Welcome from BCCLA President Jason Gratl

Thank you for engaging in the participatory conference Racial Profiling: National Security in a Multicultural Era, hosted by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. The Association has been fighting to protect the freedoms enjoyed by Canadians for almost 45 years. Our volunteer Board of Directors and dedicated staff, supported by our growing membership, work tirelessly on issues of critical importance to civil liberties and democratic freedoms.

Racial profiling is a subject rarely discussed in our guarded multicultural environment. On one hand, key security agencies, including the RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency, and Canadian Security Intelligence Service, officially deny engaging in racial profiling. On the other hand, Muslim and Arab leaders say that their communities are unfairly and disproportionately targeted. In the view of the BCCLA, public and open dialogue on this challenging issue is long overdue. We have assembled an extremely distinguished panel of Canadian and U.S. experts in the arena of racial profiling to present their insights and facilitate discussion.

This conference is among the many initiatives in which the B.C. Civil Liberties Association has been active since September 11, 2001. Aside from ongoing advocacy in relation to anti-terrorist legislation, we fought to free Maher Arar and called for an inquiry into the government’s role in his deportation and torture. In response to the findings of the Arar Inquiry, the Association drafted and is lobbying for the enactment of a comprehensive Prevention of Torture Act. We recently achieved partial success in our Federal Court action to prevent the transfer of detainees by Canadian Forces to face a risk of torture in Afghani prisons, and we are hatching plans for litigation in relation to the proposed Canadian No-Fly List.

We wish to thank the Law Foundation of B.C. for their generous financial support, without which this conference and important dialogue would not have been possible

Jason Gratl, President

9:05 – 9:15	Remarks from B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal
9:15 – 11:00	Defining the Profile
	Professor Scot Wortley	Part of the Solution or the Source of the Problem: The Impact of Racial Profiling Research in Canada
	Professor Frances Henry Course Director Carol Tator	Theoretical Perspectives on Racial Profiling in Postmodern Societies
	Barbara Jackman, Q.C.	Sustaining Investigations and Security Certificates through the Use of Profiles
11:00 – 12:15	Externalities
	Jameel Jaffer	Surveillance and Race Security Certificates
	Professor Reem Bahdi	Under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act: The Problem with Profiling
1:30 – 3:15	New Approaches
	RCMP Chief Superintendent Richard Bent	Racial Profiling and National Security: A Canadian Police Perspective
	Professor Reginald Whitaker	Profiling: From Racial to Behavioural Dialogue
3:15 – 4:00	Keynote
	Professor Kent Roach	Remedying Racial and Religious Profiling