Mr. Speaker, the United Nations Security Council recently adopted an unprecedented and most comprehensive anti-terrorism resolution wherein it determined that international terrorism constitutes “a threat to international peace and security”, a decision that the United Nations and its allies have construed as supporting legal authority action in Afghanistan.
While the military campaign may remind one of the aphorism that “while the guns roar, the muses, including the legal ones, are silent”, the centrepiece of the UN security council resolution effectively mandated a multi-faceted diplomatic and legal war on terrorism, one in which Canada is particularly well positioned to assume a leading international role.
The following initiatives comprise the essence of this juridical offensive, while identifying the diplomatic leadership role that Canada can play in an international counter-terrorism law and policy.
First, the security council has called on member states to sign and ratify the 12 international anti-terrorism conventions, including the two most recent conventions on the suppression of terrorism bombing and the suppression of terrorist financing. Canada has ratified 10 of these conventions and has now undertaken to ratify the last two.
Accordingly, it can take the lead in seeking to globalize this international legal arsenal, as it has done in leading the campaign for the ratification of an international criminal court. Moreover, ratification has not only juridical importance in underpinning the global counter-terrorism legal arsenal, but it sends a message that these countries have put themselves on the side of the international legal war against terrorism.
Second, the security council has called upon all member states to enact domestic legislation to implement these 12 international treaties so as to establish an international criminal justice system to combat terrorism. As Canada has now introduced such domestic anti-terrorism legislation to give effect to these treaties and is already spearheading the campaign for a global international justice system organized around the domestic implementation of the ICC treaty, it could equally spearhead an international campaign for domestic implementation of these 12 anti-terrorism conventions.
Third, the UN has called for the adoption of a comprehensive convention on international terrorism. Indeed I had occasion to recommend this initiative six years ago in my capacity then as special advisor to the then foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy in the course of the Paris ministerial conference on counter-terrorism. It was felt at the time, however, that such a convention might be difficult to craft from a legal point of view and difficult to adopt from a diplomatic point of view.
Now that the UN security council has recommended this initiative so as to underpin what secretary general Kofi Annan has called “the global legitimacy” of the war on terrorism and as the matter is now before the United Nations legal committee Canada could lend its expertise and experience to this drafting and diplomatic exercise.
Fourth, the security council decided that all states should prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism, which involves a network of initiatives, including: freezing without delay the funds and other financial assets and economic resources of those that commit or facilitate the commission of terrorist acts; criminalize the wilful provision or collection by any means of funds intended for the commission or facilitation of terrorist acts; and deregistering any charities or entities that provide support for the facilitation or commission of terrorist acts.
Again, as Canada is in the process of implementing these initiatives and as our finance minister serves as chair of the G-20, we are particularly well situated to lead and co-ordinate the international effort to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism in all its forms.
Fifth, the security council has recommended that states adopt comprehensive legislation to ensure that any person who participates in the financing, planning, preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts is brought to justice and that such terrorist acts are established as serious criminal offences in domestic laws. As Canada has adopted model war crimes and crimes against humanity legislation, underpinned by the principle of universal jurisdiction, and has now introduce comprehensive anti-terrorism domestic legislation with rights protecting checks and balances, including charter protection, legislative oversight and judicial review, Canada is once again well placed to serve as an international model for this genre of comprehensive domestic anti-terrorism legislation consistent with rights based concerns.
Sixth, the United Nations has called upon member states to ensure that asylum seekers are not terrorists in disguise and that international refugee law is not used as a cover for international terrorism. At the same time, the right to political asylum must be safeguarded as a fundamental right, one that should not be undermined or diminished, and must remain a cornerstone of our international and domestic policy.
Accordingly, Canada's experience and expertise in refugee law and policy, in both appreciating the importance of the right to asylum while ensuring that it not be abused, and our learned appreciation of the weaknesses in our law enforcement system thus far, may commend the adoption of model initiatives that will improve and refine the screening, detection and exclusion of terrorists from claiming refugee status to begin with; ensure that refugee status is not abused by the perpetrators, organizers or facilitators of terrorist acts; ensure that those whose refugee claim has been denied because of their deemed affiliation to terrorism and against whom a deportation order has been issued, do not disappear into our system and in fact are brought to justice to begin with; and ensure that claims of political motivation are not recognized as grounds for refusing a request for the extradition of alleged terrorists.
Seventh, the security council has called upon all member states to afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with criminal investigations and prosecutions of terrorist acts. As an exemplary member of more multilateral groupings than any other member in the international community, including NATO, the G-8, the Commonwealth, la Francophonie, APEC, the OAS, the OSCE and the like, Canada is uniquely positioned to help organize and expand the necessary international juridical initiatives.
Eighth, the UN security council has warned against the danger of terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction, with Secretary General Kofi Annan pointing out that a single attack involving a nuclear or biological weapon could kill millions of people.
Canada, as a country that has taken the lead in sponsoring and ratifying treaties to control and prohibit weapons of mass destruction, can take the lead in international efforts to implement these treaties; ensure closer co-operation among international organizations dealing with weapons of mass destruction; and work toward the enactment of tighter domestic legislation covering the export of goods and technologies used in their production.
Finally, one of the more important instruments in any counter-terrorism law and policy is the control of incitement to terrorism, the combating of the promotion of hatred and contempt against the targeted and demonized prospective victims. Indeed, it is particularly important for the international community in general, and for member states in particular, to begin to address the issue of how they will regulate incitement to terrorism, of how they will regulate the demonization of the other, which, as we saw in Rwanda, can take us down the road to genocide. In Bosnia, it took us down the road to ethnic cleansing.
As the Supreme Court of Canada put it in upholding the constitutionality of Canada's anti-hate legislation, “The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers--it began with words”.
Canada, with its experience and expertise in combating incitement to hatred and with its proposed legislative initiatives to also eliminate hate on the Internet against prospective victims of terrorism as well as against any identifiable groups in Canada that may be unfairly discriminated against in our counter-terrorism effort, can play an important and significant role in developing this centerpiece of a counter-terrorism law and policy.
In a word, while Canada's contribution to the military effort may be a limited and modest one, its contribution to the legal and diplomatic war on terrorism can be a distinguished and distinguishable one.