The NDP’s Finance Critic and Northern BC MP is calling the federal government’s new anti-terror bill “Dangerous”.
Nathan Cullen, who represents Skeena / Bulkley Valley says C-51, which is currently being debated in the House of Commons, would give spy agencies and police new powers.
“Anyone they suspect of being a problem, it would allow them to spy on them, and anybody they know,” he says. “Going through their houses, going through their emails; This is terrible, this is not the way to run a country. The idea that people can’t raise their voices, can’t assemble together, is offensive to me, as a Canadian.”
Cullen says that the country is entering into the realm of a “Police state”.
“Where you’re being observed all the time and assumed to be guilty,” he says. “Heaven forbid you were ever to put your name on a petition against a project or raising a concern with government. We’ve seen this, all of government attack on civil society and our rights, this is very dangerous.”
The Conservatives say C-51 will protect citizens from possible attacks and they’d like the new security measures in place by the summer.
While the bill is debated in the House, an internal report from the RCMP is pointing to Northern BC as one of Canada’s most vulnerable regions to “Violent anti-pipeline extremists working with aboriginal radicals to sabotage critical infrastructure”.
The January 2014 report states that “Violent aboriginal extremist factions” are allying with a “Highly organized and well-financed anti-petroleum movement” determined to attack “Society’s reliance on fossil fuels.”