Just as Harper's conservatives began to debate Bill S7, The Combating Terrorism Act, on Monday afternoon, news broke out that two people had been arrested for conspiring to derail a VIA Rail train in the Greater Toronto Area. This serves as fresh justification for the controversial, unknown bill S7and now, having passed the House of Commons on Wednesday night, it is Canada's next step in adopting a more draconian stance against terrorism. The bill allows for "preventative detention" and "investigative hearings", techniques that waive constitutional rights in order to fight the state's definition of terror. By empowering the government to point out what is terrorism and what is not, we forfeit our legally protected liberties and freedoms. Laws that grant authorities rights that bypass our constitutional rights to not be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned pose a much greater risk than the notion of true terrorism. Haven't we learned anything after watching America's never ending "War on Terror?"
For more on Bill S7 and the the VIA Rail terror plot, check out these articles:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/04/24/pol-anti-terror-bill-s7-vote.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/04/24/via-train-terror-plot.html
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