False Security: The Radicalization of Canadian Anti-Terrorism by Craig Forcese, Kent Roach (review)

When terror attacks occurred in Quebec and Ottawa in October 2014, Craig Forcese and Kent Roach were on sabbatical. With terrorism once again at the forefront of national politics, and new legislation likely, the authors probably knew their research plans would soon be derailed. But as Forcese and Roach note at the outset of False Security, they were sceptical that the attacks resulted from a ‘failure of law’ and feared a legislative overreaction premised on the belief that law reform alone would prevent a recurrence of similar events (vii). They supported efforts to learn lessons from the attacks. For example, why was there enough evidence to revoke the passport of one of the suspects, Martin Couture-Rouleau, but not enough to prosecute him? They expected there to be renewed interest in the recommendations of the Air India Commission of 2010 and hoped lawmakers would recognize that ‘oversight and review of security in Canada is in disarray’ (viii). Above all, they were optimistic that Parliament would be careful to ‘build restraint into the foundation of new powers’ (viii).

But, as the authors write:

Boy, were we wrong. In its content, the bill the government tabled on 30 January 2015 – Bill C-51¹ – was the most radical Canadian national security law ever legislated during our career as scholars and analysts of such things. And that means it was the most radical national security law ever enacted in the post-Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms period. In a dubious accomplishment, it managed to raise acute rights issues that already are being challenged under the Charter, while rejecting security improvements that the Air India Commission recommended were urgently needed.²

(viii)

The authors also regret being wrong that the government would show ‘careful deliberation’ in creating new law. The debate in the fall of 2001, preceding Canada’s first Anti-terrorism Act,³ had been extensive and relatively civil. By contrast, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper moved Bill C-51 through Parliament hastily and with few amendments, in a ‘toxic’ and ‘polarized’ debate that Forcese and Roach characterize (borrowing from Thomas Hobbes) as ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ (viii).

For various reasons, the authors felt compelled to engage in public discussion of Bill C-51 to an unusual and possibly exceptional degree. They were uniquely positioned to do so. Each is the leading expert in their respective fields, with Forcese having authored an expansive treatise on Canadian national security law,⁴ and Roach having published a large volume of scholarship on various aspects of counter-terror law.⁵ Often collaborating together, they have served in many ways as Canada’s closest equivalent to the United Kingdom’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation or Australia’s National Security Legislation Monitor. They also confess to having been ‘astonished at the evident disconnect between [the bill’s] radical content and that of the short and misleading “backgrounders” issued by the government’ (ix). Soon after Bill C-51 was tabled, the authors took it upon themselves to publish what they termed ‘real time scholarship’ through a series of papers posted online, analyzing various aspects of it. They wrote several op-eds and short articles, gave countless interviews, and appeared before parliamentary committees. As the back cover of the book states: ‘For much of 2015, [Forcese and Roach] provided, as McLean’s put it, the “intellectual core of what’s emerged as a surprisingly vigorous push-back” to Bill C-51.’

False Security is the culmination of their efforts and does something far more ambitious than repackaging the backgrounders from the spring of 2015. It sets out a global overview and critique of Canada’s counter-terror and national security framework, touching on almost every conceivable dimension of both topics. Two facts had made a work of this scope necessary and welcome: the breadth and nature of the change to Canada’s security law brought about by Bill C-51 and a host of other recent bills, and the...