The BCCLA is proud to announce that Shirley Heafey, the former Commissioner for Public Complaints against the RCMP, was appointed to the Board of Directors in March of this year. Ms. Heafey brings an immense amount of experience and insight to the Board, and we bid her the warmest of welcomes to the Association. Suffice it to say, Ms. Heafey is also a member of our Policing Committee.
Solicitor General John Les publicly confirms he has stopped plans by Crime Stoppers to raise money to pay the salaries of three RCMP officers in Kelowna. Les stated "If there were direct forms of funding coming from outside of government, that would very likely influence policing decisions, or at least the expectation would be there that policing decisions would be influenced in that way."
In February, the Update reported that the BCCLA initiated formal police complaints in relation to the deaths of four men who have recently died while in police custody or being pursued as a suspect. In each case, the RCMP and their Complaints Commissioner refused to investigate our complaints citing the fact that there will be an internal RCMP investigation and a coroner's inquest into the deaths.
The clouds have now broken. Paul Kennedy, the chair of the RCMP Complaint Commission, wrote the BCCLA on March 15, 2006 to confirm that he has initiated an investigation into the death of one of the men, Kevin St. Arnaud, before a coroner's inquest is scheduled. One down, three to go. The BCCLA will reinvigorate its efforts to ensure civilian oversight of in-custody deaths is the rule, not the exception.
On March 13, 2006, the Association wrote to the Vancouver Police Board to express concern over imminent changes at the Vancouver Jail. In 2004, the Association made a formal complaint about a policy of mandatory strip searching at the Vancouver Jail. Such a policy was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada and small improvements have since been made to the policy. However, the Association is concerned that civilianization of the administration of the jail in April will undermine those improvements. We have asked the Police Board to give its urgent attention to the formal complaints mechanism for the new civilian guards, how they will be trained and what the strip search policy for detainees will be. Meetings with the Vancouver Police Department and Vancouver Police Board are ongoing.
In the light of the recent revelations regarding the lack of adequate protections in the agreement between Canadians and the Afghan government for the transfer of prisoners to Afghan authorities from Canadian forces, the BCCLA is calling on the Attorney General and the Minister of National Defence to improve safeguards.
Compared to the Dutch-Afghan agreement, the Canadian agreement does not include the authority for Canadian officials to visit Afghan prisoners transferred to Afghan authorities. Nor does it include any provisions for notice regarding transfer to third parties such as American authorities. At least one international law expert has raised the spectre of Canadian officials being complicit in war crimes given the record of Afghan treatment and torture of prisoners. The BCCLA encourages individuals to write the Minister of National Defence and the Attorney General to express their concerns.
The BCCLA has decided to intervene in two human rights complaints against publishers of words and images that are alleged to promote hatred. In Alberta, a complaint has been lodged against Ezra Levant and the Western Standard magazine for publishing the Muslim cartoons that have been the subject of so much controversy and violence in 2006.
The BCCLA will intervene in a complaint lodged with the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal against operators of an internet website. The complaint alleges that inflammatory comments and offensive 'jokes' that were posted to the bulletin board service discriminate against Italians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Haitians, francophones, blacks, First Nations persons, East Asians, non-whites, and Jews and promote hatred and contempt.
The BCCLA takes the position that citizens and NGOs have a responsibility to censure offensive speech but that it can not be left to the state to censor speech. Freedom of expression is a democratic value no matter the colour of your skin, the country of your origin or the nature of your metaphysical beliefs.
The BCCLA released an open letter to the York School Board in Ontario and the Canadian Jewish Congress calling on both bodies to reconsider the steps taken recently to remove Three Wishes, a Canadian children's book, from consideration for the prestigious Silver Birch award, and, effectively, to discourage Canadian children from reading the book.
This move, coming just as Canada was celebrating Freedom to Read week, seems ill advised to the BCCLA, and we are asking that both the CJC and the York school board reflect deeply on the freedom of expression issues raised by this matter. Three Wishes is a book of interviews with Israeli and Palestinian children, and it touches upon deeply contentious issues such as suicide bombings. The BCCLA takes the position that the existence of political violence and its effects on children does not merit censorship.
The BCCLA is dedicated to protecting free speech and all the other civil liberties that make democracy possible. We consider intellectual freedom and access to controversial written material as a necessary pre-condition for democratic self-rule, and are deeply concerned about protecting these values for young readers as well as old.
The BCCLA called upon the federal government to immediately amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) in light of the decision of the Federal Court in Jaballah v. Canada. Mr. Jaballah has been detained since 2001 under the Security Certificate provisions of the IRPA. These provisions permit the government to use secret evidence and deport individuals in spite of a risk of torture.
The Association is on record calling for major reform of the Security Certificate process to bring it into compliance with Charter protections and Canada's obligations to oppose the use of torture in all contexts. This decision only underscores the urgent need for such reform. We expect to be at the Supreme Court of Canada in June as intervenors in a case testing the constitutionality of Security Certificates. In the meantime, we urge the Canadian government to move to shut the door permanently and unequivocally to ever deporting prisoners to torture.
Call the BCCLA office to book a BCCLA speaker today! Sex, drugs or reform of assisted suicide laws; no topic is off limits for the BCCLA as long as it involves civil liberties and freedom. Call us at 604-687-2919 or e-mail us at info@bccla.org.
Civil Liberties
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