Canada's Public Safety Minister Vic Toews secretly told CSIS in December 2010 that the Harper government now expects the spy service to "make the protection of life and property its overriding priority" Including the use of information based on torture. The Harper government is arguing that the ends justify the means. Canada signed the UN Convention Against Torture which has an absolute prohibition against torture, Torture is also prohibited under the Criminal Code of Canada. As Stuart Hendin, an expert in the law of armed conflict and human right laws, said. “What they (the Harper government) are doing now is they are giving CSIS what amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card. That question is would that get-out-of –jail-free card provide a defence against a charge of aiding abetting torture or, in fact, torture itself,”
Of course any information obtained through torture is totally useless because tortured people will confess and/or say anything their captors want to hear just to make the pain stop. Bob Rae said he's concerned such a ministerial directive was issued "without real discussion with Canadians about its implications. The law in Canada has been pretty clear that information based on torture, first of all, is not reliable and, second of all, is not permissible."
Not reliale and not permssible are one issue immoral is another. Harper and his fundamentalist brethern are shaming Canada. Canada, until recently, stood on the moral high ground in the hearts and minds of those people everywhere who aspired to a something greater. Now, with its complicity in torture, its petro state politics, its subservience to right-wing US interests, its fear mongering crime bill, its refusal to cut greenhouse gas emissions, its refusal to comply with the court ruling in the Wheat Board case, its condemnation and bullying of any opposition to its pipeline-istan bullshit, its...its become just like the rest...just like all those other places that in the hearts and minds of good people everywhere it once stood above. Canadians now have good reason to be ashamed.
The links and video below give further details on the opposition parties and the general population's response to Harper's repugnant fascist policy of using information obtained by torture.
Canada security services 'can use torture material' - Canada ordered its intelligence agency to use information that may have been extracted through torture if public safety is at risk, it has emerged.
Is Canada breaking the law by using torture info? - ...these cases would never come to public light because CSIS is shrouded in secrecy. There is never a public disclosure of what they do or don’t do. The trouble is we’ll never know.
CSIS Spy Agency gets boycotted over human rights -The surveillance of Indigenous communities is one example among many showing that CSIS does not play a neutral role. [...] It's highly politicized and the state determines who the enemies are and historically, the very origins of policing in Canada, the Northwest Mounted Police and eventually the RCMP, was to quell native rebellions and was in the service of Canadian colonialism.
NDP MLA Jack Harris on torture from Straight Goods News
NDP MLA Jack Harris on torture from Straight Goods News
