Canada's Best Kept Secret: Democracy

Buried on a back page of the A section in yesterday's USA Today, was a tiny, seven-line article about two of Canada's anti-terror laws expiring today, March 1, and not to be renewed. Of the two laws the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to let die a quiet death, one involved holding suspects for three days without charges if they were suspected of planning a terror attack.

The second, left lying on the side of the road to expire, permitted Canadian judges to force witnesses to testify at investigative hearings about alleged terrorist activities. This law clearly begs an obvious question: How does one force a witness to talk on the stand? Torture them in open court?

According to the article, Canada's Liberal party leader, a woman named Stephane Dion, stated that these two laws had never been used, and she was quoted as saying they "represent a risk to individual rights."

So, in letting these laws go, it would appear at least one governing body on the North American continent remembers there is such a thing as individual rights.

The last line of this mini-story was, as expected, devoted to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's view on the actions of the House in allowing the laws to terminate without renewal. Harper, Canada's answer to Dick Cheney, predictably squawked about Liberals being soft on terror. Yada yada yada.

In addition to my curiousity over which techniques could force a witness to speak in court, or anywhere for that matter (that manual could be a bestseller), a number of other questions leaped to mind as I squinted at those seven lines.

In a paper called USA Today, why was a story of this magnitude deeply buried when the U.S. shares a long border with Canada, and decisions about its anti-terrorism laws have the potential to impact America, also? Maybe the story didn't bleed enough to lead, but it did seem important enough to deserve more attention than to place it where a reader would need to dig through all the kitchen drawers until he or she located a magnifying glass to see it.

If this story had appeared more conspicuously, might Americans have noticed that their neighbor to the north was handling the issue of terrorism in a more thoughtful, Bill-of-Rights kind of way? Might Americans have then gotten riled with the notion their representatives should follow suit to keep America from being viewed as the crazy barbarian the world thinks it has become?

Have Canadians always been a step saner and a tad more progressive than Americans? If so, is it due to a combination of familiarity with French philosophy combined with an English hold-out-your-pinky-while-drinking-tea social sensibility?

America, after all, began as a settlement of British cast-offs, and somewhere in the process of drawing more huddled masses to her bosom by various methods for various reasons, she grew to become a nation that has among its social priorities swilling flavored coffee sans dainty pinky, shopping day and night at the WalMart, and staring bug-eyed at the TV waiting for Anna Nicole Smith to decompose on-air.

So, is it possible that the great American experiment in democracy is being shown up, overtaken even, by a nation that still has a queen as its official head of state? If Canada's parliamentary body is busy protecting "individual rights" despite the threats of terror and terrible opposition from its prime minister, it would seem the answer is yes.

It appears that the practice of democracy post-9/11 only requires a magnifying glass if you live in the U.S.A. today.