Western Standard - HANNAFORD： 25 years after 9⧸11, freedom still comes with a price

00:00:00.000 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show of the

00:00:21.820 Western Standard. It is September the 10th, 2026. 25 years ago tomorrow, 19 Al-Qaeda hijackers seized

00:00:34.260 four American airliners. Two were flown into the World Trade Center. One struck the Pentagon.

00:00:42.320 Passengers and crew on the 4th forced it down in a Pennsylvania field before it could reach

00:00:49.920 Washington. Almost 3,000 people were murdered. If you are under 25, that is the event that we

00:01:00.300 commemorate tomorrow. Osama bin Laden's network planned it as a mass casualty jihad against the 0.69

00:01:08.220 United States. The motive was not blowback in the abstract. It was a declared war by a terrorist

00:01:17.020 organization that had already attacked U.S. targets before and wanted a spectacle large enough

00:01:23.480 to change American policy. It did. Grief became a warrant for a stronger state.

00:01:34.160 Border queues, airport scanners, and the standing assumption that intelligence services should find

00:01:41.080 plotters before they kill were not the old normal. After 9-11, they were. The trade-off was not

00:01:49.960 imaginary. North America has seen deadly attacks since, but nothing on that scale.

00:01:58.280 Same thing in Canada, which also introduced new legislation to deal with the new threat.

00:02:05.000 Here in Canada, and so empowered, the work of CSIS against the so-called Toronto 18 plot to storm the House of Commons and murder politicians is a Canadian example of how real the threat was, and also of the successful prevention that ordinary criminal law used after the fact would have arrived too late to accomplish.

00:02:30.000 But what never followed is that every power taken in the first frightened weeks should

00:02:40.240 stay, migrate, and attach to new targets.

00:02:46.840 The American sequence is familiar for those who watch Fox News, the Patriot Act, Bulk

00:02:52.740 Telephony Metadata, and FISA Section 702.

00:02:57.960 Those tools can stop bombs, but they can also be turned inward, and many conservative politicians

00:03:06.080 in the United States argue that they were.

00:03:10.180 A foreign intelligence architecture was used in an investigation that touched the presidential

00:03:16.200 campaign.

00:03:17.820 FISA process, unmasking, and an informant in a campaign's orbit are not folklore.

00:03:24.140 They are matters of public record, and the warning is simple.

00:03:28.540 A machine built for foreign enemies will, if unsupervised, sit down in domestic politics.

00:03:37.180 Happily, Canada did not copy the entire American model, but it built its own stack.

00:03:45.640 The 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act created terrorism-specific offenses, financing crimes and asset freezing

00:03:53.540 tools beyond ordinary murder and conspiracy. Years later, in the government which I serve,

00:04:01.140 Bill C-51 let CSIS move from watch and report to threat reduction measures. CSIS warrants still go

00:04:11.780 to the federal court, but are usually dealt with in secret. In 2002, the national security

00:04:19.940 vocabulary was applied to oppressors. To declare a public order emergency cabinet had to find a

00:04:26.820 threat to the security of Canada in the CSIS Act since espionage, sabotage, foreign influence,

00:04:33.380 terrorism or violent subversion while the same statute excludes lawful advocacy, protest and

00:04:40.820 dissent. In the end the emergency economic measures order then authorized banks to freeze

00:04:47.300 accounts of people linked to the protest without a court order the shape of a sanctions tool used

00:04:54.340 on a political occupation the federal court of appeal has since held the invocation unreasonable

00:05:01.300 and beyond what the law allows and found charter breaches of expression and unreasonable search

00:05:08.180 the government has taken the case towards the supreme court until that court speaks two levels

00:05:14.260 of court have said the statutory threshold was not met the freeze was temporary the present

00:05:21.940 precedent is not or to put it in a pub sort of way long after the emergency has gone the furniture

00:05:33.780 is still in the room that is the canadian warning you may not need a spy in a campaign office

00:05:41.060 You may need only a proclamation, a list of account numbers, and over the last five years,

00:05:48.580 new statutes that keep parts of the exceptional architecture in ordinary law.

00:05:54.980 That would be, for example, Bill C-8, that lets the industry minister order telecommunications

00:06:01.220 providers to take steps to secure the system against specified threats, including,

00:06:06.540 in defined circumstances, prohibiting or suspending service to a named person.

00:06:13.820 That is an executive cutoff power over connectivity with limited prior judicial control.

00:06:20.460 Bill sent C-22 passed by the commons and before the Senate is lawful access reform.

00:06:27.580 In other words, warrantless yes or no confirmation of service coupled with powers to require

00:06:33.780 specified service providers to retain categories of your information for up to

00:06:40.720 six months. They will hang on to your emails. Bill C-34, not yet law, would

00:06:49.000 create a digital safety regime for social media and chatbot services and a new

00:06:55.120 digital safety commission with enormous powers. Harmful content categories and

00:07:00.060 age-gating are the stated purpose. Broad regulation of platforms is the effect.

00:07:07.500 None of these is the American-style Patriot Act, but together they move the state closer to seeing,

00:07:13.500 tracing, interrupting, and conditioning us to accept government oversight of our digital lives.

00:07:20.620 It is the legacy of 9-11 that we have spent our moral superiority. Liberal democracies had that

00:07:28.860 once. We used to tell other countries we hunt terrorists, we do not treat dissent as a security

00:07:35.260 file, we do not freeze a citizen's money, we do not prepare dossiers on our political opponents,

00:07:42.220 we welcome visitors to our country with a smile. The actions of terrorists have cost us all that.

00:07:51.100 The rule should have survived. The second week of September 2001 is still simple.

00:07:57.340 any power sold as necessary against terrorism needs to include a sunset clause this changed

00:08:07.900 everything is not a legal test in canada at least it is still the charter 9-11 changed what we fear

00:08:17.480 it did not repeal what a free country is allowed to become ladies and gentlemen today is a sober

00:08:26.720 day as we contemplate what our politics has become here in Canada. I'm very privileged to

00:08:33.140 have with me Dave Naylor, news editor here at the Western Standard. Like myself, on the original day

00:08:39.840 he was in the newsroom. I'm also delighted to have also with me Liam O'Shea, one of our younger

00:08:47.580 reporters who um almost missed it dave what was it like on the day for you uh was woken up by a

00:08:59.020 phone call and told to turn on the tv right away uh just caught the second uh jet going into the uh

00:09:07.580 the the twin towers and it was one of the fastest drives i've ever done

00:09:13.740 down Deerfoot trail uh listening to the radio and the radio had announced that a plane had gone into

00:09:19.020 the pentagon and there was another one headed for Washington and the the the emotion that I

00:09:26.140 that I recall that day was just utterly it was being utterly terrified absolutely no one knew

00:09:32.060 what was going on uh planes uh going into buildings uh obviously uh unheard of um I remember my

00:09:40.380 daughter phoning, asking me what's going on. I said, hon, I can't tell you. She would have been

00:09:45.900 about nine at the time. I remember, you know, obviously being glued to CNN in the newsroom

00:09:54.040 and getting reporters onto the story and everybody, big stories like that, Nigel, you know what a

00:10:00.020 newsroom's like. Everybody just drives in without even being asked and, you know, sending reporters

00:10:05.060 to the airports and uh and whatever what other stories that we can and and uh we we put out uh

00:10:12.580 calgary sun put out a an afternoon edition which was i think uh the first time we had uh had ever

00:10:18.820 done that but uh uh lee has been working for a couple days on the feet on a feature now to come

00:10:24.980 out uh tomorrow and uh just going through those old videos and you you see the building collapse

00:10:30.580 and then that wall of ash and dust and everything sort of barreling down the canyon of a street

00:10:37.640 and people running for their lives.

00:10:39.960 It was a horrific day, a 16-hour day, and at the end of it, I had a very good cry.

00:10:51.380 Ian, you are seeing things perhaps for the first time.

00:10:56.460 Were you taught much about this in school?

00:10:58.120 um i just remember i think the first time we ever learned about it was grade nine

00:11:03.980 and i think we watched a documentary on it so that's how i was kind of introduced to it

00:11:09.660 back then but uh in high school i don't really think we really talked about it that much

00:11:15.320 from my memory so when you saw that documentary did you come away with any idea of why it happened

00:11:23.480 um i honestly it's been too long but from what i can remember i think the only

00:11:31.560 inkling of why it happened would have been in the documentary the teacher

00:11:35.220 himself didn't really say anything as to why it happened now that you're now that you're working

00:11:41.700 on this special project with with dave here what are you finding out that strikes you as a reporter

00:11:50.240 my goodness i never knew um honestly i think the most famous is the videos of the twin towers but

00:11:59.120 i didn't really know about the pentagon stuff so i think that shocked me most and also the fact that

00:12:05.040 the people in the one of the flights fought back that's how they landed in the field yes

00:12:12.160 that was sure they were they were headed for washington as well but they there's that famous

00:12:17.040 phrase uh it comes over on like these poor people we knew they were going to die but they had their

00:12:23.440 cell phones and they were able to talk to to their wives their husbands their children yeah and then

00:12:31.680 on the particular flight that you mentioned you hear the words let's roll and that's when

00:12:37.040 the passengers i shouldn't say took control of the plane because it crashed they didn't have control

00:12:44.560 but they were able to prevent the act that had been intended from taking place are you saying

00:12:52.560 tell me again you're saying that's not a story that's well known in your generation

00:12:56.640 i don't know if it's my generation i don't want to speak for everyone but i think it's just

00:13:00.080 because you see all the videos even on social media you'll see a bunch of videos in 9 11 every

00:13:04.480 single year so i think that's also how i was exposed just through social media all the time

00:13:09.040 you'll see the videos but they don't really show that much on the pentagon so i think that's also

00:13:14.800 why maybe people don't know about it as much i see dave i'm making the case that the phrase

00:13:24.240 everything has just changed which was on everybody's lips in the days immediately

00:13:30.320 after the event actually everything did change i wonder if i can just talk about

00:13:36.160 But some of the things that changed, like going down to the States, right?

00:13:42.420 Yeah, I think the big thing for me was air travel and, you know, going, actually been to New York a couple of times since.

00:13:50.540 And it used to be easy.

00:13:53.120 It's like getting on a bus, wasn't it?

00:13:54.160 Yeah.

00:13:54.700 And now it's rigmarole and shoes off and arms up in the body scanner.

00:14:02.960 But it seems to me like a small inconvenience to guarantee your safety as much as you can.

00:14:12.900 You know, and you were talking about cell phones to loved ones just there.

00:14:17.780 And to me, that's one of the most haunting things.

00:14:19.860 I was listening to a guy yesterday who was trapped on the 110th floor and just begging for a fire department to come and help him.

00:14:27.760 You know, it's getting closer, it's getting closer.

00:14:29.780 And then just as the building collapsed on him, you do, oh, you hear him say, it's God, you know, screeching for God.

00:14:37.940 And the calls of people to their wives and notes and just utterly, utterly heartbreaking.

00:14:47.560 Now, as you say, we now got, we've gone into a more authoritarian, authoritarian, some people say.

00:14:56.060 Yeah, a state with much more broader overreaches, which is not good.

00:15:03.320 And you've written several pieces on that for the Justice Center.

00:15:09.400 So, yeah, it's and, you know, it got us into a war in Afghanistan, which we didn't win.

00:15:16.640 The Taliban are still there.

00:15:18.580 We were, you know, hunting Bin Laden for several years till we finally got him, and terrorism

00:15:29.380 has not stopped, has it? There's acts of terrorism, it seems, somewhere around the world almost

00:15:35.200 daily. Well, because we were doing this interview, I did look up to see how effective things like the

00:15:43.340 Patriot Act have been. And there's probably been about a dozen acts of, I won't call them mass

00:15:51.420 casualties because two and three is not a mass casualty, but excluding school shootings and

00:15:58.720 things that have got nothing to do with terrorism, there have probably been about a dozen

00:16:03.120 events, notwithstanding all of these rules and regulations in the United States where people

00:16:11.760 have been killed in threes, fours, and in one case, the nightclub was bombed, and I think there

00:16:18.100 was probably about 40 people, and that's kind of most of the casualties. So in some senses,

00:16:24.360 the regulations do work. It has enabled the authorities to see what's going on long before

00:16:31.500 anything happens. A good example of that, Nigel, would have been just a couple of weeks ago when

00:16:36.700 the UFC held their fight on the grounds of the White House, and authorities were able to

00:16:44.520 intercept or stop a plan that was going to fly explosive-ridden drones into the event

00:16:52.440 with President Trump sitting at ringside.

00:16:56.360 So there are nasty people still out there plotting against the United States, and hopefully

00:17:03.280 the uh the uh the authorities get get them all sadly some will slip through what do you what

00:17:09.920 do you think leah do we should we have these kinds of uh of uh draconic legisl rules and legislation

00:17:18.720 they do work apparently but on the other hand we've got to live with them um well i just recall

00:17:25.440 what dave said about the airport stuff and although i do find it a bit annoying when i go

00:17:31.120 i understand it so in my opinion sometimes you have to sacrifice some stuff for your safety

00:17:38.880 i do think sometimes it does go too far um when you were in your introduction when you're

00:17:44.480 mentioning about like especially like social media the government having access to i don't

00:17:49.360 know just all your data and stuff like that that to me does seem like kind of like they're just

00:17:55.100 trying to justify having access to everything without like a it's almost like they're calling

00:18:00.260 you uh guilty before proving that you're guilty kind of thing which does scare me in those cases

00:18:06.660 but safety wise for like flights and stuff i do think that it's okay yeah you're okay with that

00:18:14.740 but but not on the buses no not on buses that would be ridiculous oh it's uh no it it's it's

00:18:21.940 it's a very old weighing up of the options do we do we go for security or do we do or do we go for

00:18:29.780 complete freedom and of course in the end we have why do we have government at

00:18:33.980 all it is because we want protection from internal threats and external

00:18:38.400 threats we want internal order we want to keep the bad guys out so I think my

00:18:44.120 my whole point really is we have to be constantly monitoring what government

00:18:51.740 what powers government is taking to themselves in order to promise us

00:18:58.640 safety because I think sometimes I think frequently they take more than what they

00:19:04.160 need and and then tell us well it's for your safety mmm maybe not maybe not

00:19:10.140 always I cannot resist adding I saw your your special edition from the Sun when

00:19:20.540 when you were when you were passing it out and I think like the Calvary Herald

00:19:24.860 did one as well of course um and uh so the few times that i saw senior management out there with

00:19:32.620 a arm full of papers buy a paper here and read all about it it was like something out of the 19th

00:19:38.540 century yeah peter menzies and lauren motley and myself i guess not when i was senior management

00:19:45.660 but at any rate everybody everybody who could pick up 50 newspapers they told us to sell and

00:19:51.260 and nine-tenths of mine I think I gave away

00:19:54.180 because just people wanted it, but they didn't have change, you know.

00:19:56.900 Yeah, I remember just the insatiable appetite for the news

00:20:00.840 and tell us what's going on.

00:20:02.220 We need to know, we need to know.

00:20:03.660 Then there was that astonishing silence in the skies afterwards.

00:20:09.920 And then we were in an editorial.

00:20:12.280 I'm getting into telling old stories here.

00:20:14.260 We were sitting there and having an editorial board meeting

00:20:16.960 And suddenly, about 500 feet above where the old Calgary Herald building was, there was this roar as a plane went out low and fast, looked up.

00:20:27.760 It was a transport.

00:20:29.640 It turned out to be the U.S. ambassador who had been caught on the ground in Calgary getting recalled to Ottawa.

00:20:37.680 That was the only plane that flew that day in Canada.

00:20:42.200 We have the wonderful story of Gander, Newfoundland, where all the American planes were diverted to.

00:20:50.600 All of a sudden, they had thousands of people on their doorstep.

00:20:53.540 Oh, okay, welcome to Gander.

00:20:55.380 I guess we've got to find places for you to stay and food for you to eat and all that sort of stuff.

00:21:00.100 It was excellent Canadian hospitality, and it even spawned a musical, which is apparently quite good.

00:21:09.240 Again, was that story told to you?

00:21:12.200 No, I had no idea, which is insane, because you'd think in our social studies classes they would want to teach us that.

00:21:18.920 Canadian history.

00:21:20.140 Exactly.

00:21:20.860 Well, Canadian history, and frankly, in the present temper of the times, it stands in sharp contrast to the war of words that's going on between Canadians and Americans and the antipathy.

00:21:34.340 But, you know, do you think that if the same thing happened, we'd do it all again?

00:21:38.800 Absolutely, we would, because we're Canadian.

00:21:40.980 I don't want to offend my separatist friends, but there's much good in this country yet, if we could just change the government.

00:21:53.240 Anyway, look, 9-11, a black day, a terrible day, one that changed everything, just as people said it did.

00:22:02.500 Do you ever see it changing back?

00:22:04.520 No. No. As I said, there's always terrorists somewhere popping their ugly heads up.

00:22:09.680 and there's always to use the Hannaford theorem there is always a government that

00:22:16.100 would like to know just a little more about you so I just like to encourage

00:22:20.600 everybody to look out for Leah's peace tomorrow should be good terrific and I

00:22:25.640 know Chris old corn has several opinion columns lined up tomorrow today very

00:22:30.920 good so all the reason in the world to check the Western Standard tomorrow 25

00:22:38.780 years. Good, we're on it. There you go. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Leah. I very much appreciate both

00:22:44.820 of you joining me on this program. For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Hannaford.

Western Standard - September 12, 2026

HANNAFORD： 25 years after 9⧸11, freedom still comes with a price

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