September 11: Consequences for Canada -book review

Book Review - September 11 : Consequences for Canada by Kent Roach . 2003 Montreal and Kingston : McGill-Queen 's University Press . 272 pages

Kent Roach provides a masterful analysis of the changes shaping Canadian politics in the aftermath of the September 11 , 2001 (henceforth , 9 /11 ) terrorist strikes . His central theme is to explore to what degree changes had occurred in post-9 /11 Canada from a legal and political point of view . To establish the same , Roach looks at Canadian legislations since Black Tuesday ' and the greater policy-related questions of military strength , immigration and foreign policy

p The terrorist strikes of 9 /11 in the USA - the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D .C . - have served to establish a new of international relations , marked by a palpable fear of catastrophic terrorism , the fright of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to non-state actors such as the al-Qaeda , and the burgeoning War on Terror ' The question remains , however , as to whether this attack marks the emergence of a hitherto unknown threat or only the etching of an existing affliction into popular perception . Kent Roach challenges conventional wisdom to take the latter view , saying that the novelty of 9 /11 was the vulnerability that it instilled in the minds of the west in general , and North Americans in particular . For the author the attacks only accelerated a number of pre-existing attacks already faced by Canada (Roach , 15

Indeed , Roach 's analysis is somewhat supportable in view of long-drawn problems with terrorism elsewhere in the world , especially in the Middle East , South Asia and Africa . What 9 /11 changed , however , was the response of countries , particularly the USA and Canada , to the threat of terrorism . A substantial portion of Roach 's book deals with the post-9 /11 changes in Canadian legislation , especially the hastily passed Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-36 ) of 2001 . A review of Canada 's pre-Bill C-36 criminal laws reveals that the same already threatened the most severe punishments , including life imprisonment . In such a situation , Bill C-36 only managed to enlarge the scope of the state 's power in arbitrarily identifying several kinds of activities - even anti-globalization protests and illegal strikes (Roach 2003 : 5 ) - as terrorist behavior . This was in keeping with the sweeping changes that many countries swiftly instituted in to deal with the specter of the new transnational superterrorist (Cotler . In effect , all that the new bill succeeded in doing was to politicize the particular nature of crimes

Roach 's legal analysis is remarkably sound . He maintains that the functional problems of instituting the Anti-Terrorism Act ' before any complementary consequence management efforts indicates the Canadian government was too eager to publicly display that necessary measures were being taken to address the threat of terrorism . This preoccupation with actors (terrorists , rather than their actions (terrorism , worries Roach about the future prospects of minority rights and civil liberties that have been so closely guarded through Canada 's history

It is also difficult to establish any correlation...