Fast forward a few days and we have the arrests of Raed Jasser and Chiheb Esseghaier, accused of a plot to attack a VIA passenger train enroute between New York and Toronto. And just a few days after that, the Harper government successfully passed amendments to Canada’s anti-terrorism legislation. The Combatting Anti-Terrorism Act resuscitates two provisions in the original law enacted shortly after 9/11 but expired in 2007 because of built-in “sunset” clauses: preventative detention for up to 72 hours without charge, and compelled testimony in investigative hearings. The timing of the two events was, in the words of Jasser’s Toronto lawyer, John Norris, “surprising.” Even assuming accident over deliberate political manipulation, the three events—Boston, the VIA arrests, and the Tories’ successful efforts to beef up anti-terror provisions—require some dispassionate and depoliticized analysis.

Do we really need such provisions? After all, Canadian authorities managed, albeit with significant assistance from informants within Canada’s diverse Muslim communities, to foil plotters in the “Toronto 18” group arrested in 2006, and now in the VIA rail case. There are two schools of thought on this. The Canadian Bar Association, the NDP, and civil libertarians generally believe that new measures are not necessary and, in any event, run dangerously counter to our legal traditions and the spirit of the Charter. The current government, along with the Globe and Mail editorial board and security professionals generally believe that desperate times sometimes require desperate measures and the fact that the preventative detention and investigative hearings provisions were not used in the past is no indicator of their potential future utility in the law enforcement tool kit. Craig Forcese of U of Ottawa’s law faculty defends the provisions, with the reasoning that it is better to have the measures enshrined in (and limited by) law rather than potential extra-legal responses. Better to have emergency measures within the big tent of the law.

One would suspect that preventative detention and investigative hearings would only effectively work with significant intelligence and detective work in any event, which further assumes that individuals and groups were plotting long enough and were organized, leaving a trail to be followed, or having raised alarm bells in a community willing to work with law enforcement. This may be what happened in the VIA case, but given that our system rightfully presumes innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law, it is simply too soon to tell. But, then again, such provisions were obviously not needed to produce the arrests of Jasser and Esseghaier.

Getting back to Boston, what we know of the story of the Tsarnaev brothers yields the unsettling conclusion that even the most robust and civil rights-trenching provisions probably would not have helped. Everyone—family, friends, neighbours—appeared shocked and appalled that the two were capable of such an enterprise, even though the elder Tamerlan was disgruntled, disempowered by his own lack of success, and had a brush-in with the law over domestic violence. In this respect, he was no different from probably thousands of other young men in the United States who would otherwise not resort to public or political violence. He was apparently on a classified FBI watch list, and the Russians had provided the Americans with a tip-off, which rather begs the question about how and why he was able to obtain a Ruger 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. Who knows if gun control or, at minimum, background checks, might have helped but it is hardly realistic to round up all the angry young men with access to guns and the Internet in a 20^th century democracy.

We can anxiously wring out hands about “homegrown” radicalization and applaud efforts by the RCMP and CSIS to work closely with Muslim communities: fostering  mutual understanding, building or enhancing lines of communication and sharing worrying information seems far less suited to political grandstanding in parliament and is far more fruitful given Canada’s relatively (and thankfully) limited experience. Yet even here, care must be taken: if the past can teach us anything, there’s a fine line between community engagement and targeting a minority religion or ethnicity for special scrutiny. International conflicts have too often resulted in a pointless and rights-denying search and destroy mission for the “enemy within.” Any hint of guilt-by-association yields suspicion and disengagement and one side, and tunnel vision and an increased possibility of false positives on the other. The stakes are high, as many Canadian citizens know personally. Just ask Maher Arar.

We decided first to mark the occasion with a visit to Trafalgar Square, the endpoint of the annual May Day march and rally. Apparently the Left, unlike the private sector, doesn’t really operate on a tight schedule so were left waiting, in itself not an unpleasant experience given the sunny weather and a chance to touch base with the radical newspaper sellers, pamphleteers and advocates of various causes. I thoroughly enjoyed my brief conversation with a very earnest young man who was surprised to learn I knew much more about Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis than he did—surely what he did not expect from the be-speckled woman old enough to be his mother. I kindly pointed out to the sandwich-board wearers with the tiny-print notice on the front about rights for working mothers that perhaps their mode of communication wasn’t up to 21^st century means of getting the message out; they responded with surface cheer but were obviously a tad perturbed by my intervention. The publications contained what I sadly expected: grief over the death of Hugo Chavez, celebration of Cuban democracy, shame about European imperialism and Israeli apartheid. One bulletin was listed as an affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency: a group with at least enough self-awareness of their own marginalization to avoid the word “Party.” Overall, the crowd was modest and quiet: the Internationale was hummed and sung as the marchers entered the square, but they hadn’t even 10% of the energy one felt at Zucotti Park in Lower Manhattan at the height of Occupy Wall Street in 2011, despite obvious dissatisfaction with Prime Minister David Cameron’s austerity measures. I attempted to generate a round of applause when the recent Bangladeshi factory collapse was mentioned, surely a good a reason as any for international worker solidarity, but too few responded. The largely gray-haired demonstrators seemed to care more about the survival of the National Health Service and pensions than reaching the next generation: a fact betrayed by the event’s almost non-existent web presence.

Recognizing, like Freud, the narcissism of minor difference, it was difficult to tell the various groups apart—no doubt one of the reasons for the earnest calls for unity by the Trades Union Congress. Lots of red banners with the usual slogans, but surely Stalin on the same banner with Marx draped at the bottom of Nelson’s column did more to discredit than advertise the movement. It’s actually hard to find a member of the Old, New, or any Left to actually have the gumption or idiocy to defend the Soviet dictator anymore; it’s certainly much easier to make the case that Marx, more an effective analyst of the contradictions of globalizing capitalism than a theorist of revolutionary action in any event, is figure of contemporary relevance despite various regimes held up in his name in the 20^th century.

Tony Benn was scheduled to speak, surely a crowd pleaser. I hadn’t even realized the ancient aristocrat of the British Labour Party was still alive; my cousin recalled that he had retired after an impressive 50 years in the House of Commons, not to spend more time with his family, as is usually offered as the perennial excuse, but in order to spend more time on politics. We were disappointed—after the fourth speaker, we were told that the 88 year-old Benn was not well enough to attend. Fair enough, but I couldn’t help feeling that the delayed announcement was designed to keep the meager crowed there just a touch longer—a tactic affirmed by our quick departure, and of many others. I privately wondered if Benn’s appearance is advertised every year to boost the crowd.

Our next stop was Highgate Cemetery, to visit its most famous resident, Karl Marx. Actually, six members of the Marx family are buried at the site (including his long-suffering wife Jenny, daughter Eleanor, several grandchildren and his former housekeeper and paramour Helene Demuth), which includes an impressive bust of Marx on a stone plinth. There were a few fresh flowers scattered about. We had a charming exchange with an American family of CPUSA origins, New Yorkers now transplanted to DC who were bemused to discover their new graveside acquaintance was conducting research on trials of American communists in the 1950s while working at a Canadian military staff college on a publicly-funded research grant. I enjoy cracking stereotypes wide open and passed around my business card. I regaled them with what I knew of Claudia Jones, buried appropriately to the left of Marx—a well-known and respected communist from Trinidad who wrote on the intersections of race, class, and gender long before second wave feminism made the topic one of interest in nascent women’s studies departments. Jones was deported from the US after being indicted with 20 other communists in 1951for conspiracy to teach and advocate the overthrow of the US government by force and violence. The evidence was both thin and, according to one FBI informer-witness who later recanted, fabricated. Needless to say, the trial was deeply political, the guilty verdicts all but inevitable. Jones’ trial was one of 15 similar trials held all over the United States—from Puerto Rico to Hawaii, Connecticut to Denver, involving more than 135 people. Today those trials are all but forgotten.

We rounded out the day’s events with a pub dinner and attendance at the 2013 annual Marx lecture organized by the Friends of Highgate. This was no radical gathering, resembling something more akin to a Monty Python sketch. The featured speaker was erudite and interesting enough, a Cambridge professor of intellectual history who aimed to situate Marx into 19^th century legal debates about the origins and continuing examples of village communal life, from the Russian mir to the Iroquois confederacy. Nevertheless, one had to wince at the befuddled nature of his presentation, with dropped pages and too many moments of dead air time; he couldn’t quite manage the simple effort of speaking into the microphone. He seemed to principally address the middle-aged woman with the plummy accent wearing the purple sweater and pearl necklace that had introduced him. I’m sure his writing is infinitely better, but it saddens me to think of my many marginally and unemployed academic friends who would do better on a bad day to a large hall filled with unruly undergraduates.

My May Day experience was amusing and depressing in equal measure. Marx had once famously claimed after his dissatisfaction with the “revolutionary phrase-mongering” of French socialists Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, “…ce qu’il y a de certain c’est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste” (“…what is certain is that [if they are Marxists], [then] I myself am not a Marxist.” I could not have summed up the day better myself.

Al Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran are not just separated by the Sunni-Shi’a schism. Al Qaeda’s particular Salafi interpretation of Sunni Islam is virulently anti-Shi’a.  Core Shi’a practices, such as the veneration of shrines and saints are considered by the Salafis to be apostasy, not much different than idol worship or polytheism.  Al Qaeda’s interpretation is inspired by the state practice of religion in Saudi Arabia, where the country’s Shi’a population has been politically and economically marginalized, and the public practice of Shi’a rituals has been restricted. When the Arab Spring swept across the region the Shi’a of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province rose up, only to be put down by force by the Al Saud’s security forces. Similarly, the Saudis intervened in Bahrain, where popular protests were interpreted as a pro-Iranian Shi’a uprising. The Saudis and Al Qaeda have also backed the Sunni opposition against the Iranian-backed Asad regime in Syria.

This pattern has been repeated across the region. In Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda had embedded themselves within the Taliban government, the country’s Shi’a and Persian speaking Hazaras population were persecuted. In 1988, after several Iranian diplomats were kidnapped and executed, Tehran blamed the Taliban and mobilized its military threatening to invade the country[i]. In Iraq, Al Qaeda’s off-shoots have been targeting the country’s Shia population since the fall of Saddam’s regime. Al-Qaeda’s first leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared war on Iraq’s Shi’a in 2005[ii]. Al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006, but the attacks continue. In the past month, Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI) killed 26 and wounded 190 in bombing campaign targeting Shi’a pilgrims[iii]. The Shi’a population in Pakistan has also been subject to persecution and Iran has maintained a long running war with the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan an anti-Shi’a militia allegedly funded by the Saudis and for a time attached to the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) [iv].

Iran itself claims to be a victim of Al Qaeda terrorism. In October 2009 a Sunni group drawn from Iran’s Baluchi minority named Jundullah (the Soldiers of God), staged a series of attacks against Iranian Revolutionary Guard installations. Tehran has long argued that the group is connected to Al Qaeda and supported by Pakistan’s (ISI)[v].

So, with this pattern of conflict and animosity, how is it that Al Qaeda can operate out of Iranian territory? Senior members of Al Qaeda began moving into Iran in the wake of the US war against the Taliban, although they appear to have used Iran as a transit country before then. Initially, the Iranian government arrested their members and claimed that it planned to put them on trial. However, it is rumored that Iran tried to trade its Al Qaeda fugitives to the US for members of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MKO). Tehran has accused the MKO terrorist activities dating back to the early 1980s[vi]. Although no deal materialized with the US, in an effort to reduce tensions ties with Riyadh, Iran did deport several hundred Saudi nationals[vii]. In 2004 they deported Khalid Al Harbi, a prominent Saudi national involved with Al Qaeda[viii].

Unfortunately, as relations with the west and Saudi Arabia have deteriorated, there has been little incentive for Iran to turn over more of Al Qaeda’s membership. Rather it has held them under a loose form of house arrest. This has allowed Tehran to keep tabs on them, and use them as leverage to dissuade Al Qaeda from further attacks against Iranian interests. Al Qaeda has benefited from this arrangement as well. While under detention, its members seem free to go about their business as long as they do not interfere with Iranian interests, and they are safer than they would be in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. Occasionally, they kidnap an Iranian diplomat outside of the country and use them to leverage the release particular individuals, as they did for members of Bin Laden’s family in 2008[ix].

There is a degree of tacit cooperation in this complex relationship, but it is not an alliance in any recognizable form. Iran may hope to use Al Qaeda as a proxy force if they are attacked. However, this would only make sense of if they were truly desperate. Al Qaeda is simply too hostile and too uncontrollable. It is also likely that Iran has provided Al Qaeda with money and weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq. This would be consistent with Tehran’s pattern of backing every viable actor (including the central governments) to hedge against the unpredictable nature of the conflicts. Al Qaeda, however, is not their favored group in either country.

How Iran will react to this latest incident is unclear. We might hope that Tehran would cooperate with Canada and the west as a sign of good faith. It is more likely though, that they will deny any involvement, perhaps wrap a few Al Qaeda knuckles and maintain the status quo. Upsetting their arrangement with Al Qaeda could prove costly for Tehran, and it is uncertain they would get much back from the West in return.

After 20 years on the police force, why did you choose to speak out against drug prohibition after your retirement?

By the time that I was on the job five years, I realized that there was only one aspect of the job that no matter how vigorously I or my brother and sister officers did it, it didn’t make any difference. No matter how many drug arrests we made, nothing ever changed. There was never a shortage of drugs on the street.

Why did you decide to start an organization comprising of fellow law enforcement and justice system professionals?

All through the ‘90s I talked about this idea I had for this law enforcement group, because I knew there were a lot of people from my own profession that felt the same way I did. I felt that a voice from them would be similar to the voice we heard from the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. When they were out speaking against the war, whether you agreed with their conclusion on the war or not, nobody would dare say to them ‘you don’t understand the problem.’ And that’s what I thought a law enforcement group would bring to this discussion.

With the legalization of marijuana use in Colorado and Washington, do you think the tide is finally turning when it comes to drug policy in the United States?

Yes and No… My fear is that what we’re going to see is the legalization of marijuana first, and then we’re going to lose a whole bunch of people in the (anti-prohibition) movement because they’re going to have their marijuana.

Then we’re going to hear, ‘Wait, we’ve still got the drive-bys, we’ve still got the gangs’ and the argument and the discussion is going to have to start all over again. We are not Law Enforcement Against Marijuana Prohibition, we are Law Enforcement against the policy of prohibition, and how we define the policy of prohibition is the prohibiting of consensual adult behavior.

So you are advocating for the legalization of all drugs?

I explain to (people) that all drugs should be legal — heroin, methamphetamine, crack-cocaine — and in order to agree with our position, they do not have to change their mind about any of those drugs. I’m not saying that these drugs should be legal because they’re okay. I’m saying these drugs should be legal because they’re too dangerous to leave in the hands of gangsters, thugs, and terrorists and 13-year-old children on street corners. We call this policy in America drug control policy, and in reality, when you institute a prohibition, you are actually institutionalizing de-control of the whole marketplace.

So you believe that all drugs should be legal, but regulated?

We at LEAP are not the people that you should come to and ask what the laws should be. We are telling you that when you send us out there to enforce prohibition laws, we are incapable of doing it, and you’re causing more harm in your society by making this activity illegal than you would if you regulated and controlled it. If we decided to legalize these drugs, LEAP as an organization has no position on how they should be regulated. But any form of a legalized, regulated marketplace is better than what we have now.

But wouldn’t legalization lead to wider use?

I know what happened in America when we legalized alcohol. Just as many people were using alcohol (after prohibition) as before, but now it’s out in the open where we can give assistance to people who need it.

If you’re an alcoholic but you never drink and drive, and you never hurt other people or other people’s property, what do we do with you? Pretty much nothing. We leave you alone. What do we do for you? We guarantee you a purity of product, we provide you, as much as possible, with safe places to purchase and use the drug, and if you want treatment, you can go to an AA meeting starting tomorrow.

A heroin addict who uses every day, what do we do with them? Well, if we catch them, in New York State it’s a felony, it goes on their record. What about purity of product? What about a safe place to use in? And what about treatment? If I’m the heroin addict and you want to help me, why don’t you help me like you’re helping the alcoholic? If I’m not hurting other people or other people’s property, leave me alone, guarantee me a purity of product, give me a safe place to purchase and use it, and allow me to access treatment without having to admit that I’m a criminal first.

When do you think the “War On Drugs” will end?

I don’t know… (There are) other examples of things we’ve done in this society for a profoundly long period of time that were never good ideas. We did slavery in this country for a hundred years after we signed the constitution. It’s the same with this drug prohibition stuff that we’re doing now. So I don’t know how long it’s going to take people to educate out of this, but eventually I have no doubt in my mind that they will.

Peter Christ spent twenty years on the police force, retiring as a captain in Tonawanda, NY in 1989. In 2002, he co-founded Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a drug policy reform group dedicated to ending the “War on Drugs.”

Photo Credit: Alexodus via Compfight cc

According to Paula Amato (a member of the Ethics Committee and co-author of the guidelines), the policy change was motivated by new, reassuring data on pregnancy in women over 50. As summarized in the guidelines: “In one report of 45 live births in healthy women aged 50-63 who established a pregnancy with donated eggs, 35% had pregnancy-induced hypertension, 20% had gestational diabetes, and 78% had a cesarean section.”

It is difficult to see how these data are reassuring, however, when one compares these numbers to those available for healthy women aged 15-45 who establish a pregnancy without using reproductive technologies: 5-7% (not 35%) have pregnancy-induced hypertension, 3-4% (not 20%) have gestational diabetes, and 27-28% (not 78%) have a cesarean.

The new guidelines consider three arguments in favor of oocyte donation to women over 50. The first argument insists that there is no reason to assume that older parents lack the physical and psychological stamina to raise young children. According to the Ethics Committee, it is not unusual for grandparents to parent children, so why prevent women who are of an age for grandparenting from experiencing pregnancy and becoming parents? The second argument is that older men can still father children, so why shouldn’t older women be able to get pregnant using another woman’s eggs? The third argument is that women have a positive right to satisfy their “strong desire” for children. A negative right is a right to non-interference. A positive right is a right to be provided with some good or service.

The first argument is supposed to be an argument based on societal practices. The most relevant societal practice, however, is not the parenting that grandparents do by default (because the parents are working, have divorced or have died), but rather social policy governing adoption by older persons. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for older persons to adopt, and when they do adopt, typically they are only able to adopt older children, not newborns. Why? Could this have something to do with assumptions about the best interests of children?

Notably, arguments about the best interests of the children are not among the arguments presented in favour of egg donation to women of post-reproductive age. The Ethics Committee hints at the benefits to children of having parents with increased economic stability and maturity, but stops short of saying that it is actually in the best interests of newborn to have parents over 50. If having aged parents is a benefit to newborns, however, then why don’t we allow persons over 50 to adopt newborns if they would prefer adoption to the use of expensive, risky technology?

And speaking of risky technology, what about the ill-considered risks to the young women who sell, trade or gift their eggs to older women so that these women can experience, pregnancy, birthing and parenting? Egg donation is onerous and risky. In addition to the considerable physical and psychological risks, there are also the twin risks of coercion and exploitation. The guidelines are notably silent about these potential harms.

The second argument in favor of oocyte donation to women over 50 is supposed to be an argument based on gender equality. But, gender equality is not about sex and reproduction. It is about social roles and parenting responsibilities. Throughout the ages women have had, and continue to have, disproportionate responsibility for parenting without adequate social resources to support them in their parenting role. For this reason, young women frequently delay childbearing while they pursue an education and a career, thereby potentially increasing their need for oocyte donation in the future.

The third argument in favor of oocyte donation to women over 50 rehearses the contemporary “rights” mantra with which we are all so familiar – a mantra that aims to transform “strong desires” into rights. The pivotal issue here, however, is not ‘rights’ but ‘responsibilities’. Family-making is about assuming the burden of care and conscience for a child, not about staking out a rights claim.

If having aged parents is good for children, then we should promote this as a matter of social policy. If this is good social policy, then it should apply equally to assisted human reproduction and adoption.

© Françoise Baylis

So at the outset there is a clear case for reform within donor countries and this has been happening. The most recent example is Germany which in 2011 undertook major reforms that restructured and consolidated 3 large aid and technical cooperation agencies into 1 ministry, to both drive efficiencies but also increase the profile of international development.

In Canada, CIDA was never alone. DFAIT, Defense, Finance, IDRC and RCMP are all important channels of Canadian aid. Back in 2000 over 75 percent of Canada’s aid was delivered through CIDA. By 2011 CIDA’s share declined to around 63 percent.

It is very hard to glean anything solely from whether a bilateral aid agency is independent or part of a wider ministry. However, that several bilateral donors have been simplifying complex aid bureaucracies is not only important from the perspective of administrative efficiency but also from the perspective of reducing the burden on partner countries.

An interesting case study for Canada could be Denmark. In the 1990s Denmark undertook a major administrative reorganisation where DANIDA (the Danish aid agency) went from being an independent unit to being part of a single-string service in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. What happened to the volume of Danish aid? According to the latest figures Danish aid expressed as a share of gross national income (GNI), exceeded the global 0.7 percent of GNI target. In 2011 Denmark gave 0.85% of GNI in aid, while Canada gave only 0.32%. Clearly the folding of DANIDA into the Foreign Ministry did not lead to reneging on aid commitments. What about the quality of Danish aid? According to the latest data from the Quality of Official Development Assistance report, on both “fostering institutions” in aid receiving countries, and “reducing the burden” on its recipients, Denmark fares better than Canada. In fact folding DANIDA into the foreign affairs ministry had the effect of raising the profile of development assistance in Danish foreign policy.

Are aid agencies located within foreign affairs ministries more cost effective? The average administrative cost of providing aid as a share of bilateral assistance is around 6.5%. At 7.6% Canada places above average. The costs of more generous donors including Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Switzerland and Denmark, where aid is located within the ministries of foreign affairs is similar or even higher than Canada. While the cost of UK, US, German and French aid is far lower. Clearly there is a case for making aid at least more efficient by rationalizing big aid bureaucracies, regardless of whether independent or located within foreign affairs.

Is there a case for closer alignment between foreign aid and commercial interests? One may ask what commercial ends has aid ever served? Consider the following. While Haiti and Afghanistan are the largest Canadian aid recipients today, historically the bulk of Canadian as well as global aid has gone to countries like India, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Aid has played a critical role in the “emergence” of emerging economies, as it has the potential to do in Africa and Asia today.

Back in the 1960s and 70s aid played a huge role in countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea. Strikingly, South Korea in 1961 was as aid reliant as a share of national income as Benin, Nicaragua, Madagascar and Senegal are today! Yet today Korea is one of our most important trading partners and a major aid donor in its own right. There is no real reason why commercial and long-term development interest should be at loggerheads.

The amalgamation of CIDA into DFATD has the potential to bring a longer term perspective into foreign policy thinking. But amalgamation should not become an excuse for policy paralysis or indifference.

It is now even more important to have a clear international policy statement that helps calibrate short term (diplomatic strategy) and long term (development outcomes) priorities which some perceive as contradictory. This is also an opportune moment to reemphasize Canada’s commitment to aid effectiveness, transparency and accountability. Ultimately, if we want it to, this reorganization presents a unique opportunity to elevate the profile of development in Canadian foreign policy.

Aniket Bhushan, The North-South Institute

This government is prescribing Canadian aid with the wrong medicine. Global evidence points to the value of empowering independent development ministries to achieve real development results, not just through big bang restructuring but also through real changes in policies and political commitments. In an environment where aid policy is increasingly skewed to service domestic and commercial interests, this merger is bound to dilute Canadian development commitments so that it serves the interests of private and parochial constituencies rather than the world’s poor.

Here is the evidence.

In the UK, development policy is implemented through an independent Department for International Development (DFID) since 1997. This restructuring was accompanied with the appointment of a strong-willed Minister committed to using aid money to achieve development good. As a Minister, she had a seat at the Cabinet table, and so had the power and the courage to badger the Prime Minister and Minister of Finance whenever development policy was getting the short end of the stick. She also had a Parliamentary Committee entirely devoted to pushing excellence in development policy. Gleneagles. Make Poverty History. The Commission on Africa. All of this originates from moving development to the heart of government.

The UK aid budget became a potent tool, funding development research, building a storehouse of knowledge and experience, and putting DFID on the map as an aid agency that knew the difference between digging wells and building effective states. It supported multilateral institutions like the World Bank, merging its funding with theirs to improve efficiency in aid distribution but also strengthening its global voice on development policy.

DFID lobbied and won exceptionalism from Treasury fiscal rules, allowing it to make long-term financial pledges to projects that sought to address the causes of poverty rather than just treating the symptoms. It also began to directly fund the central budgets of aid recipients and NGOs located in developing countries, actors closer to the beneficiaries who better knew the needs and wants of local communities than any expat. Independence and political championship gave it the courage to implement legislation with real teeth, making it illegal for narrow special interests to overwhelm its development aims.

DFID improved staff morale by attracting top civil service recruits, young people motivated by a powerful mission to help but no longer encumbered by the legacies of British colonial history. It decentralized staff all over the world and gave them more authority to disburse funds, trusting them to do this well rather than monitoring their every move and burdening them with forms to fill for their London-based managers.

Since 1997, DFID has skyrocketed to the top of international rankings of donor agencies. Make no mistake, it has had its problems and still continues to have them. Nevertheless, independence from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office gave DFID the space to flex its political muscles. A powerful minister will always be attracted to a powerful ministry. Making DFID more autonomous was the bedrock for enhancing political commitments to development, which in turn has turned both the agency, and the UK, into a world-class center for all things development.

Compare this to Norway and you see why Canada’s making a huge mistake with this merger. In 2004, Norway’s development directorate, NORAD was merged into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The move was largely motivated by bureaucratic politics at the time, especially the desire to rein in NORAD, which had both autonomy and a global profile that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lusted after.

Integration has come with real reasons to believe that Norway suffers from “doublethink.” Aid is used more than ever to cultivate its geopolitical aims, especially in NATO and the Arctic. Aid has been dangled as a carrot in front of fragile governments in Angola to land lucrative commercial contracts for Norway in its Oil-for-Development Programme. Its trade policy is among the most self-serving of OECD nations, with high tariffs on agricultural products and high levels of domestic agricultural subsidies minimizing possibilities for exports from the Global South. Policy coherence has become a euphemism for development policy dilution and advancing other, more vested, interests.

The merger has also been financially costly, increasing contract administration in embassies and worsening operational dispersion. Yet, these costs have remained hidden from view because of Norway’s rising aid budget that has surpassed the 0.7% global aid target. Norway is now officially the most generous donor in the OECD.

In the absence of a rising budget as in Norway or strong political obligations to development like in the UK, the decision to merge CIDA with DFAIT is a grave mistake. The real travesty is that it could have been wholly avoidable if Canada bothered to make policy with the benefit of global evidence.

Nilima Gulrajani is Senior Researcher at the Global Economic Governance Programme at the University of Oxford.

But, at least in my lifetime,  a counter-myth of sorts seemed to have emerged denying  the Canadian militia  of any noteworthy contribution during the U.S invasions.  More recent interpretations of the U.S invasions of 1812-14 often tend to portray the Canadian militia  as a bumbling auxiliary force  that was largely  uncommitted to defending the country.     

The truth,  as with  so many contrary historical interpretations,  lies somewhere in between.

Certainly,  the Canadian militia  did not- and by its very nature could not- take the lead in defending the Canadian colonies.

Yet at the same time it would be equally wrong to  automatically dismiss or  denigrate wholesale   the militia’s contribution  to the War.

Casualties Speak Volumes

To begin,  I can think of a least 314 reasons why we should  respect and honour  the Canadian militia  that was the number of militia soldiers who were killed in action or died while on duty in  Upper Canada where most of the fighting took place.

Private Henry Cope of the  2^nd York Militia may have just been a second-rate  militia soldier but he was killed in action in much the same way  as his regular army counterparts during the Battle of Queenston Heights  on October 13, 1812.  The service of Private Henry Woodruff of the  1^st Lincoln Militia  may have only been part-time until  he was captured  by the Americans and became a full-time  Prisoner of War  where he subsequently died on July 11, 1814.  And,  like so many soldiers of his day disease,  rather than an American musket ball,  ended the life of Captain Donald McKay  of the 2nd  Glengarry Militia on May 4, 1813.

Looking at the militia casualty rate  we must also consider the fact that the population of Upper Canada on the eve of the War of 1812 was only 76,000 which today is just over half of the population of Prince Edward Island!  Imagine, if you will,  how  profound  an impact these  local militia  casualties   would have had to this tiny  resident population many of whom were already suffering the social and economic impact of having a major war fought in their own tiny colony.

With facts like this we truly should  be ready to forgive the resident population of the time  for constructing an inflated  militia legacy in the years following the War of  1812?

Militia  never organized to operate at  the same level as British regulars

From an operational  perspective ,  we seem all too willing today  to blame the Canadian militia for being what they were expected to be at the time- non-permanent soldiers trained  at various levels of readiness to  compliment the regular army.  

And that is exactly what today’s reserve army  organized to do.

Furthermore these  1812-14  militia  battalions ,  quite unlike their  seasoned regular British army  counterparts ,  had to deal with the challenges of inexperience, time,  and civilian commitment.  Today it takes many months to properly train the individual soldier  to a fully reliable professional standard.  But in 1812,  faced with the immediate invasion of their country the Canadian militia did not have that much time to prepare and get adequate equipment,  training and experience.  Furthermore,  quite unlike their long service British counterparts, militia soldiers were far more   conflicted  over lingering  commitments to their  families, farms, businesses and  homes nearby.

Yet in spite of all this  detachments of militia played a honourable role next to their regular British counterparts in battles such as Queenston Heights,  Fort George,   and Lundy’s  Lane.  Between battles militia contingents regularly stood guard on the frontier  and performed a variety of other duties in support of the war effort.  The  all-Canadian contingent  of defenders at the strategically important  Battle of Chateauguay  on November 11, 1813 consisted  of both  militia  and permanent Canadian regiments, notably  the Canadian Voltigeurs.

Would and modern hastily-organized militia force be any better today? 

Finally,  before  allowing  another generation of historians to  belittle the Canadian militia during the War of 1812,  let’s also  consider the following.

Should Canada ever be invaded today by another country just how  professional and just how battle-ready   would any  local,  hastily mobilized army formation be with respect to our  regular army?  Furthermore,   just how  far would the patriotism  and fighting commitment  of the average adult  Canadian  go should they  suddenly get the order to  leave their families serve and  fight or to have their sons and daughters do the same?

Exactly!

So lets give the  civilians who had the courage to make  some sincere military  gesture two-hundred years ago their due.

Photos courtesy of Margaret Petrik.

Well, you can rest-assured that Bill C-55 is not Bill C-30 with a pretty new dress.

To refresh your memory on why Bill C-30 was so strongly opposed, here’s BCCLA Policy Director Micheal Vonn’s short and succinct summary of what was originally proposed in the bill:

C-30 was the government’s proposal to significantly expand the surveillance powers of police and intelligence agencies. For example, the bill would have required telecommunications service providers give police and intelligence agencies certain kinds of information about their customers without a warrant and require telecommunications service providers to in-build surveillance architecture into their systems.

In contrast to these highly invasive measures, Bill C-55 offers considerably less in the way of additional surveillance on Canadians, and, importantly, will make national surveillance laws conform to the Supreme Court surveillance decisions made last year.

The CBC reports that the spying measures proposed in Bill C-55 will only give law enforcement “the right to secretly intercept private communications without a warrant in relatively rare, urgent situations.” Further, the government has assured Canadians that there are strict limits on the types of officials who can use the wiretaps, and the specific types of crimes that can be involved. By contrast, Bill C-30 would have allowed “authorities” to collect your data in any situation without a warrant – not just in emergencies. In addition, both the provincial and federal governments would be required to issue annual reports on the use of such measures- a method of oversight not present in Bill C-30.

So, what’s the big takeaway here? Well, in a nutshell: Bill C-55 is not Bill C-30.

However there are still things to be concerned about in C-55. For example, how are ‘emergencies’ defined, and who has the ability to define them? In addition, the Bill limits wiretaps to 90 days, after which anyone who has their communications intercepted should be notified by police. However this period can be extended in 90 day blocks, meaning that warrantless wiretaps could continue without notice for up to three years.

As the BC Civil Liberties Association argued this week in a submission to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Bill C-55 should be used as a stop-gap measure in emergencies, when there is not time to seek a warrant for interception. But not providing a time limit on this emergency surveillance, C-55 could be used as an alternative form of longterm wiretapping.

Other spying developments requiring vigilance

At the same time as these issues are being debated, other policy developments suggest that the ghosts of Bill C-30 may take on a new life behind closed doors.

As Micheal Vonn again notes, “Ironically, having won such a wonderful democratic victory, we are almost assuredly going to see the arena for such changes now slink out of the public forum and into the realm of the shadows.”

A recent blog post by surveillance expert Christopher Parsons entitled ‘Lawful Access is dead; Long live Lawful Intercept!’ illustrates the backdoor methods through which some policy makers are still quietly pushing internet surveillance.

According to Parsons, Vic Toews’ department, Public Safety Canada, is working with Industry Canada to change the rules for wireless licensing. These changes affect the ‘lawful intercept’ requirements for telecommunication providers – rules that require the service provider to have the ability to access and store communications when provided with a warrant. Changes to these rules will significantly expand “the volume and types of communications that ISPs must be able to intercept and preserve”.

Why is this important? Because as Parsons explains, these changes would make it so that ISPs have the intercept capabilities and data retention facilities that would have been introduced had bills like C-30 passed. Put another way, these Industry Canada changes would build the capacity for surveillance into our ISPs, which is the first step in putting online spying into action. [13]

How will the government slip this past Canadians? Changes to licensing agreements aren’t subject to the same kind of public debate as national laws like Bill C-30. As Vonn notes, this is a way of “doing through the back door what you can’t do through the front door. It’s a way of insulating critical debates about our rights from the Canadian public.”

This continued effort to build in the capacity for mass-spying is doubly worrying because, currently, if law enforcement officials ask an ISP to turn over a user’s data to without a warrant, the ISPs may or may not provide the information at their discretion. In such situations, some ISPs do refuse (e.g. Teksavvy) but some don’t (Google and Twitter recently released stats on the number of government requests for user data they receive, and it’s a lot- so you’d better hope you have a pro-privacy ISP).

While Bills C-30 and C-55 would make such warrantless disclosures of information mandatory, they do contain reporting requirements which would give us an insight into what law enforcement and service providers are doing with our data. By contrast, when ISPs give up user information voluntarily, those users don’t know their information has been turned over to law enforcement.

Another piece of legislation to be mindful of is the now dormant Bill C-12, which may encourage such voluntary disclosure and further weaken oversight. The bill is an amendment to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and is currently lying in wait with Industry Minister Christian Paradis expressing no clear plans to advance the bill. As Ottawa professor Michael Geist points out, “the bill has some serious faults, with no penalties for security breach, no update to the Privacy Commissioner’s powers, and provisions that make organizations more likely to disclose personal information without warrant during an investigation.”

If the government is really serious about scrapping online spying, they need to pull back not only on the bill itself, but on all the other little policy changes that together build the spying system. Once the capacity for online spying is put in place, it will be challenging to remove, and it should absolutely not be built in before there is even a law to allow its use.

So is online spying dead?

The current terrain of Canadian spying legislation is complex. Bill C-30 is dead, and that is cause to celebrate. But it’s also important to remain vigilant. Serious questions remain over Bill C-55 and its so-called “emergency” situations, as well as how long authorities can continue to monitor communications after getting approval for intercept. At the same time, Bill C-55 represents an opportunity to limit warrantless wiretaps to emergency situations only. Such a stipulation would prevent future attempts at mass surveillance along the lines of Bill C-30.

On the privacy side, Bill C-12 threatens to further erode the protections we do have. However we have already seen positive steps in a pro-privacy direction, as last week NDP MP Charmaine Borg officially announced her intent to pass a Private Member’s Bill that would force companies to notify Canadians of any release of their private information, and would give the Privacy Commissioner enforcement powers to prevent non-compliance.

Canadians need guarantees that telecom companies and online service providers will not surrender our private information to authorities without court oversight.

Call on your MP to make a pro-privacy commitment

Catherine Hart is the Communications Coordinator, and Josh Tabish is the Campaign Coordinator at Openmedia.ca

The inauguration of the ICC, held in the ancient Ridderzaal in The Hague on 11 March 2003, marks its first decade this month. The Court was created to end impunity for the worst known crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression. Ten years on, the mural of justice and lasting peace remains an aspiration.

The opening lines of the Court’s founding document, the Rome Statute, have unintentionally proved idealistic. Together, 121 state parties “resolved to guarantee lasting respect for and the enforcement of international justice.”

It took Plato several books of The Republic to prelude, but finally, Socrates captures justice as the result of a “well-ordered” society where just rules are followed. Creating the ICC did not guide governments to follow a set of just rules. Instead, the last decade witnessed chaotic engagement in the global war on terror, and uninterrupted civilian murder and bodily violation of gross magnitude. Governments unwound rules that international lawyers understood were settled.

On one important count, the ICC vision is fulfilled. Ten years ago, eighteen judges became “the embodiment of our collective conscience,” in the words of former United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan. The bench has since been spotlessly decision-making, manifest in its first and widely praised conviction of Congolese war criminal Thomas Lubanga. Success is also evident in the first referral by the UN Security Council to the ICC in 2005, a feat for the Court’s credibility. Other successes are that the first Chief Prosecutor retired in grace after a long and colourful term, and that he showed an arrest warrant issued mid-conflict – as sought for three top Libyans during the 2011 civil war – is compatible with, in Annan’s words, “the delicate process of dismantling tyrannies.”

In short, the ICC was a milestone in firmly legitimating the international community’s prerogative to deliver justice. It was not, however, a compass of any strong function for guiding rules-based conduct by governments. The major failures that followed the inauguration revealed that when they prefer, governments are willfully blind to the legal pathways they help to chart.

First and most shameful, just as “never again” after the Holocaust was no end (it’s been “never again, never again, never again …” as the world watched genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, etc.), the international community is still watching mass crimes against humanity. In the Rome Statute, states vowed they were “determined to put an end to impunity.” It took too long to intervene as conflict tore open Sudan and Côte d’Ivoire, and the world still watches Congo and Syria burn. Imagine a family’s grieving for the violent death of one young child, the bloodied corpse of one grown son, the rape of one mother. This is likely all we can imagine. The horror in Syria and Congo is beyond empathy.

Leaders in these countries ought to agonize, anticipating an arrest warrant. One autocrat cannot allow the rape of nearly 1,700 women and girls – in the first half of 2012 alone in just two of Congo’s Eastern provinces, nor can one tyrant oversee 70,000Syrians slaughtered, without also violating humanity. The failure is precisely that prosecution awaits because, once begun, carnage thrives on inaction.

In a second remarkable failure, the international community sustained an illegal extraordinary rendition program for nearly a decade under direction of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Canadians are familiar with the consequences, the damage to one individual and his family, through the experience of Maher Arar. The Canadian engineer was sent to Syria by the US Government in collusion with Canadian authorities, detained for close to a year and tortured. A report from the Open Society Justice Initiative on the global program found 54 countries, including Canada, facilitated the CIA’s secret detention, rendition and interrogation program following September 2001.

Like Arar, many prisoners were tortured although the practice is banned by international law. This law is not the sort one state can opt to ignore, as easy as North Korea ending a peace pact. Instead, jurists call it binding: torture is universally unlawful. Again defying the Rome Statute and its call to respect and enforce international justice, dozens of states, even parties to the Convention against Torture, broke fundamental shared rules.

Habeas corpus is still unrestored. This is clear in the dismal treatment of extraordinary rendition victims. According to the Open Society Justice Initiative, only four countries have issued compensation, and just one, Italy, has convicted officials for their involvement. It is likewise clear in the continuing life of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay used by the US military and CIA to detain without trial and interrogate prisoners since 2002, despite earlyevidence of torture.

Third, there is no code of conduct for targeted killing by drones. In February, President Barack Obama’s Administration ended its silence by acknowledging a policy that allows the President to authorize the killing of virtually any national, including Americans, without due process. The policy is criticized as both strategically disastrous and a flagrant breach of rule of law. It’s contagious too, with an estimated 680 drone programs worldwide, up from 195 in 2005.

Another recent estimate pegs killing by the American drone program at 4,700. Outside the combat zones of Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, the killing happens in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and possibly Philippines. The word ‘possibly’ is a characteristic label for the secret and extrajudicial killings, for instance, on which laws of war and human rights the US Government applies to the program. Possibly all, or possibly none, according to the cryptic White House response to a UN review that “targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law.” Beyond awhite paper leaked in February, all legal reasoning is classified. The deaths of 4,700 people, by a secret decision without a judge, signal that national interest still crudely trumps universal rules.

—

To peg agreement on the Rome Statute as a breakthrough for ending impunity is to miss the bigger picture, that the ICC authors oriented global relations towards rule of law. But ten years show the pivot didn’t last. The indicators are enduring, mass crimes against humanity without intervention, a globally executed extraordinary rendition program, and another illegal but consensual program, non-battlefield killing by drone.

The decision to put Nazi war criminals on trial in 1945 was, as Chief Prosecutor Justice Robert Jackson phrased, “the greatest tribute that power has ever paid to reason.” The ICC continues that tribute, but in disunity with leading foreign policy.