The Three Questions: Prosperity and the Public Good

Book by Rae Bob

Introduction to the 2006 edition

This book was first published in 1998. It was my second book, and followed From Protest to Power. It was an effort to focus attention on the need to break down the idea that Canadians had to chose between values of prosperity, sustainability, and social justice. What follows has not been “re-touched.”

The decade since 1996 has been very much a second career, beginning with my association with the Goodmans law firm in Toronto. To return to the practice of law with such a congenial and able group of colleagues has been a real pleasure. My work on corporate governance and restructuring has taken me into the practical and ever-changing world of the market place. I have developed an even deeper conviction that how a society becomes and remains prosperous lies at the heart of a successful public policy.

In a great many countries this question has been seized by reforming social democratic parties as a central one. Despite the best efforts of a few, such has not been the case with the federal New Democratic Party. I resigned from the NDP when I was named to the Security and Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) by Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 1998. That appointment involved some adjudication of complaints by citizens of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), and I did not want any appearance of conflict in that new role. But there was also steady disenchantment with both the federal and Ontario New Democratic parties, and in particular their failure to embrace fully the need for change, and to practice balance in all aspects of policy, both domestic and foreign.

I had a chance to work on a number of fascinating challenges: the work of Canada’s intelligence and security services, with SIRC; the restructuring of the Canadian Red Cross; issues of federal governance around the world, with the Forum of Federations; the softwood lumber dispute; the dispute at Burnt Church, New Brunswick; the review of higher education for the McGuinty government; and the Air India bombing. Throughout it all I worked as a lawyer on negotiation, mediation, and corporate governance. It has hardly been a retirement!

The review of CSIS, which continued even more intensively with my Air India work, brought home to me the challenge of reconciling the protection of security and the maintenance of civil liberties. The difficulty of this balance was of course heightened by 9/11 and even more recently by the arrests in June 2006 over allegations of a bomb plot in Ontario.

In my experience with SIRC, and through subsequent work in Sri Lanka and with the victims of the Air India terrorist bombing tragedy, I have come to know the risks of living in a dangerous world.

Isolated as we may feel from the troubles of the Middle East, South Asia, or even central London, we are in the world, and the world is in us.

The face of violence may be new, but there is nothing new about extremism.

The Air India bombing was conceived, planned, and carried out in Canada. A bomb was built in British Columbia, placed on a plane in Toronto, and loaded aboard a flight bound for India. All 330 people aboard Flight 182 were killed in an instant.

The challenge of recognizing extremism and its potential for violence tests all of us, including our security and policing services. They were at the heart of the security and intelligence failures in 1985. To a significant extent, air safety was revamped in the immediate wake of Air India and has been again since 9/11, but the circumstances that surrounded the activities were more complex. It is apparent, from my work on SIRC, and from my review of the Air India matter, that the RCMP and CSIS have come some way since then. This was evident through the joint appearance at their press conference announcing the arrest of the seventeen men in June 2006. Seamless cooperation, working within their mandates but closely with each other when necessary, is critical to ensuring the transition from an intelligence investigation to a law-enforcement operation in order to save lives and hold to account those who are violating our most basic laws.

CSIS has come a long way since 1985 when it was an agency in its infancy, focused to a great extent on the Cold War. It will have to keep changing, in an effort to respond to newer threats with different aims. The emergence of terror cells in Montreal and the arrest of the Millennium bomber spurred these changes in a way that simply did not happen sufficiently in 1985.

An even broader challenge to our society is to make sure we respond to the threat of violence fully within the best traditions of Canadian values. Those principles, along with our basic rights, are safeguarded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which have been upheld by the Courts. But they lie in public opinion as well.

Incidents of terror and threats to the safety of the public can test our sense of equality, tolerance, openness, and the compact with our fellow citizens that is the basis of the civil society we have enjoyed in this country. There are people who have suggested that some levels of coercive interrogation are acceptable: I disagree. Canada should not fall prey to those who are carried away by the moment.

We must protect cherished values. We must do it as citizens. Government alone cannot ensure the outcome. Public confidence in our system of justice, and in the fundamental features of our free society must persevere. We must keep our perspective and hold sight of basic values when we react to such incidents. Our society must resist any backlash. The growth of intolerance or hate, which can take root in the wake of alleged terror plots in the name of a religion or cause, poses the strongest challenge to citizens as well as to governments.

How Canada responds will be a profound test of our values and our capacities as a country.