The politics and timing behind Bill S-7
Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Public Safety, Candice Bergen
We started this segment with a clip from lawyer John Norris sounding suspicious about why police chose Monday to arrest his client. Mr. Norris represents Raed Jaser, one of the two men suspected of planning to derail a VIA Rail passenger train, allegedly with the support of al-Qaeda.
The House of Commons is to vote today on Bill S-7, known as the Combating Terrorism Act. A week after the Boston Marathon bombings and just months after discovering Canadians were involved in the deadly attack on an Algerian gas plant in January... the federal Government demands broader anti-terrorism laws.
Bill S-7 would re-instate preventative arrest ... the ability to detain Canadians for three days without charge. As well, suspects could be imprisoned for as long as a year if they refuse to testify in front of a judge at an investigative hearing.
To talk more about the bill, we were joined by Candice Bergen, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of Public Safety. She was in Ottawa.
Panel: Tasha Kheiriddin / Tim Harper
Our next two guests believe politics played into the decision to reopen the debate on bill S-7. But whether that decision was a good one is where they part company.
Tasha Kheiriddin is a columnist with The National Post and iPolitics.ca. She joined us from Whitby, Ontario.
And Tim Harper is a national affairs columnist with the Toronto Star and he was in Ottawa.
This segment was produced by The Current's Sujata Berry, Shannon Higgins, Catherine Kalbfleisch and Melissa Shaw.
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The Great Pretenders: Why we fall for cons, schemes and imposters