Random Access

It’s interesting that the debate over the extension of special police and judicial powers that came to a head last night with a Commons vote became such a political lightning rod.
That seems to have a lot more to do with the jockeying for political position before the gun goes off in the next federal election campaign than it does to do with the very serious issues raised by the legislation.
In the wake of 911, with the Liberals in power, Parliament passed extraordinary measures that allow a suspected terrorist to be held, without charge, for up to a year. A second provision compelled suspects to testify about their knowledge of terrorist activities behind closed doors.
Extreme measures indeed, measures that would never normally be considered except in the wake of such attacks as those on the World Trade Center or the FLQ crisis of 1970. Measures that were recognized as so unusual that an internal blow-up clause was included, forcing our MPs to renew the powers after five years.
Whether to extend those powers is not a subject to be taken lightly, nor to be the subject of the kind of frat-boy, food fight theatrics we have witnessed in the Commons in the past few days.
This issue requires sober reflection, not finger-pointing from both sides of the House as the Grits and the Tories try to position themselves for the coming campaign by casting aspersions on their opponents — the Liberals painting Prime Minister Harper as a villain whose low-blow against Mississauga-Brampton South MP Navdeep Singh Bains was an intentional attempt to paint their party as pro-terrorist and the Tories demonizing Stéphane Dion as a bumbling moron who has to whip his Party to oppose a cautionary piece of Legislation they themselves originated.
Surely the wise thing to do would have been for all parties to accept the Senate’s proposal, as Harper did, to leave the legislation in place for now and have a civilized debate over the next few months about how to come to terms with our conflicting goals of stopping terrorism in its tracks, while maintaining the rule of law and right of defence for all of our citizens.
There are lots of outstanding questions still to consider.
Are these extensions really required when police never used their provisions in the five years they were in place?
In view of the Supreme Court’s recent unanimous ruling striking down provisions that allow alleged terrorists to be held indefinitely without charge on the basis that they are potential threats to national security, what are the chances that these regulations being upheld by the courts?
Should we allow critical issues of national security to be hijacked by the personal political agendas of leaders who appear a lot more interested in grooming themselves and their party images for the pending election campaign than they do in giving sober thought to critical issues?
Is it too late to reconsider the adversarial system?