September 8, 2003
Last month, Immigration Canada, together with the RCMP and several local police forces, conducted raids that resulted in the arrest of 19 men in the Toronto area. Eighteen of the arrested men were originally from Pakistan, while one was an Indian national. At the time of this writing, a total of 21 arrests have been made and three of the men have been released from custody. Ten more are being sought by Immigration and police, the culmination of a seven-month investigation called "Project Thread".
Although some of those arrested are being detained on Immigration Act charges, all the men were arrested on the grounds that there is a reasonable suspicion that they are a threat to national security. Specifically, it is being alleged that the men form part of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell that has been in the Toronto area prior to September 11, 2001.
The lack of comment by the federal government on the possibility of sleeper cells in Toronto was deafening. While it would be improper to comment individually on the cases against specific individuals, if this type of operation had happened in the United States, the government would have addressed the topic of terrorism. The Canadian government is no more committed to ensuring that terrorist acts do not occur in this country than they were shortly after September 11, when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien proudly, but ignorantly, declared that there were no terrorist cells in Canada. This statement was made after Ahmed Ressam, a resident of Montreal, was arrested while trying to enter the United States in December 1999 in order to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
The facts that led to the suspicion that the men who were arrested were members of a sleeper cell are the following:
Of course, the arrested men have their supporters who happily try and explain away the above factors. They were students, so of course their apartments were sparsely furnished. A light plane couldnt damage the Pickering Nuclear facility. They are all nice people who, at most, obtained false documents to enter or to stay in Canada. And of course, they are the victims of racial profiling.
Any one of the factors that led to the suspicion of terrorism, in and of themselves are meaningless and can be explained away. But when you examine all of the factors together, that leads to the reasonable suspicion that there was a terrorist cell operating in Canada. That does not necessarily mean that any one individual is a member of that cell.
It is ironic that the federal government, under whose legislation the men were arrested on, now, unlike their Ontario counterparts, have nothing really to say about terrorism. This is most likely the result of the fact that the government that cares more about tolerance than about safety, are wary of getting involved in the "racial profiling" debate. These arrests had nothing to do with racial profiling. The men were arrested, not because they were Muslims, but because they were suspected al-Qaeda members, all of whom happen to be Muslim. To use the logic that is being used by the arrested mens supporters, arrests of ethnic gang members could never be made because all the members are of one particular ethnic group.
Canadas reaction to terrorism, to use a recently coined expression, is so September 10th. We are where the U.S. was on that date. Its unfortunate, but it is going to take an actual terrorist attack in this country before the federal government starts to take terrorism seriously.