Hosanna!

"When terrorists acting on Canadian soil are apprehended and brought to justice, the responsibility lies with the courts to send a clear and unmistakable message that terrorism is reprehensible and those who choose to engage in it here will pay a very heavy price." Ontario Court of Appeals

Finally. Finally the Canadian court system is reaching the conclusion that the Government of Canada arrived at years earlier, then spent frustrating years witnessing the courts trivialize. It will always be better sooner than later, but occasionally we have to accept better later than never. Canada has thus far been fortunate that none of the as-yet apprehended plans of jihadists have resulted in catastrophe.

Although we were not quite so fortunate with a terrorist attack that blighted this country through Sikh Khalistan separatists bringing their vitriolic terror from India to Canada, making a target of innocent Indo-Canadians and shattering the peace that this country accustomed itself to enjoying. Although that issue yet simmers, it is closely watched; alarmingly it is renascent in Canada, quiescent in India.

It is not the isolated, albeit deplorable and fearsome incidents such as the Air India bombing that now takes our attention, nor even the large Tamil presence within Canada, migrating from Sri Lanka and bringing to Canadian shores the unjust miseries and vicious antipathies that threatened to embroil this country within the unremitting civil war unleashed there, but a wider, more ferocious and all-encompassing threat courtesy of Islamists International.

"Terrorism in our view, is in a special category of crime and must be treated as such. When the terrorist activity, to the knowledge of the offender, is designed to or is likely to result in the indiscriminate injury and killing of innocent human beings, sentences exceeding 20 years, up to and including life imprisonment, should not be viewed as exceptional. That may not be the traditional approach to sentencing, but it is the approach we believe must be taken to repudiate and deter terrorism and denounce it for the insidious crime it is." Ontario Court of Appeal

The Sikh and Tamil Tiger groups had well defined targets, horrendous as their plans were. The jihadists who seek to foment terror and in the process slaughter innocent people who know nothing of their grievances and care little about their historical antecedents target the entire Western world, its governments, populations, infrastructure, social and cultural values, and justice system. Whatever speaks of the West reeks of abhorrent, degenerate values to Islamists.

Justice has been seen to be delayed within Canada with respect to the harbingers of terror, those who seek to impose it in all its variable forms within Canadian society. That Canada has finally aroused itself to witness the reality that its own home-grown jihadists have been spawned within the very social milieu that guarantees them freedoms and justice - spurning the social contract to light a conflagration of suspicion between peoples from various ethnic and religious backgrounds - has not resulted in instant rejection.

Instead, the 'social progressives' have found one intolerable excuse after another to have concerns about the well-being of those whose purpose it is to destroy Canadian society. They have been oppressed and humiliated by Western culture superimposing itself upon their cultural norms. Church, university and union groups hasten to understandingly support the efforts of militant Islamist groups whose mission is clear enough.

The steady infiltration into the political life of the country, its academic circles and union groups has built into a support network preparing the way for the larger society to accept that the disaffected fundamentalist Islamists have a legitimate grievance deserving of universal support. Was a society ever better positioned to surrender its traditions and values to those of a foreign influence demented in its existential purpose?

Can we finally take comfort that the Ontario Court of Appeals has seen fit to meet the challenge head on, not shrink from the confrontation of calling the threat what it is, and to exert the law of justice upon those who threaten a democratic and just and free way of life?

"Terrorism must not be allowed to take root in Canada. When it is detected, it must be dealt with in the severest of terms. With respect, the trial judge in the [Khawaja] case did not give sufficient weight to this concern." Ontario Court of Appeal

That sentence for Momin Khawaja has been increased substantially, as have sentences given to two of the men, Sad Gaya and Saad Khalid convicted in the Toronto 18 bomb-plot case. Yet the three suspects in the Ottawa-based terror group have been given bail, awaiting their hearings. And Mohammad Harkat may still appeal the ruling that has identified him as an ongoing al-Qaeda threat to the country.

It is now long past time we need concern ourselves with the 'rights', the fundamental freedoms, the infringements of religion, thought, belief, opinion, expression and association when balancing the rights of free people against those who would destroy those freedoms.