Justice Minister Anne McLellan claims her anti-terrorism bill balances civil liberties with the needs of security, but offers no evidence it does anything of the kind.

We’re told this unprecedented intrusion on the rights and freedoms of Canadians must be rushed through Parliament within days of being drafted, as if it were all that stands between us and yet more unimaginable terrorist atrocities. There’s no evidence of that either.

Beware of people who try to use the September 11 barbarities as an excuse to push agendas that wouldn’t stand the light of day when people were thinking more clearly.

In the days after the World Trade Centre attacks, Alliance and Tory MPs showed unseemly eagerness to uncover a Canadian connection to the events. Alas for their blighted political purposes, none appeared — aside from some guy with an Arab-sounding name detained for allegedly carrying false documents.

The terrorists were mostly long-time residents of the United States, having entered that country legally, from Europe for the most part, and having outstayed their visas without detection while preparing for their crimes.

In complete disregard for this reality, we Canadians have spent much of the ensuing month flaying ourselves for our allegedly porous immigration system, our bleeding heart treatment of refugees, and our chronically lax security.

We’re told we need a continental security system to harmonize our immigration rules (which played no role in the attacks) with the vaunted U.S. system (which failed to prevent them).

Failing that, the world’s longest unprotected border will slam shut, and trade between the worlds’ two largest trading partners will go down the toilet.

Three weeks after the terrorist attacks, a friend passed through two international airports — Boston’s Logan airport, staging ground for the September 11 attacks, and Halifax — carrying a cell phone, a digital camera, and a laptop computer.

At Logan, he saw a lot of big guys packing iron, but security procedures were otherwise unchanged. He passed through the usual metal detector, but no one made him open, let alone turn on, his electronic gear, and no one checked his boarding pass.

At Halifax, there was no muscle or weaponry in sight, but he had to show his boarding card twice. Every passenger was passed through a metal detector, then rechecked with a metal-detecting wand. Guards required him to open and turn on each of his electronic gadgets.

Had these simple procedures been carried out at Logan on September 11, the attacks would have been thwarted. But they still weren’t in place October 3, even as Canadians beat ourselves up as patsies in the war on terrorism.

Now comes McLellan proclaiming the need for sweeping new police powers to arrest and detain persons suspected of crimes that haven’t yet taken place, and to keep them in jail for up to one year without trial if they decline to abide by restrictions imposed by a judge.

The bill is a pot pourri of sloppy wording, overbroad definitions, and cavalier disregard for the fundamentals of due process. It would make it an offence to raise money for foreign groups that exercise coercive influence on their respective governments. Had such a law been in place in the 1980s, some Canadians might have spent ten years in jail for the crime or raising money for Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. Forget about raising money to help Kurds seeking liberation from Saddam Hussein.

The act defines terrorist activities as “any act or omission intended to cause serious interference with or serious disruption of an essential service, facility, or system, whether public or private.”

It provides an exemption for lawful public protests or legal strikes. But what about wildcat strikes, or protests such as this week’s sit-in outside the gates of CFB Halifax that break minor laws? Should participants be treated as terrorists and subjected to the draconian provisions of McLellan’s bill?

The law removes and dilutes the safeguards against excessive police wiretapping. Police would no longer need to show that wiretaps were a “last resort.” It is already very rare for judges to turn down wiretap requests. Why the change?

The law would extend from 60 days to one year the length of time a wiretap could be used without disclosure.

Says Alan Borovoy, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, “All that’s going to accomplish is to reduce judicial supervision of this very intrusive practice.

Borovoy says the section allowing preventive detention of persons police suspect of crimes that haven’t taken place, “puts a premium on clairvoyance.”

Everyone wants to prevent any recurrence of the September 11 atrocities. But let’s make sure we take carefully considered steps that help accomplish that common goal. Lessening restraints on police power will, by definition, make us less free.

Where is the evidence it will make us more safe?