Since the introduction of the federal government's omnibus anti-terrorism legislation, many academics and community activists have argued the bill, as drafted, goes too far in curtailing individual freedoms. Anne McLellan, the Minister of Justice, responded on Tuesday by proposing amendments that would soften two of the most troubling aspects of the law. The definition of "terrorist activity" would be narrowed to ensure it does not include acts of civil disobedience, illegal strikes or rowdy street protests, and the most sweeping new police powers would expire after five years, absent new legislative action. These limited modifications, some of which we called for in a previous editorial, are welcome. But as we argued in this space on Wednesday, our greatest concern regarding Bill C-36 is not that it will go too far, but that it will not go far enough. In its present form, the legislation has some significant shortcomings:

- Though the bill gives greater powers and responsibilities to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, it does not give the agency the budget and manpower it needs to protect Canada from terrorist threats. Despite mounting evidence of a foreign terrorist threat, the agency has only 2,000 employees -- down more than 25% from a decade ago.

- The legislation leaves in the hands of Cabinet, not police agencies or administrative officials, the determination of what groups are and are not terrorist in nature. The pitfalls of such an approach are obvious in light of the federal government's coddling of the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils, an organization CSIS and the U.S. State Department say is a fund-raising front for a terrorist army in Sri Lanka.

- In Canada, undercover agents are hampered by the fact they are not generally permitted to break the law in the service of apprehending a criminal or infiltrating a conspiracy. But Bill C-36 does not deal with undercover agents at all. This is a significant flaw. As Martin Friedland, a University of Toronto law professor, wrote in a recent article, "Persons would not last long as undercover agents ... if they refused to go through stop signs or insisted upon using their right names and occupations on their personal documents. Moreover, illegal organizations often test the bona fides of their members by making them engage in illegal activity."

- While Bill C-36 defines terrorism, the recently enacted Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, Bill C-11, does not. Thus, the possibility exists that a migrant to Canada might be considered a terrorist for purposes of criminal law, but not immigration law, or vice versa. As another University of Toronto law professor, Ed Morgan, wrote on the facing page Tuesday, the application of our refugee policies to terror suspects is unpredictable and Byzantine, and there are many cases of foreign terrorists staying in Canada for years awaiting deportation. Bill C-36 should be modified to ensure foreign terror suspects do not slip through the cracks between criminal and immigration law.

Canadians must take terrorism seriously -- even before Sept. 11, CSIS and others alerted us to dangers at home. The fundamental social contract governing the amount of liberty citizens give up to the state in exchange for security is such that striking the right balance means Bill C-36 must be strengthened.