On Monday February 26th, the Working Group to Repeal Bill C-51 marked three years of weekly actions to repeal this anti-democratic and unjust bill that attacks our fundamental human rights. The 156th Weekly Action was an informational picket at Broadway and Commercial Station, the busiest transit hub in Vancouver and the same location where the first action happened three years ago. In the last three years, the Working Group has worked with various unions, the BC Civil Liberties Association, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, and other local and national organizations to organize successful conferences, public forums, national days of actions, banner drops and weekly picket actions. The campaign continues to educate and organize people not only in BC but across Canada.
The day after the action, Canadian Minister of Finance Bill Morneau released the details of the Government’s 2018 Federal Budget. This budget included $500 million over five years for their so-called new “cyber security plan” which contains $155.2 million for the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), plus an extra $222.5 million for the CSE to develop a Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The RCMP will also receive $116 million to establish a National Cybercrime Coordination Unit.
The $500 million is important for the Liberal Government as they begin their increased push to pass Bill C-59, a law that provides even more far reaching powers to the CSE, the Canadian Cyber Spy Intelligence agency, than even the Harper Conservatives did with Bill C-51. This is especially concerning because the CSE acted in secret for decades and its existing powers are already not clearly defined.
History Tells a Different Story
A recent book titled “Policing Indigenous Movements” exposes how different Canadian Intelligence agencies and police forces coordinated their activities in 2013 to suppress Idle No More, an indigenous rights movement which quickly spread across Canada and the U.S. As one of the book's authors Jefferey Monaghan told CBC News, "They were so petrified about another form of cross-country mobilization and solidarity that they were trying to get ahead of that possibility. What it really has to do with is economics: they do not want threats to the various extractive industries." The book also exposes how the RCMP coordinated with various different corporations to suppress Indigenous resistance. If the RCMP and Canadian spy agencies were able to do this in 2013, what do we expect they can do now with Bill C-51 and its possible successor Bill C-59?
Currently many different indigenous nations and organizations are at the forefront in the struggle against the Kinder Morgan pipeline in British Columbia. Given this recent evidence, we can be sure the government and police forces will use every possible means to suppress justified protest and protect corporate interests. Meanwhile both the Conservative and Liberal governments tried to justify new restrictions on our rights as necessary to protect us from “violent Islamic extremists”. It sure looks like these restrictions are intended for something else completely!
History and current events demonstrate that these laws are not intended to protect our security but instead intended to suppress legitimate organizing by poor and working people. If we do not fight to defend the rights won by past struggles, we will lose them. If we do not organize for a better future, we will not have one. Three years after its first action, the Working Group to Stop Bill C-51 remains committed to this ongoing struggle.
Repeal Bill C-51!
Scrap Bill C-59!
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