West's submissions on a Canadian Foreign Influence Registry Scheme
In March 2023, Public Safety initiated public consultations on the merits of a Foreign Influence Transparency Registry. The following are Dr. Leah West’s submissions to this consultation process.
Her recommendations are informed by reports from CSIS on foreign interference, as well as reporting by advocacy groups like Alliance Canada Hong Kong. It also incorporates Canada’s constitutional jurisprudence on the freedom of expression protected under section 2(b) of the Charter. Finally, it reflects her analysis of strengths and weaknesses of comparable registration schemes like those of the US, Australia and proposed in the UK, as well as the impact on expression and advocacy of registration regimes in countries like Russia. I welcome informed feedback from academics, practitioners and advocates working in this space.
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Ukraine, Foreign Fighters and Canadian Law: A brief overview
The invitation of the government of Ukraine for individuals from around the world to join a foreign legion created for its self-defence, and the seeming ambiguity of the Canadian government’s attitude to this has raised a number of legal questions about those who may choose to do so. This short piece provides an overview of a number of legal issues this situation raises.
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Legal Trolling: Russian Lawfare in the Context of Ukraine
Observations on the Russian legal posture in the Ukraine conflict.
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Public Order Emergency: A guide to thinking through the legal thresholds and its justification
Late on Wednesday, February 17th, 2022, the Governor-In-Council (effectively cabinet) tabled a series of documents as part of a motion for consideration of a declaration of an emergency in the House of Commons under the Emergencies Act. In order to help Intrepid readers understand what Parliament is voting on, Leah West has prepared a helpful chart. It identifies the legal threshold required to find that a public order emergency exists, and the justification offered by Cabinet in support of that declaration in the documents laid before the House.
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Counting Terrorism Charges and Prosecutions in Canada Part 2: Trends in Terrorism Charges
The Anti-Terrorism Act 2001 brought Part II.1 of the Criminal Code into being and with it, Canada’s terrorism offences. In the twenty years since that time, 62 individuals have been charged with terrorism offences by our counting. This blog post is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of the field. Instead, we set out merely to remind the reader of what constitutes a terrorism offence in Canada and then review some of the trends that we can see from the prosecuting and charging numbers to date.
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Counting Terrorism Charges and Prosecutions in Canada Part 1: What does the data say?
This blog post is a medium for providing a series of tables that provide information on all terrorism cases and charges to date—a public release of information collected over the past five years that, I hope, will be of interest to students, lawyers, national security practitioners and academics. The tables strive to provide further information related to each of these cases, such as the specific offences charged, whether individuals were convicted or not, their sentences, and so on.
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Noble Cause, Terrible Reasoning: Zarei v Iran, 2021 ONSC 3377
Last Thursday, Justice Edward Belobaba released a much-anticipated decision, Zarei v Iran, 2021 ONSC 3377, for those who lost loved ones on Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS 752. We sympathize deeply with the families’ efforts to get justice, and in no way condone or excuse the actions of the IRGC or the state of Iran. Nevertheless, as terrorism law scholars we find the legal analysis in the Court’s decision unconvincing for several reasons. This post reflects our initial response to the legal analysis in the decision.
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Introducing...A University Called INTREPID
We’re pleased to launch a new component of the growing INTREPID empire: mini-courses. Right now, we’ve put together around 5 hours of explainer video modules covering the basis of Canadian national security law. We may or may not make more courses, if we can persuade ourselves there is a business case for spending many hours doing so. But right now, our first mini-course is free and open for “enrolment” — “enrolment” means creating a sign-in account on the learning management platform we use. You can find the link under “University” in the menu above or here.
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