The Senate’s national security and defence committee released an interim report yesterday on countering the terrorist threat in Canada. The report made some 23 recommendations, many of them critical of what the government has and has not yet done, such as making it a criminal offence to be part of a terrorist organization, or having a “no-visit” list to keep known ideological radicals out of the country. The one that got the most attention on Power & Politics and subsequently the Twitter Machine was recommendation 9, which suggests the government “work with the provinces and the Muslim communities to investigate the options that are available for the training and certification of Imams in Canada.” And then they were off about how this was criminalizing speech and thought, and how it was likely to be a Charter issue, but actually reading the report itself, the preceding section noted the problems of amateur prison proselytizers, and that members of the Muslim community were concerned about foreign-trained imams spreading extremist ideology, and noted that certification is already the case in Europe. Not much further down in the report is a reputable Calgary imam talking about how extremist ideology is being protected on campuses under the guise of “academic freedom.” In this context, the recommendation doesn’t seem nearly as extreme as it was presented, but hey, it’s not like that context made it into some of the articles (not that surprising, unfortunately). This having been said, there remain problems with the report, which is why the Liberal senators dissented from the report, looking for more counselling, early intervention, study of the roots of radicalization, and more importantly resources for RCMP that the government seems reluctant to do. Is it perfect work? No. Is it better than we’d get from the Commons? Yes. It’s also still an interim report, and more work will be done on it in the next parliament, so perhaps things will improve with it before the final version is issued. In the meantime, it’s not a bad thing that senators are actually talking about this issue without relying solely on slogans.

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