On March 4, 2004, CAUT president Victor Catano and executive director James Turk wrote on behalf of CAUT to the Canadian Senate raising concern over Bill C-7: The Public Safety Act. Alarmed at measures contained in the legislation, CAUT is asking the Senate to delay the passage of this bill.

We are writing to express our utmost concern about Bill C-7: The Public Safety Act (formerly Bill C-17), which is currently being debated in Senate and is slated for final review by the Senate Transport Committee. This bill allows for the collection of personal information about Canadians and for the sharing of this information with foreign governments with wholly inadequate controls. It represents a grave risk to Canadians' rights and freedoms, and to Canadian sovereignty.

In the wake of the Arar case, we are dismayed that our government would remain intent on passing such a law. Clearly it is meant to implement the post-Sept. 11 Smart Border Action Plan negotiated without Parliamentary oversight. The plan envisions the deep integration of Canadian and American police and security intelligence, the merger of databases, the sharing of information and the risk assessment of individuals by data mining computer programs of the type we have seen outlined in the American Total Information Awareness and CAPPS II programs. The inventors of this technology admit it will generate a disturbing percentage of false positive assessments. The dangers of ethnic profiling it presents are obvious.

We believe that the Smart Border Plan, like dozens of other bilateral agreements that have been negotiated by the Bush Administration since Sept. 11, will feed into a larger American plan for a global surveillance system in which national governments will be powerless to protect their citizens once they have been identified by a foreign government as a security risk. This is the Arar case written large.

Canadians should be extremely alarmed by these developments and by the haste with which the federal government is pushing this legislation through. This is watershed legislation. It is distressing that it will be reviewed by a Senate committee, the Transport Committee, which has little or no expertise in constitutional and civil liberty matters and no scope to understand the legislation in its full context.

We urge you and your fellow Senators to take the position that this highly controversial and dangerous legislation not be approved before the conclusions of the Arar inquiry are made public and the three-year review of its companion piece, the Anti Terrorism Act has taken place. Then there must be a thorough examination of the proposed legislation, with ample time for public submissions before the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

Our organization, and many other mainstream organizations with which we are in communication, will give you outspoken support for following these recommendations - as will most Canadians when informed about the implications of the bill.

The legislative summary of Bill C-7 can be viewed at www.parl.gc.ca/common/Bills_ls.asp?lang=E&Parl=37&Ses=3&ls=C7
&source=Bills_House_Government.