Counter-terrorism and alien justice: the case of security certificates in Canada

Abstract

This article examines the security certificate process that has been in effect in Canada since 1978 and the 2008 amendment (Bill C-3) of the Immigration and Refugees Protection Act. It highlights how democratic means can be used to subvert meaningful policy changes, and underscores the antinomy inherent in a nation-state's zeal to protect its citizens and appeals by a group of Arab Muslim men held under security certificates for suspected terrorist activities for their human rights to be recognised and respected by a state in which they are non-citizens. The problematic immanent in nation-states serving as guarantors of human rights and its concomitant misconstruing of human rights for citizenship rights are used to demonstrate that an ‘internal Other’ has been created in Canada. The security certificate, it is argued, in stipulating that detainees may request to be deported to countries where they regularly reside or hold nationality, makes them akin to Hannah Arendt's notion of the ‘rightless’ – people who have not only lost their home (i.e., polity) or ‘distinct place in the world’, but also their legal status. Consequently, even in an advanced democracy with grandiose claims to, and assurances of, individual liberty and fundamental freedoms, ‘rightless’ people face a great danger by the fact of being nothing beyond ‘human’.

Keywords:

• human rights
• citizenship
• (counter) terrorism
• security certificates
• humanity

Acknowledgements

The painstaking efforts of the two anonymous reviewers and their insightful comments and suggestions are gratefully acknowledged. Dr. Charles Adeyanju of Brandon University, Brandon, Manitoba, Canada provided helpful comments on the first draft of this article. Thanks also to Dr. Kevin Haggerty for his priceless encouragement and review of the final draft of this article.

Notes

1. For details of the Anti-Terrorism Act, see Daniels, Ronald, Patrick Macklem, and Kent Roach. 2002. Security of Freedom: Essays on Canada's Anti-Terrorism Bill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. For a parliamentary review of the Act, see ‘Fundamental Justice in Extraordinary Times: Main Report of the Special Senate Committee on the Antiterrorism Act, 2007.

2. Home Office, U.K. (undated). ‘Terrorism and the Law’, Available at http://www.homeoffice. gov.uk/security/terrorism-and-the-law/ Accessed 13 February 2009.

3. Charkaoui v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), [2007] 1 S.C.R. 350, 2007 SCC 9.

4. Ibid, p. 50.

5. R. v. Oakes, [1986] 1 S.C.R. 103.

6. Charkaoui v. Canada, p. 51.

7. At the ‘reasonable accommodations’ hearings in Quebec, some Canadians complained of not feeling at home anymore in Montreal because of the presence of a lot of immigrants who have refused to integrate. See, for instance, Maclean's Martin Patriquin's “Canada: A Nation of Bigots?” Available at http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20071022_110249_110249&source=srch Accessed November 19, 2007.

8. The distinction made between full and lesser citizens by Canadian authorities at critical moments seems to have long been in existence. For example, a Canadian government- sponsored biography of the 329 victims of the June 23, 1985 crash of Air India Flight 182 carrying mainly Canadians of Indian descent notes that a ‘question that lingers among the families and other Canadians is if Air India Flight 182 had been an Air Canada flight with fair-skinned Canadians, would the government response have been different?’ (Canada, Minister of Public Works and Government Services 2007, pp. 3–4).