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Harassment, bigotry and indifference at CSIS: 3 questions

On July 13, 2017, the Toronto Star broke the story that five experienced employees of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s spy agency, launched a $35-million lawsuit against the secretive organization alleging a pattern of racism, Islamophobia, sexism, and homophobia from managers there over a period of many years. The complainants, who remain anonymous due to legal requirements around their secretive work, are diverse: three are Muslim, one is Black, and another is gay. And they also appear credible, each having been with the spy agency for more than ten years. (One complainant, known by the pseudonym of ‘Cemal’, has been with CSIS for 22 years.) The group also includes the first Black female CSIS employee, known as ‘Dina’, according to the claim. All complainants are now on medical leave from the agency due to stress.

In their joint statement of claim, they allege a wide range of abusive language and behaviour by managers, a small sample of which includes being:

referred to as a “homo” and “fag”

told that “all Muslims are terrorists”

harassed for wearing a hijab

referred to as “sheikh” and “Muslim Brotherhood” by a CSIS deputy director in Toronto

The response from CSIS Director David Vigneault states that the organization is taking the allegations “very seriously” and encourages employees to report “real, potential and perceived incidents of harassment, without fear of reprisal” to management. However, the complainants assert in their claim that they had previously followed the internal reporting route and nothing was done by management:

CSIS is a workplace rife with discrimination, harassment, bullying and abuse of authority, in which the tone set by management, namely to mock, abuse, humiliate and threaten employees, has permeated the workforce. CSIS management has not only allowed this culture to thrive, it has actively inculcated this culture, openly rejecting and mocking respectful workplace norms…This racist, sexist, homophobic and discriminatory behaviour has become the accepted culture and norm...Not only do members of management comport themselves in a manner to facilitate this culture, but they refuse to acknowledge it constitutes wrongful conduct. To many of them, the rules simply do not apply.

Of course, these are allegations that have not been proven in court, but former CSIS officers interviewed by the CBC reinforced them. For instance, former CSIS officer Francois Lavigne, who left the agency in 1988, said that: “I thought after 30 years, this was gone. But it’s still alive and well...it’s the Old Boys network.” And former senior CSIS intelligence officer Michel Juneau-Katsuya, who retired in 2000, says CSIS has a “systemic problem” when it comes to discrimination. Even Richard Fadden, who led CSIS between 2009 and 2013, seemed reluctant to deny that such a problematic culture would exist within the organization, stating in an interview with Evan Solomon that “organizations above a certain size all have bad apples”, but it was his “hope” that they are “few and far between.”

As an aside, it’s worth recalling here that records obtained by The Globe and Mail in July 2016 reveal that the Canadian Human Rights Commission twice admonished CSIS for falling short in employment equity audits carried out in 2011 and 2014. Both audits found that the CSIS had no visible minority or indigenous managers in its ranks.

These explosive allegations against a secretive taxpayer-funded organization that is entrusted with special powers in order to ostensibly ensure the security of Canadians are extremely disturbing, and elicit three key questions.

Will a credible investigation be launched?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau weighed in on the lawsuit on July 14, stating that: “Harassment, discrimination, toxic work environments are things that I, this government, find absolutely unacceptable and I can also assure you that the new director of CSIS, David Vigneault, also finds that to be unacceptable.” Vigneault was appointed head of CSIS in May 2017 and assumed his duties on June 19—he is obviously very new in the role, having not even completed a month on the job before the lawsuit’s launch.

However, though it may be tempting to view Vigneault as a fresh leader who will get to the bottom of the lawsuit’s allegations, the problem is that Vigneault himself has previously worked at CSIS as a senior manager: he was Assistant Director, Intelligence, from 2010 to 2013, and Assistant Director, Secretariat, from 2006 to 2009. Indeed, he served in these senior management roles during the period that the complainants allege many of the incidents of harassment and discrimination by management occurred. In other words, though he may well be innocent in the incidents alleged in the lawsuit, Vigneault’s history at CSIS means that the public can reasonably doubt his impartiality in investigating harassment in the agency.  

Public confidence in CSIS requires that a credible investigation be launched to examine the state of workplace culture in the agency. This is what the New Democrats have called for as well, with public safety critic Matthew Dubé stating that:

The reports of persistent discrimination targeted at Muslim, gay and black employees by CSIS supervisors are so disturbing that immediate action is required from the Liberal government. ...Such treatment would be totally unacceptable in any workplace in Canada, but here constitutes potential concerns for Canada’s national security as those accused serve as supervisors within our most powerful and secretive agency...I am calling on Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale to immediately launch a comprehensive and credible investigation into claims of rampant and persistent discrimination within CSIS and the impacts it has on employees’ working conditions and on the quality of work produced.

What is happening next door, at CSEC?

Next door to CSIS is the Communications Security Establishment (CSEC), Canada’s version of the U.S. National Security Agency. Along with the RCMP and CSIS, CSEC arguably forms the core of Canada’s non-military security apparatus. CSEC is charged with signals intelligence and has come under public scrutiny in recent years, following the Edward Snowden leaks, for the role it plays in snooping on Canadians’ digital communications. Certainly, the sensitive work CSEC is charged with requires the confidence and trust of the broad Canadian public.

Now, we already know that the RCMP suffers deeply from a long-running toxic culture of harassment, amply documented in various independent reports over the years. And with this lawsuit, there is good reason to suspect that this toxic culture can also be found within CSIS. It therefore seems obvious to ask: what is the internal workplace culture like at CSEC? Unlike their counterparts at the RCMP and CSIS, a large segment of CSEC employees are unionized with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), and therefore have additional protections and conflict resolution mechanisms available to them. Nevertheless, in Canada’s close knit security community, it’s not hard to imagine that the RCMP’s well-documented toxic workplace culture and CSIS’s alleged toxic culture could also rear their ugly heads within CSEC.

In this context, what will the Trudeau government do to verify and ensure that CSEC maintains a healthy workplace?

Will reforms to Bill C-51 be guided by these allegations?

In 2015, the previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper passed Bill C-51, so-called ‘anti-terror’ legislation that dramatically expanded the power of security agencies, including CSIS, and sharply curtailed the freedoms, civil liberties, and privacy rights of individual Canadians. Justin Trudeau campaigned for the Liberals on a promise to reform (not repeal) the most egregious measures contained in the bill, and once elected, handed the file to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, who in turn tabled Bill C-59 in June 2017. The bill has been described by observers as “the biggest overhaul in Canadian national security since the creation of … CSIS in 1984.” And the consensus seems to be that while Bill C-59 indeed reverses several problematic parts of Bill C-51, it also leaves some serious concerns unaddressed.

The most serious example of this is the Canada Information Sharing Act, which was introduced via Bill C-51 and now enables government bodies to share amongst each other a wide range of personal information about all Canadians in a poorly conceived effort to uncover terrorist plots. As Daniel Therrien, Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, indicated following the introduction of Bill C-51 in 2015:

This Act would seemingly allow departments and agencies to share the personal information of all individuals, including ordinary Canadians who may not be suspected of terrorist activities, for the purpose of detecting and identifying new security threats.  It is not clear that this would be a proportional measure that respects the privacy rights of Canadians.

Regrettably, Bill C-59 does not propose any changes to address concerns around information sharing, which can have profound consequences for affected Canadian citizens, particularly when organizations such as the RCMP, CSIS and CSEC in turn share details about Canadians with foreign governments. We already know, of course, that Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was detained in New York in 2002, and then rendered to Syria for torture, due to faulty information passed to U.S. authorities by the RCMP. We also know that three Muslim-Canadian men, Ahmad El Maati, Muayyed Nureddin and Abdullah Almalki, found themselves being tortured in Syrian and Egyptian prisons in the early 2000s due to information sharing by both CSIS and the RCMP. And we also know that Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik found himself in a Sudanese jail in 2003, where he says he was tortured, after CSIS shared information about him with that country’s government. (Arar received an apology and $10.5 million from the federal government in 2007, while El Maati, Nureddin and Almalki received an apology and compensation from the government in March 2017. Abdelrazik is currently suing the federal government for compensation over his ordeal.)

Now, in light of the CSIS employees’ lawsuit’s allegations, serious questions must be asked about what led CSIS to view these Canadians as threats. What role did racism and Islamophobia play? What role did racism and Islamophobia play in other cases of Muslims targeted for investigation by the agency? What role does racism and Islamophobia continue to play in the organization’s work? And more to the point, will these apparent biases at CSIS lead to amendments to Bill C-59 to protect Canadians from the potentially horrific consequences of information sharing?

[cdnpoli]

Virtually all mainstream media outlets think Harper's new "anti-terrorism" bill is insane

On 30 January 2015, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced his new "anti-terrorism" bill (C-51), which he claims will keep Canadians safe. The omnibus bill seeks to make sweeping changes to Canadian law, including: extending unprecedented powers to the secretive Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) "to disrupt" activities, lowering the threshold for detaining terror suspects, increasing sharing of private information about Canadians, and criminalizing the speech of anyone who "advocates or promotes" terrorism. On this last point, advocacy and promotion of terrorism are not defined in the legislation so it's anyone's guess which speech might be criminalized. What we do know, however, is that the Conservatives have previously labelled Canadians actively advocating for the environment and opposing oil and gas pipeline construction as "eco-terrorists". So it seems this law could cast a disturbingly wide net; for example, it's conceivable that an activist advocating direct action to protect the environment could be thrown in jail for five years under C-51. 

Moreover, extending to CSIS the legal mandate to engage in disruptive activities—and allowing these activities to involve breaking the law and even violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms—represents a serious turning away from the conclusions of the McDonald Commission of Inquiry into Certain Activities of the RCMP. The Royal Commission was set up in 1977 to investigate systematic illegal activities carried out by the RCMP, including break-ins, arson and theft, and it recommended in 1981 that the RCMP's national security functions be separated into a new civilian agency in order to break the vicious cycle of illegality. Hence the birth of CSIS in 1984, and its mandate to collect intelligence and alert police when security threats arise. By giving CSIS itself the power to undertake disruptive activities, though, the Conservatives are essentially recreating the situation that the McDonald Commission and subsequent legislation sought to change.

The bill does all the above without improving oversight mechanisms to ensure CSIS and other security agencies do not abuse their powers. (Indeed, the existing mechanism—the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC)—is suffering a serious crisis of credibility after its Harper-appointed chair, Arthur Porter (pictured above right), was charged with fraud and money laundering as part of a bribery scandal connected to the construction of a new Montreal super-hospital.)

Despite the profound changes contained in Bill C-51, Harper was not in Parliament when the new bill was introduced to face the Members of Parliament who ostensibly represent Canadians; apparently, he thought it was more appropriate to be making a speech in Richmond Hill, just outside of Toronto.  

It didn't take long, however, for major news outlets in Canada to heavily criticize the proposed legislation. Here's a sample.

The Globe and Mail editorial board: Parliament should reject the bill

Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force. Canadians should not be willing to accept such an obvious threat to their basic liberties. Our existing laws and our society are strong enough to stand up to the threat of terrorism without compromising our values.

Link to Globe & Mail editorial (1 February) »

Ottawa Citizen editorial board: The bill is appalling for many reasons

There are many reasons to be appalled by the haphazard, overbearing and ill-defined provisions criminalizing the general promotion of terrorism that were presented by the federal Conservative government on Friday, but worst of all is the potential they have to actually increase the likelihood of radicalization and terrorism in Canada. 

So let’s say the police determine that a young man with a poisoned mind posts a questionable YouTube video. Some antidotes might be community, parental or religious intervention in an effort to present a better path. A good way to further poison that mind, though, might be a short stint in a federal correctional system that has seen, under this government, a drastic reduction in rehabilitation programs and resources. Worse, jails in Canada and around the world have become breeding grounds for radical jihadis, with experts here pointing out that the Correctional Service of Canada doesn’t have appropriate resources to deal with these unique offenders. What prisons do provide, though, is easy access to people who’ve actually tried to carry out terrorists acts.

Link to Ottawa Citizen editorial (30 January) »

National Post editorial board: No reason to further police speech and greater oversight of intelligence agencies is needed

When it comes to provisions banning “promoting” and “advocating” terrorism, furthermore, the threat to civil liberties may well not be minor. Neither term is defined. Where such laws exist, they tend to be abused. In 2001, France prosecuted a cartoonist (ironically enough) for a depiction of the 9/11 attacks with the caption, “We all dreamed it … Hamas did it.” As part of a massive recent speech crackdown, French comedian Dieudonné was arrested for saying he “felt like Charlie Coulibaly” — a cryptic reference to Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the kosher supermarket attacker. 

Such statements will offend many, but they fall miles short of incitement to violence, which is the proper threshold at which law-enforcement ought to concern itself with people’s freedom of speech. Needless to say, counselling someone to commit terrorism is already a criminal offence in Canada. There seems little justification to go any further than that, and little reason to trust that prosecutions in this country will not go too far as well. Once the horse is out of the barn, it’s awfully difficult to corral — especially without proper democratic oversight.”

Link to National Post editorial (31 January) »

Toronto Star editorial board: We should not surrender our cherished freedoms; opposition MPs need to fight this

The sheer level of public concern that Ottawa may not be getting the balance right between security and civil rights argues for a higher, more sophisticated level of scrutiny than this government is disposed to consider. 

Rather than limply wave these new measures through the Commons for fear of looking “soft” in an election year, the New Democrats and Liberals should press vigorously for the creation of a panel of MPs and senators from across party lines to vet Canada’s security laws and the operations not only of our spy agencies but also of the military, police and other agencies, as the Star has urged before.

Link to Toronto Star editorial (30 January) »

Even the Toronto Sun editorial board was critical and called for changes to the bill

A no-fly list should be reserved for the worst of the lot. Not something used arbitrarily. 

A big concern is freedom of speech. George Orwell noted free speech is meaningless unless it includes the freedom to say things others hate. 

Clean up this language so it’s clear that this is about going after people urging or planning attacks, not just despicable losers tweeting thumbs up to the Islamic State.

Link to Toronto Sun editorial (30 January) »

[cdnpoli]

Toronto G20, 4 years later: 18 disturbing facts all Canadians should know

The Toronto G20 Summit of June 26-27, 2010, hosted by Stephen Harper, was an incredibly expensive undertaking that resulted in massive human rights violations against members of the public at the hands of the police. Despite this, politicians refuse to call a full public inquiry and hold police—as well as themselves—to account ... something to think about on the 4th anniversary of the Toronto G20, and as we approach this year's Canada Day celebrations.

1. Over half a billion dollars was spent on security for the three-day G8/G20 summit.

The final tally of security costs for the three-day G8 and G20 summits, held back-to-back, was $676 million. About $330 million of that went to the RCMP and the rest to various participating police forces, including the Toronto Police Service. The total overall cost of the summits was roughly $858 million.

A couple of comparisons to put this staggering sum in perspective: it's higher than the $818 million currently being spent to build a 36 kilometre light rail and bus rapid transit system in the Waterloo region, and it's almost 43 times greater than what the federal government says it will save each year (i.e., $20 million) due to cuts to refugee health care implemented by the Conservatives.

2. The largest mass-arrest in Canadian peacetime history happened during the summit.

The 1,105 arrests made over the G20 weekend constituted a new record for mass arrests in Canada during peaceful times. Stunningly, this figure was more than twice as large as the almost 500 citizens who were detained or arrested during the October 1970 FLQ Crisis in Quebec, when Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act and deployed soldiers throughout the province. (This record mass arrest was surpassed in 2012 by the arrests of protesters during the 2012 student strikes in Quebec, though these occurred across the province and over a longer period.)

The vast majority of those arrested were not charged or had their charges dropped, strongly indicating that they were unlawfully arrested in the first place.

3. Hundreds were unlawfully detained—kettled— across the city.

Hundreds of peaceful protesters were detained across the city, including in major ‘kettles’ organized by police, in which rows of riot cops in full gear trapped large groups of people in intersections, against buildings and within city blocks for hours, even as heavy rain poured down. In the words of the Toronto Star:

As the skies opened, dumping enough rain to flood the Don Valley Parkway, masses of people were arrested: peaceful protesters, curious onlookers, passersby carrying grocery bags. Many were packed into paddy wagons, dropped off outside city limits or taken to the G20 temporary jail. Dozens were held in the downpour with their hands zip-tied behind their backs.

It was later found that RCMP officers assisting Toronto Police in the manoeuvre were actually violating their own policy against kettling. In 2011, following intense public pressure, Toronto police announced it would never again kettle citizens.

  4. The Liberal provincial government secretly gave police ‘phenomenal powers’.

A December 2010 report from Ontario Omubudsman André Marin slammed the Liberal government for secretly giving police "phenomenal powers" that opened the door to mass arrests and civil rights violations. These special powers seemingly allowed for the so-called “five-meter rule” that required anyone passing within five meters of the conference security fence to submit to a search and ID check. However, it was revealed after the conference, and after citizens were arrested under the rule, that the five meter rule did not actually exist.

The Public Works Protection Act (PWPA)—the obscure Word War II-era legislation that gave police special powers—remains on the books despite many promises by the governing Liberals to get rid of it. In his June 2014 annual report, Ombudsman Marin warned that:

The PWPA featured prominently in the massive civil rights abuses during the G20 summit in Toronto four years ago, and the government has twice introduced bills to replace it – only to have them die on the order paper (most recently on May 2, 2014). Given its checkered history, it is disturbing that the PWPA is still on the books, particularly when one considers that Ontario is in the midst of preparations for hosting the Pan Am and Parapan Am Games in Toronto in 2015.

5. Police engaged in rampant arbitrary search and seizures.

  Police forces operating in Toronto engaged in arbitrary search and seizures across the core, often violating basic Charter rights. The Office of the Independent Police Review Director concluded in 2012 that “many police officers ignored the basic rights citizens have under the Charter and overstepped their authority when they stopped and searched them arbitrarily and without reasonable grounds in law.”

In one infamous incident (see above video at 1:53), a York Region police officer, Sgt. Mark Charlesbois, told Paul Figueiras, a citizen refusing to be searched, that “this ain’t Canada right now,” and that “[t]here is no civil rights here…” Figueiras later filed a complaint with the York Police Services Board but it was rejected. He then filed a lawsuit, but Ontario Superior Court Justice Frederick Myers ruled in April 2014 that Sgt. Charlesbois and his fellow officers acted with “admirable restraint”. The decision is being appealed.

6. Police told demonstrators to go to a “designated speech zone” and then attacked them.

Police set up what they referred to as a “designated speech zone” at Queen’s Park (which was also the meeting point for the main march on the first day of the summit) and invited citizens protesting the summit to assemble and demonstrate there. However, by the late afternoon of June 26, police surrounded and charged the area, physically assaulting peacefully assembled citizens who had accepted the police’s earlier invitation.

7. Police violently assaulted peaceful citizens.

Throughout the weekend, numerous citizens experienced physical assaults at the hands of the police. Some were involved in peacefully protesting the G20, while others were simply going about their business in the city.  One man, John Pruyn, who wears a prosthetic leg, provided the following testimony at the CCLA’s Breach of the Peace Hearings:

The police ordered me to walk (…) I said ‘I can’t’. Then one of the police grabbed my artificial leg and yanked it right off my leg for no apparent reason (…) He pulled it off, and then told me to put it back on. I just looked at him (…) I couldn’t believe what he was saying. Of course, I can’t put my leg back on with my hands tied behind my back (…) so then he says ‘hop’. And again I said ‘I can’t’. Then he says ‘you asked for it’. So then one police grabbed me under each arm and they started to drag me backwards. As they were dragging me backwards we went over pavement and I had on a short sleeve shirt and my elbows were digging right into the pavement and they were gouged out, both elbows, both sides.

In another prominent case involving Adam Nobody, a Toronto resident who was simply walking around to see what was going on with the demonstrations, police officers repeatedly punched, kneed, kicked and hit him with batons, shattering his cheekbone and breaking his nose.

In 2012, in submitting his report slamming police for using excessive force during the summit, the head of the Office of the Independent Police Review Director said: “It is fortunate that, in all the confusion, there were no deaths.”

8. Police detained and arrested journalists and physically assaulted them.

A number of journalists were detained or arrested by police across the city during the summit. These included two National Post photographers, Brett Gundlock and Colin O’Connor, who were arrested the evening of June 26, as well as a freelance journalist for the Guardian (UK), Jesse Rosenfeld, who was beaten and arrested in front of Novotel. The latter incident was witnessed by Steve Paiken, host of TVO’s Agenda, who said a police officer “walked over and just … gave him one in the gut...Jesse fell down face-first onto the ground. The same officer then came back, elbowed him right on the back.”

Police also arrested alternative media journalists Ryan Mitchell and Lisa Walter and, for this, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD) eventually ordered that the two arresting officers be charged under the Police Services Act. According to Mitchell’s account, the officer arresting him said: “I’m going to love shoving this baton up your ass.”

Meanwhile, Lisan Jutras, a Globe and Mail journalist, and Liem Vu, a National Post intern, were detained for four hours at Queen and Spadina, and Jesse Freeston, a journalist with the Real News Network, was punched in the face by a police officer. In total, nine journalists reported being either attacked, detained or arrested by police.

9. Name tags were removed to prevent accountability.

Hundreds of police officers violated policy and removed their name tags so as to prevent citizens from identifying them and filing official complaints. Eventually, nearly 100 Toronto police officers were identified on security footage without name tags and faced discipline, which amounted to the loss of a day’s pay.

10. Conditions in the detention centre were inhumane and did not even meet basic United Nations standards.

Despite spending $676 million on security for the G20 summit, police failed to ensure humane facilities for those sent to the former film studio that was converted into a temporary jail. The June 2012 report of the Independent Civilian Review Into Matters Relating to the G20 Summit heavily criticized the police for:

not providing those arrested with sufficient information;

not processing prisoners in a timely manner;

not facilitating adequate access to legal counsel;

not providing sufficient water and food: Colin O’Connor, one of two National Post newspaper photographers who were arrested during the summit and held in the detention centre overnight, said that “[w]e did not get water for 12 hours.” His colleague, Brett Gundlock, added that “[p]eople were yelling all night, asking for some water."

not providing reliable access to medical care;

not following international standards with respect to the use of restraints:  People were kept for lengthy periods inside jail cells with their hands zip-tied, which, according to the UN’s Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, “must not be applied for any longer time than is strictly necessary.” (UN Rules ») According to the report of the civilian review, moreover, “prisoners were detained in pre-booking cells while restrained … in some cases up to 24 hours.” (p. 344)

not detaining young persons in accordance with the law;

engaging in excessive strip searches;

and not ensuring that toilets could be used out of sight of members of the opposite sex

The vast majority of those sent to the prison were not charged or had their charges dropped, strongly indicating that they were unlawfully arrested in the first place.

11. Canadian police ignored the lessons of the 2009 G20 Summit in London.

The United Kingdom hosted a G-20 summit in London in April 2009 and police actions there also became controversial, particularly after a passerby named Ian Tomlinson was attacked by police from behind and pushed to the ground. He died shortly thereafter, and the officer who attacked him was later charged with manslaughter. Despite this, the police forces working on the Toronto G20 did not heed any lessons from the London experience around the proper use of force.

Indeed, the UK Human Rights Joint Committee report of 2009, an independent government review of policing, cautioned that “protestors have the impression that the police are sometimes heavy-handed in their approach to protests, especially in wearing riot equipment in order to deal with peaceful demonstrations.” And another report by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary submitted after the London summit further recommended that police must “[d]emonstrate explicit consideration of the facilitation of peaceful protest throughout the planning process and the execution of the operation,” and that “[t]he starting point for the police is the presumption in favour of facilitating peaceful assembly.” These warnings from the London experience were roundly ignored by police at Toronto’s G20. (See also the CCLA report »)

12. It remains unclear to what extent the police itself encouraged, facilitated and participated in vandalism.

On the first day of the summit, before the protests began, 17 activists were arrested in an early morning police raid on the basis that they were planning to vandalize a number of businesses in the city core. However, information that emerged in the subsequent trials show that two police agents had infiltrated the group as far back as early 2009, and were actively involved in preparing actions around the G20 summit.

According to the Globe & Mail, “[o]ne officer helped develop a list of locations for protesters to congregate at or vandalize,” and then apparently “advocated for the list to be distributed as widely as possible…” This list included businesses such as banks that were in fact targeted by a few protesters during the summit. Meanwhile, the other infiltrating officer “was such a prominent presence in pre-G20 marches that his face was twice featured in newspapers alongside the activists he was spying on.”

Furthermore, questions have been raised about two police cars left on the known protest route and that were later set ablaze. In the words of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association: “The fires posed a risk to the public. Why were they [the cars] allowed to burn for as long as they did? In the normal course of events, we would expect this to be dealt with very quickly.”

All the above raises some critical questions. Did the police infiltrators play a key role in helping plan acts of vandalism? And why did police not stop the vandalism if it had information about where it was going to happen, choosing instead to indiscriminately arrest people peacefully protesting the summit? Only a full public inquiry can answer such questions.

13. Police officers cashed in on the G20 summit.

Thanks to all the overtime they got from the G20, the number of Toronto police officers earning six figures in 2010 increased by 60% in comparison to 2009. In total, 2,159 police personnel earned $100,000 or more in 2010, including the infamous 'Officer Bubbles', who threatened to arrest a peaceful protester for blowing bubbles, and then sued YouTube commenters who ridiculed his actions. He took home $108,197.45.

14. No police force has apologized.

None of the police forces involved in the G20—that includes Toronto Police, York Region Police, the OPP, the RCMP, and others—have apologized for any of the abuses police officers committed against members of the public during the summit. In July 2012, the head of Toronto’s police board, Alok Mukherjee, offered a “personal” apology for his role in the debacle, but refused to heed calls from the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition for his resignation.

15. And neither have any elected officials.

Much like the police, elected officials at all three levels of government have refused to apologize for G20 abuses. Quite the contrary, then Toronto mayor David Miller said that the police “acted with professionalism and with respect for the people’s right to lawfully demonstrate,” and then Premier Dalton McGuinty was quick to state that he wanted “to thank our police officers for upholding the rule of law.”

16. No public inquiry has been held.

Despite immediate calls for a public inquiry into police actions during the G20 summit, no comprehensive and open investigation has been launched, and little police accountability has emerged.

17. No police officer has been jailed for abuses committed during the G20.

To date, no officer has been jailed for abuses committed during the summit. One officer, Constable Babak Andalib-Goortani, was found guilty of assaulting Adam Nobody (whose nose and cheekbone were broken) and received a 45-day sentence in 2013, but he was immediately granted bail pending an appeal, which will be heard in the fall of 2014.

Contrast this 45-day sentence for a violent police assault on a human being with the 13.5 month sentence given to Alex Hundert for planning to break some windows. Hundert was arrested early on June 26, well before the day's protests began, and was in jail while some businesses were vandalized. However, prosecutors claimed that he played a role in planning the vandalism and the judge ruled that this somehow warranted a jail sentence that is nine times longer than the sentence given to Const. Andalib-Goortani for far more serious offences.

18. History will repeat itself: police in Australia are preparing for mass arrests at the 2014 G20 Summit in November.

Police in Australia are preparing for the forthcoming G20 summit in Brisbane in November. But already, it appears that history is repeating. For instance, the state police force has already told its officers that they can remove their name tags, which prevents accountability, as Toronto’s G20 experience clearly showed. Moreover, police there have also decided to turn the state’s Supreme Court into a temporary prisoner processing facility for the duration of the summit, and it’s anyone’s guess if this building, which ostensibly symbolizes justice, will become another human rights debacle like the temporary film studio prison during the Toronto G20.

[cdnpoli]

10 things you need to know about sick leave in the federal public service

As they get ready to bargain with federal public sector unions, which together represent around 200,000 workers, the Harper Conservatives, led by Treasury Board Tony Clement, have been spreading a lot of misinformation about the sick leave system in the public service in order to set the context for the introduction of a private, for profit insurance scheme that will only benefit big insurance corporations.

UPDATE: In September 2014, the Conservatives issued their official proposal for changes to sick leave. They would like to reduce the annual allocated sick leave for federal public service workers from 15 days to just 5 and make even these 5 days completely subject to the discretion of the manager. They are also aiming to cancel all accumulated sick leave days. And finally, for those workers who need more than 5 days of sick leave, they will have to wait an additional 7 days without any pay before being eligible to apply for short term insurance, which will be administered by a private company. 

UDPATE 2: With the introduction of Budget 2015 on 21 April, the Conservative government is now officially indicating that it will unilaterally eliminate existing sick leave provisions if unions do not agree to changes at the bargaining table (see page 171 of the Budget). In effect, the government is predetermining the outcome of the collective bargaining process.

1. Tony Clement can't be trusted on how much sick leave public service workers use.

Treasury Board president Tony Clement has repeatedly made the dubious claim that public service workers take an average of 18.2 days of sick leave per year even though they only get 15 sick days each year. The independent Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), however, used Treasury Board’s own numbers to estimate that the average number of paid sick days taken by public sector workers is closer to 11.5. And there's more: the PBO says that even this lower figure comes with many caveats, so the actual number is likely even lower. 

Clement gives the impression that there's some kind of free for all in the public service, with workers taking sick days indiscriminately. But this is simply wrong: every hour of sick leave taken by a public service worker must be approved by management.

2. It's not true that public service workers take way more sick leave than private sector workers.

The Harper government likes to claim that public service workers abuse sick leave but, in September 2013, Statistics Canada issued a study that compared absenteeism in the public and private sectors and found that when adjusted for unionization, age and gender, the gap in the number of sick days used amounts to around a day per year.

Update: Regardless of differences between the public and private sectors when it comes to sick leave use, the notion that the private sector should be the gold standard for workplace rights and benefits is extremely dubious. Quite the opposite, the public sector is a far better model for workplaces everywhere. An October 2014 study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), for example, found that there is less wage discrimination for women, aboriginals, and visible minorities in the public sector compared to the private sector.

Moreover, on the question of sick leave, while it's true that most private sector employers do not offer paid sick leave—thereby rendering any comparison of sick leave use in the public and private sectors equivalent to comparing apples and oranges—some private firms do in fact provide good provisions to their workers. Professor Linda Duxbury of the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University states, for instance, that: “Some oil companies, it's like - 'Hey your dog died. Good enough, take a day. We understand' ... And quite frankly, the data’s clear that organizations that demonstrate trust in employees get trust back from employees.”

Indeed, a case in point is Momentous Corporation, an Ottawa internet technology company that does not track how often its 110 employees take vacation days or sick leave. Rob Hall, the company's CEO, reports that the policy is successful and that: "We metric people based on getting the job done, not how many days they're in the office or how many days they take off or how many days they're sick."

3. Sick leave helps ensure productivity and helps avoid spreading diseases like mono, flu, avian flu, SARS, H1N1, and whatever comes after H1N1.

Paid sick leave provisions enhance overall productivity by ensuring that workers who are sick with colds and flus don’t come in to work and spread it to other workers. To the Conservatives out there, it's good for the economy!

Indeed, a 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) research paper observes that "there are no doubts that gaps in paid sick leave result in severe impacts on public health and the economy..." To illustrate the point, moreover, the report reveals that:

In 2009, when the economic crisis and the H1N1 pandemic occurred simultaneously, an alarming number of employees without the possibility of taking paid sick leave days attended work while being sick. This allowed H1N1 to spread into the workplace causing infections of some 7 million co-workers in the USA alone. [...] Fears of losing one’s job, restructuring, downsizing, and financial worries were identified as reasons for the dangerous and costly presence of the sick at work.

Update: The September 2014 edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) includes a peer-reviewed commentary piece advocating for paid sick leave for all. The authors note:

Despite medicine’s impressive advances, there are still simple solutions to reduce the likelihood of illness and to speed up recovery that are underused. Paid sick leave with job protection is one such example in Canada...Paid sick leave gives workers the opportunity to seek medical care and speeds recovery. Beyond individual needs, it is in everyone’s interest to ensure that employees who are sick can stay at home: people with contagious dis- eases who go to work put their coworkers and clients at risk of infection, which can lead to increased general morbidity and productivity losses.

4. Sick leave is NOT cashable.

Unused sick leave accumulates each year but, contrary to media and government claims, is in no way cashable upon retirement or departure from the public service. Sick leave that is not used by the time a public service worker quits or retires is lost, not cashed out.

5. How can sick leave cost the government $5 billion if employees can't cash it out?

Tony Clement claims that accumulated sick leave days represent over $5 billion in liability to the government. This is utter nonsense: most public service workers have many unused sick days (often in the hundreds) when they quit or retire, and this does not cost the government anything. Again, sick leave is not cashable.

UPDATE: In July 2014, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) concluded that there is virtually no incremental cost to government (and taxpayers) stemming from the federal public service sick leave system.

6. The current system should be improved for young workers, not destroyed.

Young public service workers tend not to fall sick very often and so can accumulate their sick days for use when they are older and more likely to fall ill. Sometimes, however, young people do become seriously ill or suffer a major trauma like a concussion from a sport. In such cases, they may have to stay off work for months but would possibly not have enough sick days accumulated to cover the 13 week period before long term disability insurance kicks in.

Both the unions and the government agree that this is a problem, but the solution is not to get rid of the current sick leave system and replace it with a private short term disability plan, as Tony Clement has suggested. In fact, making young workers, who as a whole don't take much sick leave, pay premiums to an insurance company in order to cover the more frequent sick leave of older workers, also seems problematic.

There are other solutions, though—for example, ‘sick day loans’. If the banks can lend you money to buy a house, surely your employer can lend you sick days with the expectation that you’ll be back at work. In fact, at the discretion of managers, this is already currently possible in the public service. 

7. Sick leave is a NEGOTIATED benefit.

The current sick leave system didn’t just happen—it was negotiated by members of federal unions such as PSAC, CAPE and PIPSC, in previous rounds of bargaining. And like other non-monetary benefits in collective agreements, it was agreed to in exchange for other things, such as withdrawing demands for wage increases during recessionary periods. If the Conservatives want to change the sick leave system, they need to negotiate with unions and not legislate changes, as many suspect they will try to do.

8. Unions will not back down.

Federal public service unions will reject the change to the private plan. PSAC, the largest of the unions, with well over 100,000 members working in the core public service, has said that it will not negotiate away the current sick leave system for the weaker, privately managed, for profit system that the government is pushing.

9. If the government has its way, insurance companies will be the only winners.

The government’s plan to get rid of sick leave and replace it with a private, for profit, short-term disability (STD) insurance plan is good....for big insurance corporations, which stand to win a massive contract. Indeed, STDs are never good for flesh and blood persons, and this one will cost public service workers more in insurance premiums and involve more time-wasting paperwork. Every time a worker is sick, even if for only a day, the insurance company will demand all sorts of paperwork before it issues a cheque to cover lost wages. And it's certainly possible that the insurance company will reject the claim and not pay lost wages if it deems the paperwork unsatisfactory. Indeed, it's important to remember that, as with any private insurance company, the less that is paid out, the higher the profits.  All this will have the effect of dissuading many workers from staying home when sick and having others possibly staying home without pay.

10. Like in New York City, sick leave should be extended to all.

In 2014, New York City passed a law expanding paid sick leave to workers in all businesses with more than five employees. Today, any employee working for a business of this size can take up to five paid sick days off per year without fear of losing their jobs. In fact, workers can even use their paid sick days to take care of family members, including grandparents, grandchildren and siblings. 

This law follows a similar law that was passed in San Francisco in 2007, which extends paid, bankable sick days to all workers in that city. The San Francisco law is in fact more generous than New York's, providing as many as eight paid sick days to full time workers over the course of a year.

Why don’t governments in Canada take inspiration from these examples south of the border and pass laws to ensure paid sick leave for all workers rather than attacking the negotiated sick leave of workers who deliver important public services?

Update: In September 2014, California adopted a paid sick leave law for all workers in the state, allowing them to take paid time off not only for their own illnesses, but also for those of a family member. For comparative purposes, California's population is roughly 38 million, just a bit more than Canada's population of 35 million, and California has a comparable GDP to that of Canada.

Update 2: In October 2014, the Public Service Alliance of Canada—the largest union representing federal public service workers—launched an online pledge in support of paid sick leave for all workers. Within weeks, the pledge received around 30,000 signatures from Canadians across the country. 

[cdnpoli]

The Kafkaesque Trial of Professor Hassan Diab

Would Canadians support a scheme by which the courts and the government can hand a Canadian citizen over to another country for detention and investigation even if the latter can adduce no credible evidence linking the citizen to a crime? The vast majority of Canadians don’t know it, but this is precisely what Canada’s kafkaesque Extradition Act enables. Next week, an Ontario Court of Appeal will hear a case to extradite former Carleton University professor Hassan Diab to France for questioning in relation to a 1980 bombing near a synagogue in Paris which killed four people, an attack that was undoubtedly a tragedy. Yet the case against Diab, brought forth by a French investigation, is producing another tragic episode due to the unfair and abusive nature of the Canadian extradition process.  

The basic outline of the story is as follows: In November 2008, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested Professor Diab, then teaching at Carleton University, at the request of French authorities, who wanted him extradited to France even though he had not (and still has not) been charged with committing any crime. (In fact, the allegations against Diab are based on unsourced intelligence, meaning that no one—not even the French investigating judge—knows the origin of the intelligence.) Diab was imprisoned until April 2009, when he was granted bail under rigid and invasive terms, which remain in effect today: he can only leave his house during the daytime if accompanied by a surety and must wear a GPS bracelet on his ankle 24 hours a day, which he and his partner must also pay for to the tune of $2,000 a month.

Following this, Carleton University fired Diab without cause, even though the judge who granted him bail specifically approved his continued teaching at the university. The decision was strongly protested by Diab’s colleagues in the Sociology and Anthropology department, as well as CUPE 4600, the Teaching Assistants and Contract Instructors union, but the administration refused to reverse the decision. As Diab observed: “My life has been turned upside down because of unfounded allegations and suspicions.”

To be sure, Diab has consistently denied the allegations against him, and he offered to take a polygraph test and answer any questions that the French have from Canada. Moreover, many friends and colleagues have filed character letters with the Court describing him as “non-violent”, a “humanist”, “conscientious and dependable”, and “a peace loving man, a devoted teacher.”

The extradition proceedings have been lengthy but the key court decision so far is the June 2011 ruling by Justice Robert Maranger of the Ontario Superior Court. In his ruling, the judge found that the French case against Diab—centred around a handwriting analysis report—is “very problematic”, “convoluted, very confusing, with conclusions that are suspect.” He also found that four other key components of the case made by the French against Diab—including a passport, descriptions of the suspect and composite sketches—"whether taken individually or viewed as a whole, would not be sufficient to justify committing Mr. Diab to trial in ... France.” And he went even further, noting that “the case presented by the Republic of France against Mr. Diab is a weak case; the prospects of conviction in the context of a fair trial seem unlikely.” Yet, in a conclusion that can only be viewed as deeply troubling, Justice Maranger ruled that Canada's extradition treaty with France gives him no choice but to approve extradition in spite of the aforementioned determinations. Gary Botting, arguably Canada’s foremost legal scholar on extradition matters, has written that the Extradition Act is “perhaps the least fair statute ever to be passed into Canadian law.” Once an extradition treaty is established with another country—in this case, France, which, by the way, does not extradite its own citizens to Canada—the Act allows a foreign state to request a Canadian citizen’s extradition by merely claiming that it has a “record of the case” that would hold up in its own courts. As Botting explains, “the record of the case is said to be ‘presumptively reliable’ – even though the record of the case does not come close to meeting Canadian standards of evidence and is by definition ‘hearsay’.”

Despite this, some observers seem to suggest that Diab should acquiesce to the extradition demand and head off to France to face the investigating judges and clear his name. This is absurd, however. Absurd not only because this means the man who, again, has not been charged, and who has already suffered profoundly since 2008, would have to leave his family and friends in Ottawa to potentially spend years in detention, racking up legal bills in France, but absurd also because France’s judicial system is especially problematic and dangerous in such cases.

Indeed, Human Rights Watch has sounded the alarm, cautioning that “French counterterrorism laws and procedures undermine the right of those facing charges of terrorism to a fair trial.” Furthermore, the organization has observed that “the use of evidence obtained from third countries where torture and ill-treatment are routine raises particular concerns,” and that “the courts appear to have allowed as evidence in some cases statements allegedly made under torture.” Given the use of unsourced intelligence by the French in Diab’s case, the above is very concerning.

Amnesty International, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association have all filed interventions with the court, expressing their concerns about the case. In the end, however, even if the Court of Appeals upholds Justice Marenger’s ruling, the final decision to extradite is a political one, resting with Minister of Justice Peter MacKay.

Some who have learned of Diab’s case have been so shocked by the injustice that they have started the Hundred for Hassan campaign, where supporters make a monthly contribution of $20 to help cover the financially draining cost of the GPS bracelet. The campaign started with just a few but quickly grew to well over a hundred supporters within a few months, a strong sign that those who learn about the extradition system find it unacceptably problematic.