Creating
Insecurities in Order to Strengthen the State
A recent poll
conducted for The Globe and Mail and
CTV found that a significant majority of Canadians support a reduction of civil
liberties in order to combat terrorism. This result is not surprising given the
systematic propaganda campaign that has been carried out by various Canadian
government officials in the wake of the July 9 bombings of the London transit system.
Following the London bombings, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Anne McLellan toured Canada
with the message that it is only a matter of time before similar terrorist
attacks are launched in Canada.
Transport Minister Jean Lapierre has been making
similar dire predictions. He recently announced a number of new security
measures for Canada’s
transportation system, including expansion of the use of security cameras and
the creation of a Canadian no-fly list of people barred from boarding planes
because of security concerns. General Hilliard, Canada’s top military commander,
also received a lot of media coverage for his sensationalist views on the topic
of terrorism and his militaristic, pro-U.S. and anti-Muslim opinions.
All of this
hysteria about the terrorist threat to Canadians is, of course, designed to produce
exactly the results found in the Globe
& Mail poll. It is designed to create an atmosphere in which Canadians
are willing to give up their civil liberties in exchange for supposed security.
However, McLellan, Lapierre
and Hilliard have not explained to Canadians how their proposed ramping up of
security measures and restrictions of civil liberties will prevent terrorist
attacks in Canada.
Such measures are already in place in Britain
and failed to prevent the bombings of the London
transit system. In fact, the most draconian security measures in the world
exist in Israel
and terrorist attacks are still carried out in that country. Clearly,
strengthening and fascizing the state will not
prevent terrorist attacks. This is because the problem is a political problem
and the solution is, therefore, also political.
The modern
Canadian experience with terrorism began in the late 1960s and early 1970s with
the FLQ bombings in Quebec.
It turned out that most of these acts were inspired by RCMP agents, who also supplied
the dynamite used to make the bombs. The RCMP were operating as part of
Operation Chaos, an operation involving U.S., British, Canadian and Australian
intelligence agencies aimed at disrupting the revolutionary movement of the
youth and students which was growing in those countries at that time. The 1970
FLQ crisis was used to justify the imposition of the War Measures Act in Canada. Under
the War Measures Act, hundreds of political activists were arrested and
imprisoned without charge for lengthy periods of time, including hundreds of
members and supporters of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
which had publicly condemned terrorism on numerous occasions, and which has
never supported or excused terrorism as a legitimate form of political
struggle. Several years later, two members of the FLQ cell which held British
Trade Consul James Cross admitted to being RCMP informants. They revealed that
the RCMP knew the exact location of Cross at all times and could have rescued
him any time they wished, but they left him a prisoner of the FLQ for two
months so they could justify their continuing assault on the progressive and
revolutionary movement.
A series of
terrorist acts, including the bombing of Litton Industries in Toronto,
took place in Canada
in the early 1980s at a time when a movement was gaining momentum against the
testing of U.S. Cruise missiles on Canadian soil. These terrorist acts, which
also bore the trademark signature of the RCMP, were used to attack and disrupt
the movement against Cruise missile testing.
A third round of
terrorism on Canadian soil occurred in the mid-1980s, culminating in the Air
India bombing of June 23, 1985. The attack was supposedly carried out by Sikh
separatists demanding an independent Sikh homeland called Khalistan.
However, at the time both the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS) claimed that the bombing had been planned and organized by the Indian
intelligence services, probably with the assistance of the American CIA, as a
means to discredit and destroy the Khalistani
movement. There were also suspicions about the involvement of the Israeli Mossad, which supported the Khalistani
movement as leverage to blackmail India into dropping its support for
the Palestinian cause.
This history of
terrorism in Canada
over the past 50 years demonstrates that terrorism is not a weapon used by
oppressed people to fight against their more powerful oppressors. Rather, it is
a weapon used by imperialism and oppressor states, such as the Canadian state,
to strengthen themselves and disrupt the revolutionary
movements which seek to put an end to imperialism and oppression. Therefore,
the only way for Canada
to make a contribution to ending terrorism and protecting Canadians from
terrorist attacks is for it to take a resolute stand in opposition to
imperialism and to all forms of imperialist aggression and oppression.
Unfortunately, this is not a direction in which the Martin government is
willing to travel. Far from it Martin, McLellan, Lapierre, Hilliard and their ilk are determined to bind Canada even more firmly to the imperialist
system in general and to U.S.
imperialism in particular. Such a path will not result in greater security for
Canadians. On the contrary, it makes it all the more likely that Canadians will
be targetted for terrorist attacks organized either
by the Canadian state to justify more and more draconian “security” measures or
by some other state with an axe to grind with the Canadian state.