Are these the 'terrorists' Harper's security agenda is targeting?
You betcha.
You betcha.
Remember how back in 2012, the Harper government launched an unprecedented assault on Canada’s environmental laws when it introduced Bill C-38 – an omnibus bill that put a halt to automatic environmental assessments of projects under the federal government’s purview. But that was only one step in Harper's attempt to muzzle any opposition to his corporate fossil fuel benefactors plans. After the Fisheries Act, Navigable Waters Protection Act and Canadian Environmental Assessment Act were either repealed or simply gutted, Harper neutered the NEB, then attempting to close the Experimental Lakes Area, and ordered the dumping of books from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Library.
All that was just to prepare the ground for Bill C-51, the recent wide-reaching anti-terrorism bill under which CSIS and the RCMP now act in secret and without oversight while spying on peaceful ordinary Canadian's carrying out their constitutional right to protest. Of course the hearing are held in secret, no members of the public, no media are allowed in despite the fact that there is zero threat to anyone except the profits of Harper benefactors.
Jeffrey Monaghan, a criminologist at Carleton University, has obtained documents from CSIS and RCMP through access to information laws that reveal how these agencies are spying on the environmental movement, especially those opposed to pipelines or who participate in National Energy Board (NEB) hearings. They also revealed that twice a year, at the CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, top-ranking members of the RCMP, CSIS and the CSEC meet with oil industry representatives to brief them on the “threat” from environmental and aboriginal groups.
As Josh Paterson, British Columbia Civil Liberties Association {BCCLA} executive director, one of the groups who filed the complaint being looked into by the secret court, said, "Witnesses will testify that the allegations about widespread CSIS surveillance has turned many people off from community activism."
Last week, Alexandra Swann, a volunteer with the Dogwood Initiative, another of the groups involved, opened up about how the purported spying revelations have impacted her activism saying in part: "Finding out had a chilling effect for me. Suddenly, I was very concerned how far it had extended. Was I personally named somewhere? Had they investigated my online activities? Read my emails? I realized the right to privacy was a myth in this country, and that being a decent person was no barrier to illegal scrutiny by people far more powerful than me."
Harper's near non-stop pounding on the fear of terrorism drum is meant not only to divert attention away from his economic policies and the Duffy trail but also to divert it away from who his security agenda is actually designed to protect as well as who its real targets are. Harper and his neo-con ilk will do anything to stay in power including subvert the very things that have made Canada the envy of the entire world for generations. Canadians must unite in a one time people's coalition to overthrow this tool of corporate dictatorship on Oct 19th by voting, riding by riding, for the candidate with the best chance of defeating the Cons in that riding before it's to late to stop them.
Please help stop the greatest evil descending on Canada - Harper's Secret Police State - which is designed to silence dissent.
