Bill C 51

A powerful book by one of Canada's leading legal historians on sexual assault.

On 20 October 2014, a terrorist drove his car into two members of the Canadian Armed Forces, killing Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent. Two days later, another terrorist murdered Corporal Nathan Cirillo before storming Parliament. In the aftermath of these attacks, Parliament enacted Bill C-51 -- the most radical national security law in generations. This new law ignored hard lessons on how Canada both over- and underreacted to terrorism in the past. It also ignored evidence and urgent recommendations about how to avoid these dangers in the future. For much of 2015, Craig Forcese and Kent Roach have provided, as Maclean'sput it, the "intellectual core of what's emerged as surprisingly vigorous push-back" to Bill C-51. In this book, they show that our terror laws now make a false promise of security even as they present a radical challenge to rights and liberties. They trace how our laws repeat past mistakes of institutionalized illegality while failing to address problems that weaken the accountability of security agencies and impair Canada's ability to defend against terrorism.

Incitement to terrorism connects the dots between evil words and evil deeds. Hate precedes terror. History has already taught us that incitement to genocide and to crimes against humanity unchecked will inevitably bring devastation to humankind. Incitement is an affront to the dignity of its victims, and poses a dire threat to all people of good will. However, combating incitement to terrorism poses operational, constitutional and human rights challenges on many fronts, both domestically and internationally. What is incitement? Where should the line be drawn between protected speech and incitement that should be criminalized? Does war change the calculus of what are appropriate and lawful measures to contain and respond to such incitement? And, perhaps most challenging of all, how does social media and the nature of communication and engagement in today’s virtual world change or complicate how we think about and can respond to incitement?

Years of surveillance-related leaks from US whistleblower Edward Snowden have fuelled an international debate on privacy, spying, and Internet surveillance. Much of the focus has centered on the role of the US National Security Agency, yet there is an important Canadian side to the story. The Communications Security Establishment, the Canadian counterpart to the NSA, has played an active role in surveillance activities both at home and abroad, raising a host of challenging legal and policy questions. With contributions by leading experts in the field, Law, Privacy and Surveillance in Canada in the Post-Snowden Era is the right book at the right time: From the effectiveness of accountability and oversight programs to the legal issues raised by metadata collection to the privacy challenges surrounding new technologies, this book explores current issues torn from the headlines with a uniquely Canadian perspective.

Drawing on previously classified government records, the authors reveal that for over 150 years, Canada has run spy operations largely hidden from public or parliamentary scrutiny - complete with undercover agents, secret sources, agent provocateurs, coded communications, elaborate files, and all the usual apparatus of deception and betrayal so familiar to fans of spy fiction. As they argue, what makes Canada unique among Western countries is its insistent focus of its surveillance inwards, and usually against Canadian citizens.