If the name Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab doesn’t ring a bell, you might know him better as the “Christmas Day bomber”. On December 25, Abdulmutallab managed to avoid the “rigorous” airline security in Amsterdam and boarded Flight 253 heading to Detroit with explosives strapped to his underwear. As Flight 253 began its descent towards Detroit, Abdulmutallab [...]

If at first you do not succeed, try, try again. These words of wisdom convey the ethos of human rights advocacy: paucities of political power, limited financial resources, public indifference (if not outright hostility), and the slow pace of social change regularly conspire to cast those who persist in the fight for justice as idealistic [...]

This week, The Globe and Mail responded to the Supreme Court’s decision in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony, 2009 SCC 37, critically. (The decision is summarized and discussed by TheCourt.ca Senior Contributing Editor Daniel Del Gobbo here.) The Globe was critical of the Supreme Court’s decision requiring the Hutterites to participate in Alberta’s [...]

On September 24, 2008, Judge Simon Noël of the Federal Court (FCC DES-5-08) the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Ministers of Public Safety and Citizenship and Immigration to “file all information and intelligence related to Mohamed Harkat including but not limited to drafts, diagrams, recordings and photographs in CSIS’s possession or holdings with [...]

Last Thursday the Supreme Court of Canada handed down its ruling in Charkaoui v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2008 SCC 38. The ruling has significant implications for the Canadian security certificate regime, and for the practices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (“CSIS”). Before discussing these implications, a brief overview of the case is in [...]