C-350 – Combatting Torture and Terrorism Act – makes changes to the State Immunity Act, Criminal Code, and Immigration and Refugee Protection Act related to torture and terrorism.
State Immunity Act
First up we have changes to the State Immunity Act. This is the Act that provides state immunity to other countries. (State immunity is what makes it so you can’t sue a country or their representative outside of their own country, so no suing the US government in a Canadian court) Currently countries that support terrorism can have their immunity taken away.
C-350 would add the ability to take immunity away from countries that support torture or extrajudicial killing. A country is considered to support torture or extrajudicial killing if it’s responsible for or directed one of these acts. It also counts if an act occured that, if it happened in Canada, would qualify as torture or murder under the Criminal Code.
Finally if a committee of the House or Senate recommend that an order be made to take away a country’s immunity the government has 40 days to table a response outlining why they will or will not issue the order.
Criminal Code
This part’s a bit interesting. At the moment the government can, though an order in council, add an organization to a list of terrorist organizations if the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness recommends it. C-350 will add a new section (a Schedule) to the Criminal Code that would also include groups that are considered terrorist organizations. The list and the Schedule don’t need to be the same and groups on either are treated the same.
The reason this is interesting is it looks like it would just be a way to legislate groups as being terrorist organizations. The schedule is treated the same as the list, with the government having the same options to add names to it, but being included in legislation means the government has the option to simply legislate groups onto it. Great example here is that C-350 also adds the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the schedule that it creates, effectively declaring them a terrorist organization.
Finally C-350 will make it so, if a committee of the Senate or the House recommends adding a group to the list or schedule, the government has 40 days to table a response on their decision about adding the group.
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
Finally C-350 makes changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act regarding mandatory service with a terrorist organization.
Currently a permanent resident or a foreign national can be denied entry to Canada if they’re a member of an organization that is working against Canada’s interests (espionage, working against a democratic government or institution, etc) or engaging in terrorism. C-350 would add an exemption to this if there is a mandatory period of service with the organization, the person didn’t serve longer than the mandatory period, and they didn’t engage in espionage/terrorism/etc while they were a member.
Progress
C-350 is currently waiting to get on the Order of Precedence.
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