in exchange for greater security, for we will end up with neither. A sober reflection on the present point to which our country has arrived in the area of human rights is cause for celebration. On this Human Rights Day, we can set our accomplishments in striking a just balance between the rights of the individual and the collective interests of society. These gains could not have been arrived at without the dedication and commitment of those who fought the hard-won battles that have brought us to where we are now.

Finally, we must maintain an unwavering commitment to continue to pursue to find the correct balance between the competing rights that every person can claim under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I call on all senators in the coming days to carefully weigh what others have given us in this society.

On motion of senator Kinsella, debate adjourned.

The Senate adjourned until Tuesday, December 11, 2001, at 2 p.m.