Search: “national security”

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on September 2, 2019. It should come as a surprise to no one that people in many parts of the world lack confidence in important public institutions. Whether we are talking about governments in general or more specifically agencies such as law enforcement and security intelligence, there is […]

This piece appeared in the Hill Times on February 25, 2019. If there is one legal tool that divides Canadians like few others it is the so-called ‘national security certificates’. These are administrative processes whereby the government can remove those who are not Canadian citizens and who are seen as ‘undesirable’. To cite Public Safety […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on February 18, 2019. One duty that a government or state has to treat seriously is the protection of its citizenry. Police forces, militaries, security intelligence services and other bodies are created, resourced and run by various levels of government (federal, provincial, municipal in Canada) with the goal […]

An edited version of this piece appeared in The Hill Times on July 23, 2018 Is Alex Neve, the secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada insane? Full disclosure: I have been a supporter of Amnesty International and its work for decades.  I admire the positions they adopt and the advocacy they employ in the interests of […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on May 7, 2018 Pop quiz!  What is Canada’s ‘national game’?  Duh it’s hockey of course (or ‘ice hockey’ as the rest of the world knows it as if it needed to be distinguished from ‘field hockey’).  What with the NHL playoffs on and one Canadian team still […]

One would think that a state has fundamental rights and obligations in the same way that people do.  Any state must, for instance, have a monopoly on the use of force since in the absence of such we would live in anarchy.  I agree that the state exists only – or rather should exist only […]

When I was in high school the movie Midnight Express came out (yes, I am THAT old).  This was a film adaptation of the true story of Billy Hayes, an American arrested and jailed in the early 1970s for trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey.  The movie portrayed Mr. Hayes as the poor American […]

After much delay, the  Trudeau government announced today that it will introduce legislation into the House of Commons that contains a significant overhaul on how this country’s security intelligence community operates.  Bill C-59 is wide-ranging in scope and seeks to address some of the concerns Canadians raised over the previous Harper government’s C-51, passed in […]

Germany has spent a long time apologising for the actions and crimes of the Nazi regime.  Not to mention the price it paid during the Versailles conference in 1919 for its decision to launch WWI (and in that case the price exacted by the victors played a big part in laying the conditions for WWII). […]

Earlier this morning the suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack that killed 12 and wounded dozens more was shot to death by Italian police in Milan.  An international manhunt ended successfully with the killing of Anis Amri, a Tunisian refugee who had spent time in Italy before moving on to Germany. He was known to […]