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Joe Oliver: Civil liberties depend on public support and vigilance

Canadians are proud of their country's tradition of human rights. So why have they tolerated the antisemitism seen since October 7, 2023?

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Canadians are proud of our country’s human rights tradition, embedded in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yet over the past century violations of rights, and failures to protect minorities have happened with at least the acquiescence and more often the active support of the public, whether because the targeted group was unpopular, perceived as threatening or simply politically marginal.

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This cognitive dissonance between the public’s self-congratulatory pride and what it accepts or even demands when intolerance, fear or indifference takes hold creates a fundamental problem: government and public pressures can combine to sweep away protections and erode fundamental rights. Unfortunately, many commentators and civil libertarians get caught up in the social contagion and are silent when needed most.

Joe Oliver: Civil liberties depend on public support and vigilance Back to video

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Last month, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld a lower-court ruling that the Trudeau government had not had reasonable grounds to believe the “Freedom Convoy” presented a national emergency, so its invocation of the Emergencies Act was unlawful. The court also found that measures adopted under the act, including financial surveillance and the freezing of bank accounts, infringed freedom of expression and protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

It’s telling that the court’s ruling has not sparked an outcry about the violation of human rights. Nor have the governments or officials involved suffered any real political or reputational penalty. The likely reason is that most Canadians, including academics and journalists, had supported the extraordinary measures against a disruptive group inaccurately painted as extremist.

Invocation of the War Measures Act during 1970’s October Crisis also suspended civil liberties and enabled 405 arrests and detentions without charge, many of people who had no connection to terrorism or violence. The FLQ had kidnapped two people, one of whom it eventually killed, but the scale of repression far exceeded the actual threat, which was hardly the “apprehended insurrection” the Pierre Trudeau government claimed.

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Several other violations of civil liberties have been tied to policing powers rather than emergency legislation. At 2010’s G20 summit in Toronto, 1,118 people were arrested — of whom nearly 800 were released without charge. They included journalists, bystanders and peaceful demonstrators. It was the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. Civil liberties organizations reported arbitrary searches, denial of timely access to counsel and indiscriminate detention.

Several years earlier, in the aftermath of 9/11, non-citizens were detained for long periods under security certificates based on secret evidence. The Supreme Court eventually ruled aspects of the regime unconstitutional, forcing legislative reform.

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During World War II, over 22,000 Japanese Canadians, most of them citizens of Canada or the U.K., were dispossessed, interned and had their property confiscated, without any evidence of having engaged in espionage or sabotage. Ottawa later acknowledged the policy was unjust and racially motivated and in 1988 formally apologized and paid reparations.

Before and during the war, Canada admitted under 5,000 Jewish refugees, fewer than any other Western democracy, both in absolute number and relative to population, a result of the “None is too many” antisemitism of the Mackenzie King government. Untold thousands could have been saved from extermination in the Holocaust.

Civil liberties can also be compromised by failure to protect a minority’s rights to security and equal protection under the law. Indigenous peoples have long experienced systemic suppression of rights. The residential school system forcibly removed children from their families and prohibited Aboriginal languages and cultural practices. Until 1960, status Indians were denied the federal franchise unless they relinquished their treaty rights. Aboriginal women were sterilized without meaningful consent and there have been double standards in policing and justice. These inequities endured because the broader public largely accepted or ignored them.

Which brings us to today. The Criminal Code contains provisions against trespass, hate propaganda, intimidation and obstruction, and assault and mischief. But law enforcement has failed to protect Canada’s Jewish community against an unprecedented number of attacks (over 6,200 in 2024) on individuals and their religious and community institutions since the murderous attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023. On a per capita basis, these numbers are worse than in the U.S., France, the U.K. and Australia. Antisemitism has become normalized on city streets and college campuses. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s hostility to Israel, like that of Anthony Albanese of Australia, heightens the community’s vulnerability. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow is even worse, referring to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide.

This sorry litany of human rights abuses is an exception to a history that has made Canada a wonderful place in which to live and work. To make our country even greater, Canadians need to listen to their better angels and be vigilant in safeguarding everyone’s rights and freedoms.

Joe Oliver was minister of natural resources and finance in the Harper government.

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