OTTAWA – Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan says he fears for the government’s ability to fight terrorism in light of “an increasingly complex legal environment” in which judges are no longer deferring to the government in its efforts to deport foreign suspects.
“It raises questions about whether we can protect national security and I can tell you I am concerned,” Van Loan told Canwest News Service. “I spend a fair bit of time thinking about it.”
His comments followed a disastrous week in the courts for the Conservative federal government as it watched one of its key tools for fighting terrorism — the power to detain non-Canadian suspects without charge or without knowing the case against them — suffer critical blows that have left the regime in tatters.
On the approval of two cabinet ministers, the government can issue immigration “security certificates” that permit the incarceration of a suspect in “administrative detention” until a Federal Court judge determines whether he or she should be returned to his or her home country.
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Van Loan is right to fear the trend but what is he doing to address the problem?
When it comes to terrorism too often ‘we have seen the enemy and he is us’.