News
Government aims to tighten terror laws

Jan 23 2015

OTTAWA – The Conservative government
wants to retool Canada’s terrorism
laws. Among the proposed changes are no-fly list procedures to make it easier to prevent a suspected terrorist from boarding an airplane.

The Canadian Press has learned the government is also looking to give police greater ability to generally restrict the movements of purported extremists by lowering the threshold for obtaining a peace bond.

The legislation to be tabled Friday is
also expected to create a new Criminal
Code provision against advocating an act
of terrorism.

A government source says an internal
federal review of the fatal assaults on Canadian soldiers last October uncovered a need for such a measure to prosecute extremists who encourage others to wage terrorism.

The provision would stop short of criminalizing the glorification of terrorism – for instance, simply posting an Internet video of a bomb going off.

But if the video also called for a similar
attack on Canadians, that would fall under
the new provision.

The government intends to address those
areas as it prepares to deliver legislation that was promised following the deaths of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Cpl. Nathan Cirillo.