Working Paper Series ___________________________________ No. 17-03 August 2017 The Experience of Canadian Muslim Civil-Society Organizations and Activists in Influencing and Shaping Counter-terrorism Legislation Tufyal Choudhury, Durham Law School, UK Director: Lorne Dawson, University of Waterloo The TSAS Working Paper Series can be found at http://tsas.ca/research/tsas-working- papers/ TSAS: Choudhury, T. 2 The Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security, and Society TSAS is supported as a national strategic initiative funded by SSHRC and Public Safety Canada, along with the following departments of the federal government: • Royal Canadian Mounted Police • Canadian Security Intelligence Service • Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada • Correctional Services Canada • Defence Research and Development Canada • Global Affairs Canada • Security Intelligence Review Committee • Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner TSAS also receives financial support from several Canadian universities, including the University of Waterloo. Views expressed in this manuscript are those of the author(s) alone. For more information, contact the Lorne Dawson, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, University of Waterloo ([email protected]). Report Submitted to the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society Address correspondence to Mr. Tufyal Choudhury, Assistant Professor in Durham Law School, 4 Stockton Rd, Durham DH1 3DX, UK. [email protected] TSAS: Choudhury, T. 3 Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 4 2.0 Bill C-51 ...................................................................................................................................... 7 3.0 Methodology and Data Collection ...................................................................................... 11 4.0 Procedural Fairness ................................................................................................................. 16 5.0 Muslim Civil Society in Canada .......................................................................................... 23 6.0 Muslim Civil Society Voices in the debate on C-51 ......................................................... 28 7.0 Emerging Findings ................................................................................................................... 33 7.1 Voices ............................................................................................................................ 33 7.2 Who is invited to Speak ............................................................................................. 37 7.3 The Value of Voice ..................................................................................................... 39 7.4 Neutrality ..................................................................................................................... 43 7.5 Respect and Civility ................................................................................................... 49 8.0 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 51 9.0 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 55 TSAS: Choudhury, T. 4 1. Introduction Since 2001, the need to work with communities has become a common feature of counter-terrorism strategies in Western Europe and North America (Briggs, Fieschi and Lownsborough 2006; Huq 2013; Spalek 2013; Vermeulen 2014) In Canada’s counter-terrorism strategy, Building Resilience Against Terrorism, the government emphasises that its approach is underpinned by a ‘fundamental belief that countering terrorism requires partnership’, not only within and across government agencies, but also with civil society and citizens (Public Safety 2013: 4). In fact, partnership with citizens and civil society is identified as ‘critical’ to the overall success of the counter- terrorism strategy (ibid: 12), and building partnerships with civil society is an important tool in the Prevent strand of the strategy (ibid: 16). Much of the counter-terrorism policy discussion around partnerships has been about using community policing to develop relationships of trust and cooperation between communities and local and federal law-enforcement agencies. Here it is claimed that an increased flow of information from positive community relations can reduce the need to resort to more intrusive hard measures, such as powers to stop and search individuals in the street or employ intensive covert surveillance, which risk alienating and marginalising communities and undermining trust and cooperation with the police (Cherney and Murphy 2013). Cooperation, support and information from communities are, it is argued, particularly important in identifying individuals involved in lone-actor terrorism, as this is harder to detect using traditional forms of investigation (Edwards, Jeffray and Pantucci 2015). Through community outreach, the RCMP has developed relationships of trust and cooperation with many individuals and organisations at the local level (ibid; Jacoby 2016). TSAS: Choudhury, T. 5 However, suspicion remains, particularly among some young Muslims, that law enforcement agencies’ outreach activities are merely a public relations exercise (Bartlett, Birdwell and King 2010: 69). Local cooperation on security and counter-terrorism operates within a wider network of interactions between individuals and organisations of Canada’s Muslim communities and government and state actors at city, state and federal levels. Action at one level can impact, positively or negatively, relationships and cooperation at other levels. While counter-terrorism policing and cooperation are implemented locally, the framework of policies and legal powers within which they operate are developed by the Canadian government. Emerging research evidence that the conditions under which national policies are developed can affect levels of cooperation and partnership between law enforcement agencies and minority ethnic or religious communities, including surveys of Muslims in the UK and the US, have found that the fairness of the process by which counter-terrorism policies are formulated shapes community cooperation with the police (Tyler, Schulhofer and Huq 2010; Huq, Tyler and Schulhofer 2011). In Australia, research by Cherney and Murphy (2013) finds that the strongest predictor of cooperation on counter-terrorism between Arab communities and the police is an individual’s perception of the legitimacy of counter-terrorism laws; this is more important than their perceptions of the police or of the actions or behaviour of individual officers. This makes it important to ensure that ‘counter- terrorism laws and policies are developed [in a way that is] seen to be legitimate by the groups that are targeted by them’ (ibid: 415). The main objective of this research is to understand the experiences of Canadian Muslim civil-society organisations that seek to influence counter-terrorism legislation and TSAS: Choudhury, T. 6 policy. I use the public debate surrounding the enactment of one of the most significant pieces of Canadian counter-terrorism legislation since 2001, the 2015 Anti-terrorism Act, Bill C-51, as a case study. The paper draws on growing evidence that public cooperation with the state in counter-terrorism policing increases when the process by which counter- terrorism policies and laws are made are viewed as fair. The main research question examines the extent to which the process of enacting Bill C-51 met the procedural fairness standards in relation to voice, neutrality and respect. There is a particular focus on voice, with further questions of how and where voice is articulated. Gaventa (2007) identifies different spaces of participation’ drawing a distinction between ‘closed’, ‘invited’, ‘claimed’, and ‘created’ spaces. The legislative process in Canada (discussed below) offers opportunities for civil society input (alongside those of experts and public officials) to Parliamentary Commons and Senate committees examining proposed legislation. When it was first published, C-51 emerged out of the closed spaces of the government policymaking process. Invited spaces offer greater opportunities for civil society to engage in the policymaking process, but the power remains with the authorities that issue the invitation. Marginalised actors can challenge power by developing claimed or created spaces on their own terms. The legislative process, during which the details of the proposed legislation are examined, offers a mixture of spaces for participation. While all individuals and organisations have a right to submit their comments to the committees, Bill committee hearings themselves take place in an invited space. Muslim civil-society actors can create space for participation by arranging private meetings with politicians, including government ministers as well as opposition critics and party leaders. They can also claim spaces for participation by organising conferences, seminars and community events at which to discuss C-51. This paper’s exploration of the experiences of Canadian Muslim TSAS: Choudhury, T. 7 civil-society organisations in the debate on Bill C-51 pays particular attention to their experience of the committee process in relation