Friday, March 26, 2010

Toews passes the buck.


Faithful to the Conservative Party of Canada and its practice of opacity and of evading accountability, the Minister for Public Safety blamed civil servants for documents that had been heavily censored. Vic Toews was reacting to a question raised by Gilles Duceppe, the BQ leader in the House of Commons.

According to a Radio-Canada news report, Djemila Benhabib discovered in 2007 that CSIS had checked out her credit rating. She contacted the agency to ask why she was being investigated. When CSIS stonewalled, Benhabib presented a complaint to the Security Intelligence Review Committee. Two years later, the Committee sent her a copy of the CSIS report written about her with most of the pages blacked out. It also concluded that the agency had the right to look at her credit file, but did not give her the justification for this action.

Djemila Benhabib is the author of a book "Ma vie à contre-Coran" - loosely translated: My Life Against the Current/Qur'an - which opposes democracy to theocracy. She holds ferocious views regarding shariah, and the preservation of secularity in the public realm. She is convinced that she was investigated because of her Arab and Muslim ancestry.

When Duceppe raised the point in question period, he observed that recommendations presented 3 years ago, to reform the policies and practices of the intelligence-gathering agencies, have not been implemented. "Perhaps the prime minister does not really want to carry out a reform since this culture of censorship and secrecy at the expense of human rights is quite useful for the current Government."

1 comment:

J S said...

Or Tommy Douglas. Oops.