Juno News - February 16, 2019


Liberal bill removes ＂advocating terrorism offences＂ from Criminal Code


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

167.35484

Word count

1,297

Sentence count

60


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Bill C-59 would make it illegal to advocate or promote the commission of terrorism offences under the Criminal Code. But what would happen if someone counseled someone to commit an act of terrorism? And who would be the person counseled?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:01.000 When former Prime Minister Stephen Harper put C-51, the government of the day's sweeping overhaul of national security laws into effect,
00:00:10.000 the left said that it was too broad, too sweeping, and didn't have enough of an emphasis on civil liberties.
00:00:17.000 Well, the Liberals' answer to C-51 is working its way through the parliamentary process right now.
00:00:23.000 Bill C-59, an act respecting national security matters. Right now, it is in the Senate Defense and National Security Committee.
00:00:31.000 It's been there since about December, and there's a lot of work to be done going through the details of this, of which there are many.
00:00:38.000 The act will go over about a dozen different acts, including the Criminal Code and other national security-related laws, and make changes.
00:00:48.000 Some of them are minor, and I think amenable to both sides, but there's one buried in this that has gotten virtually no media attention
00:00:54.000 that could have some very devastating consequences in the fight against terrorism.
00:00:59.000 If you look in Part 7, Section 143 of Bill C-59, it says the following.
00:01:06.000 Section 83.221 of the act, that's referring to the Criminal Code, is replaced by the following.
00:01:13.000 This section is going to be replacing an existing section of the Criminal Code, one that was put in there under C-51 during Stephen Harper's government reign.
00:01:39.000 And what we see here doesn't sound unreasonable to be an offence.
00:01:43.000 Yes, it should be a crime for someone to counsel another person to commit an act of terror.
00:01:48.000 But to understand why this has so many problems associated with it, we need to look at what it is in the Criminal Code that this section is going to be replacing.
00:01:57.000 And that section is as titled now, Advocating or Promoting Commission of Terrorism Offences.
00:02:03.000 Everyone who, by communicating statements, knowingly advocates or promotes the commission of terrorism offences in general, other than an offence under this section,
00:02:13.000 while knowing that any of those offences will be committed or being reckless as to whether any of those offences may be committed,
00:02:20.000 as a result of such communication is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years.
00:02:29.000 Now, I know that's very government speak, but what it means is that under the current laws, it is a crime to advocate, even in general terms, the commission of terrorism offences.
00:02:39.000 So you could have a radical hate preacher, like we've seen many reports of, that gets up in front of his mosque and starts giving people a call to arms.
00:02:47.000 You could have someone who doesn't even have an organised mosque, who calls themselves a spiritual leader and goes on YouTube and advocates in general terms for the commission of terrorist offences.
00:02:57.000 Under the current law, that's illegal. Under a plain text reading of the proposed law by the Liberals, that would no longer be a crime.
00:03:05.000 Now, I'm not the first person to have raised these concerns.
00:03:09.000 And what Shimon Koffler Fogel raised in his testimony and in his Globe and Mail op-ed, was that in response to a provision that the government thinks is too broad,
00:03:17.000 their remedy is one that's too specific. A plain text reading of it requires that someone counsels another person.
00:03:25.000 This implies, Mr. Koffler Fogel suggested, a knowledge of who that person is in a very specific counselling.
00:03:32.000 Whereas advocating or promoting could take place in more general terms, in front of an audience or in front of a computer screen,
00:03:39.000 where you know people are going to see it, but you don't specifically know who those people are.
00:03:44.000 Now, I put these concerns to Public Safety Canada, which is the department that's tasked with driving this law through.
00:03:50.000 And this is the statement that was provided.
00:03:53.000 Bill C-59 does not propose to remove the advocating terrorism offence, but rather proposes to amend it.
00:03:59.000 As originally enacted, the existing offence of advocating or promoting the commission of terrorism offences in general,
00:04:06.000 seeks to prohibit the act of encouragement of the commission of terrorism offences generally,
00:04:12.000 rather than the commission of specific terrorist offences.
00:04:15.000 However, this formulation has been criticised as being too vague.
00:04:19.000 As a result, Bill C-59 proposes to clarify the offence using a well-known concept in criminal law,
00:04:25.000 so that it would apply where a person counsels, actively encourages another person to commit a terrorism offence,
00:04:32.000 without identifying a specific terrorism offence.
00:04:35.000 It would also apply whether or not a terrorism offence is committed by the person who is counseled.
00:04:41.000 So, the concerns that they're trying to ameliorate are, in short, that this would take a law that, right now,
00:04:49.000 exists for people that counsel or advocate or promote terrorism in general terms
00:04:55.000 and restrict it to the one-on-one counselling or the small group counselling.
00:04:59.000 And even in the explanation from Public Safety Canada's spokesperson, they talk about another person,
00:05:05.000 that a specific person has to be on the receiving end of this.
00:05:09.000 Not only does this law open the door for someone to essentially get away with openly and proudly advocating terrorism,
00:05:17.000 but doing so is not even consistent with other provisions of the law.
00:05:21.000 This is what Shimon Koffler Fogel said in his testimony before Parliament.
00:05:25.000 When it comes to the offence of instructing a terrorist activity, which is a different offence,
00:05:29.000 the criminal code is explicit.
00:05:31.000 The offence is committed whether or not the accused instructs a particular person to carry out the activity,
00:05:38.000 or even knows the identity of the person instructed to carry out the activity.
00:05:42.000 The same standards should apply to the counselling offence.
00:05:46.000 So when we look at instructing terror activity, which, by the way, is one that we saw charges very similar to
00:05:53.000 in the context of the Kingston bomb threat that was averted by RCMP just a couple of weeks ago,
00:05:59.000 you have in a separate but very similar law no requirement that a specific person has to be the target of such counsel.
00:06:07.000 But under Bill C-59, it needs to be directed to a specific person.
00:06:12.000 And knowing how terror cells operate, where you have different groups in isolation,
00:06:17.000 they may not even know the identity of other people involved, there may be a glaring loophole here.
00:06:22.000 Now, it's entirely possible this oversight is accidental.
00:06:25.000 Except even when this concern has been brought to the government, in the media, in testimony before Parliament,
00:06:31.000 in my request to public safety, there seems to be no willingness to accept.
00:06:35.000 Which raises the question of why the government is deliberately loosening the laws surrounding terrorism.
00:06:41.000 Now, I'm a free speech absolutist.
00:06:43.000 I believe that people should have the right to hold controversial opinions.
00:06:46.000 The extent to free speech is always the promotion of violence.
00:06:51.000 Advocating terrorism is a very clear-cut example of that.
00:06:55.000 But we have a government now that is so hell-bent on striking this balance between civil liberties and national security,
00:07:02.000 which is an important balance that they seem to be erring more heavily on the side of ignoring one of the most common ways that terrorist messages are now spread,
00:07:11.000 which is through the internet, through radical preachers.
00:07:14.000 And by doing this, we see a logically inconsistent position with a country that supposedly,
00:07:19.000 we're being told by Trudeau and his government, is taking these concerns very seriously.
00:07:24.000 True North is at the forefront of these battles, investigating in ways the mainstream media isn't.
00:07:29.000 It's important work, and we can't do it alone. We do need your help.
00:07:32.000 Please consider joining the Heritage Club or the Patriot Club. Links are in the description box here.
00:07:37.000 And with a small monthly contribution, letting us keep working for you and your rights as Canadians.
00:07:43.000 For True North, I'm Andrew Lawton.