Hamstrung

"Director [Jim] Judd ascribed an 'Alice in Wonderland' world view to Canadians and their courts, whose judges have tied CSIS 'in knots', making it ever more difficult to detect and prevent terror attacks in Canada and abroad. The situation, he commented, left government security agencies on the defensive and losing public support for their effort to protect Canada and its allies."

Canadians are so invested in a vision of ourselves as meritoriously just we cannot envision the malignantly violent tumour we're permitting to invade our body politic. We are so enamoured of ourselves as an accepting, even-tempered, blase society. So prepared to view the customs and values of other cultures and religions as worthy of unquestioning acceptance and respect, even when they run counter to the verities of our social compact, our tried-and-true values.

When those whom we elect as lawmakers and those whom they entrust to guard our freedoms and security make a heroic attempt to save us from ourselves by apprehending those within who have entered the country in the guise of trustworthy future citizens while conspiring to bring to this society customs and tribal antipathies and values that insult our own, while bringing harm to others, we reproach them for over zealousness.

The newly-revealed existence of diplomatic notes indicating that the former head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Services informed his American counterparts of the difficulties facing CSIS in pursuing its assigned tasks to safeguard Canada and its citizens tells a compelling story. One that the current head of CSIS has also repeated. And which we ignore at our peril. Yet we do.

In the very real face of ongoing threats against the stability and security of the country, there are groups who assemble in support of those whose covert activities reveal a purpose that intelligence has been alerted to, intending to harm the country, yet the formidable opposition of left-liberal groups and the equally left judiciary create a quandary of miring the intelligence service in a bog of inaction.

At a time when our security agencies should be meeting serious threats with serious solutions they are constrained by the negative reaction of rights groups who align themselves with the very groups who conspire to create threats to the country. CSIS is well aware of the presence of members of groups deemed terrorist in nature and outlawed by the government, but these groups comprised of Hamas and Hezbollah members move freely within Canada.

They march in protest rallies in support of the Palestinians, shouting scurrilous accusations against Canada, the United States and Israel, and enjoy the support of church groups, academic and trade unions. The predictable outcry against the government's lack of interest in repatriating Omar Khadr, the defence of suspected terrorists by members of the public along with a number of parliamentarians, all reflect phlegmatic Canada's unwillingness to believe it is in danger.

It's almost miraculous that Momin Khawaja was eventually found guilty of conspiring to bring harm to an ally of Canada in a terror plot to bomb Britain. The guilt findings against the remaining 11 of the original Toronto 18 terror plotters resulting in sentences not quite commensurate with their plots to harm the country, along with justices permitting bail for suspected other terrorists bespeak an absurd failure of justice.

Another revelation, hardly surprising, and reflected in the current judicial proceedings in the extradition request by France to have Lebanese-born Hassan Diab stand trial there on evidence gathered implicating him in the 1980 Paris bombing of the Copernic synagogue, refers to Canadian court judgements "that threaten to undermine foreign government intelligence-and information-sharing with Canada".

"These judgements posit that Canadian authorities cannot use information that 'may have been' derived from torture, and that any Canadian public official who conveys such information may be subject to criminal prosecution. This, he [Jim Judd] commented, put the government in a reverse-onus situation whereby it would have to 'prove' the innocence of partner nations in the face of assumed wrongdoing."

And this is precisely what we see playing out in the requested extradition of Hassan Diab. The same groups that protest against CSIS leaning too heavily on terror groups openly defying Canadian government designations of such groups as having no place on Canadian soil, support and invite belligerent provocateurs like George Galloway to speak at university campuses, spouting his hatefully vindictive spiel about Zionist apartheid.

Canadians are complicit in bringing vicious aspirants to mass murder and destruction of a democratic foreign country into our midst, supporting their agenda in the guise of compassion for an 'occupied' people, in the process encouraging an escalation of bloodshed, and inviting it into the Canadian parlour as cherished guests.