Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-16, an act respecting the registration of charities and security information and the Income Tax Act.
The purpose of the bill is to provide a mechanism to strip organizations of their charitable status if they are caught fundraising for terrorist groups.
We believe that the bill would have minimal impact on stemming terrorism in Canada. Effectively, the legislation says that it is all right to sponsor terrorism, it is all right to financially raise support for terrorists, but a person cannot get a tax deduction for doing so.
Effective legislation, legislation Canadian Alliance could wholeheartedly support, would make it a criminal offence to raise and provide funds to support a terrorist organization. This type of legislation already exists in the United States and the United Kingdom.
If curbing the operation of terrorist front groups truly was the goal, we could emulate Great Britain's terrorism act 2000, which empowers cabinet to ban from its country any organization that it believes is involved in terrorist activities. The law proscribes any group if it commits or participates in acts of terrorism: if it prepares for terrorism; if it promotes or encourages terrorism; or if it is otherwise concerned in terrorism either in the United Kingdom or abroad.
The British government publicly identified 21 groups that were associated with terrorism. Among the groups were the likes of Babbar Khalsa, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Abu Nidal Organization and the Kurdistan Workers Party.
The United States tried to get at terrorist fundraising through the anti-terrorism and effective death penalty act of 1996. Section 302 of the act authorizes the secretary of state to designate as foreign terrorist organizations any group that meets specific criteria. The act makes it an offence to knowingly provide or conspire to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization. In 1999 there were 28 foreign terrorist organizations that were listed.
A 1998 CSIS report said that there were as many as 50 international terrorist organizations active in Canada, often using the country as a banking centre. The report said that liberal immigration laws, relatively open borders, freedom of movement, advanced communication systems and the proximity to the United States made Canada inviting for terrorists.
In January 1999 an influential Senate committee, headed by Senator William Kelly, spent months hearing closed door testimonies from almost 100 members of the security and intelligence community. The reports of the special Senate committee on security and intelligence stated very clearly that Canada remained a venue of opportunity for terrorist groups. It remained a place where they could raise funds, purchase arms and conduct other activities to support their organizations and their terrorist activities elsewhere. Most of the major international terrorist organizations already have a presence in Canada
The report made 33 recommendations which unfortunately the Liberal government failed to embrace. The most important recommendation was for a new criminal penalty to combat cyber attacks on vital computer systems by hackers and other electronic saboteurs. It also called for powers to battle terrorist fundraising, more money for intelligence agencies and measures to better track possible extremists who made their way or who came into Canada.
The senators determined that technological advances available to terrorists and spies, from cash debit cards to sophisticated satellites, posed the most serious challenge to Canadian authorities. The committee confirmed that several groups with terrorist affiliations raised money in Canada, often through philanthropic organizations registered as charities under the Federal Income Tax Act. The Senate committee said:
Such status enhances the credibility of such groups and, ironically, creates the situation where Canadian taxpayers end up subsidizing their activities.
The Senate committee also found that the operating funds for federal agencies with a security or intelligence role fell to $333 million in 1997-98, down from $467 million in 1989-90, a trend that it suggests and that it would argue must be reversed to keep Canada from falling behind.
The year 2000 budget for the United States security and intelligence sector was increased by approximately $2 billion. The amount of the United States increase alone was more than four times the total amount budgeted for Canada's security and intelligence community.
One of the committee's recommendations pertained to a legal migration into Canada, primarily through our refugee determination system.
First, it is a means by which terrorists may circumvent our vetting process abroad and enter Canada in search for a temporary or for a permanent haven. Once here they may conduct fundraising activities or other activities. In a very few cases they also organize acts of violence.
Second, large volumes of illegal migrants may ultimately provide the stream in which a few terrorists gain entry into the United States by circumventing Canadian and United States border controls, since Canada has no exit controls. No exit controls mean that it is impossible to calculate how many people remain in Canada illegally, how many slip into the United States, how many return to their country of origin or how many go elsewhere.
As of October 23, 1998 there were 6,110 warrants for removal issued against persons deemed to have abandoned or withdrawn their refugee claims. Of these, 640 warrants were executed and the persons removed from Canada; 240 warrants were cancelled; and there was no action on the remaining 5,272 warrants. It is quite obvious that this is a very serious problem.
On Friday last week a news article in the National Post reported that RCMP officers testified at an immigration hearing that as many as 8,000 Tamil guerrillas with military weapon training were now living in the Toronto area after fleeing a civil war in Sri Lanka.
In reference to the Tamil guerrillas, I would like to conclude today by quoting the April 27 National Post article which said:
Sergeant Fred Bowen said most were “in the retired category” but a few remain active and all had undergone some form of military training provided either by India's military intelligence agency or the Tamil Tigers rebel army.
Sergeant Bowen's estimate of the number of guerrillas who have slipped into Canada during this influx matches a Toronto police figure and may explain how the small rebel force manages to raise, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, $2 million a year in Canada to finance its war effort.
Sergeant Bowen testified that aside from the former guerrilla fighters there are 12 to 15 active members of the Tigers who are on call to commit crimes for the insurgent force in Toronto, as well as 1,000 Tamil gang members, about a third of them supporters of the rebels.
He said there had been 65 shootings in the Toronto Tamil community since September, 2000...“The vast majority of the community is not involved. They are being victimized, they are being extorted.
The gangs are doing anything for money: home invasions and passport theft; drug dealing; crimes of opportunity; frauds; counterfeiting; credit card frauds; attempted murder; kidnappings; extortions.”
I cannot support this ineffective legislation in its present form, therefore I call upon the government to introduce and enact legislation that would make it hard for terrorists and their supporters to get here, stay here and that would make it impossible for them to raise money while they here. If they were caught in any way, shape or form supporting terrorist activities here or abroad, criminal charges with a very severe penalty would be handed down.