Don't rock the boat? Too late, Captain Jean

By EDWARD GREENSPON
Thursday, September 20, 2001 Globe and Mail

When he drove downtown last Thursday to proclaim a national day of mourning, Jean Chrétien apparently found displeasure with the security barriers impeding traffic near Parliament Hill. The barriers quickly came down.

The Prime Minister seems intent these days on keeping things on an even keel. An old hand at the wheel, he knows this storm may be the worst he's experienced. But the captain doesn't want to panic the passengers.

Mr. Chrétien is known for his innate caution and longstanding bias toward inaction. After a long career in public life, he's concluded that many problems can be counted upon to solve themselves.

Who knows? Maybe the Americans won't ask for our military support?

But more than that, Mr. Chrétien believes that morphing into an action figure now risks exposing the government's past record on security matters as inadequate. Liberal ministers are taking great care to portray the government as ever-vigilant. Now greater vigilance may be required, these ministers argue, but all along government has been putting forth measures to enhance the security of Canadians.

Finally, Mr. Chrétien worries about creating a false sense of security among Canadians. He and his advisers have warned in recent days that there is no such thing as perfect safety. They don't want to raise the bar of public expectation to a level they might someday find impossible to clear.

Behind the scenes, the wheels of government are quietly grinding into action. A committee of deputy ministers has been mandated to review a panoply of policies to determine what really needs to be done on borders, security etc.

This work will be fed into the cabinet, although no formal committees have been struck by a Prime Minister loath to have anyone have cause to apply the term "war cabinet."

Ottawa's smart thinkers, both in the bureaucracy and cabinet, know the worm has turned. It may have been appropriate to allow certain issues to simmer 10 days ago; now they must be moved to a high boil. The fact that national security and North American economic integration were not part of the Prime Minister's famous "personal priorities" in August does not mean they won't become so before the end of September.

Consider the 1999 United Nations Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, which calls on states "to take steps to prevent and counteract, through appropriate domestic measures, the financing of terrorists and terrorist organizations."

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has repeatedly raised a warning flag about terrorist fundraising activities on our soil. An example: Canada has the largest population of Sri Lankan Tamils outside Sri Lanka. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are believed to raise anywhere from $1-million to $20-million a year within this expatriate community.

But little has happened since Canada signed the UN convention in February, 2000. The required Criminal Code amendments have not come forth.

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Mohan Samarasinghe, counsellor information at the Sri Lankan high commission in Ottawa, told me yesterday that his government has raised the issue of ratification with Canadian authorities "at every opportunity." He doesn't consider sufficient the partial measure contained in a government bill that would deny charitable status to groups deemed to be channeling money to terrorist organizations.
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The Canadian Jewish Congress also has called on Canada to implement the convention. "Denying international terrorism its crucial financial lifelines is a key way to throttle it. The U.S. and U.K. already have outlawed terrorist fundraising. Canada, unfortunately, has yet to follow suit," it told the government last February.

Before Sept. 11, the convention took a back seat to other priorities, such as new legislation to combat organized crime. The plan for the convention was to launch consultations this fall with stakeholders, such as the provinces and national ethnic groups, with a hope of passing legislation in the fall of 2002.

The timetable has shifted. This week, Justice Minister Anne McLellan promised the House of Commons she would "move quickly and effectively" on the convention "in the very near future."

So is the government springing into action?

All one can say for sure is that attention to issues already in the pipeline, such as the terrorist financing convention, is likely to accelerate. But only worsening weather will convince this captain of the necessity of sailing into uncharted waters.
egreenspon@globeandmail.ca