The Canadian parliament scrapped Tuesday controversial anti-terrorism measures adopted after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, saying they breach civil rights. Lawmakers voted 159 to 124 on a bill that opposed prolonging the measures, which are due to expire Thursday, over the objections of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government.
Harper's government had argued that the measures, which allow authorities to make preventative arrests and compel testimony from witnesses about terror plots, would help prevent attacks.
"The powers that are there are necessary for national security," Harper said in the House of Commons ahead of the vote.
But all three opposition parties argued that the controversial tools had never been used by police and were a blatant violation of civil rights, and should expire as prescribed by the bill.
"We've got to sunset these clauses ... because the whole architecture of anti-terrorist legislation in our country needs amendment and reform," said Michael Ignatieff, opposition Liberal deputy leader.
Melissa LeClerc, a spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, told AFP earlier that scrapping the security measures would "send a signal that Canada does not take terrorism seriously."
The demise of the security provisions comes only days after Canada's highest court blunted other weapons in Canada's anti-terrorism arsenal.
On Friday, the Supreme Court quashed portions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that allowed Ottawa to detain foreigners suspected of terror ties without charges for many years, based on undisclosed evidence presented at secret court hearings, as unconstitutional.
The measures were used to jail five suspected Al-Qaeda sleeper agents since 2001. The court allowed the government one year to amend the immigration law.
The vote Tuesday dealt a blow to Harper's Conservative government, which is facing rumblings of an election, possibly as early as mid-March when the 2007-2008 budget is presented.
The lawmakers rejected recommendations to extend the two controversial provision, with some amendments, offered by Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal justice minister whose party introduced the anti-terrorism act five years ago, other Liberals, a parliamentary committee and the Liberal-dominated Senate.
The vote also overcame lobbying by families of victims of the two deadliest airborne attacks in history, both with Canadian casualties, to extend the security measures.
Air India Flight 182 was bombed off the coast of Ireland on June 23, 1985, by radical orthodox Sikh immigrants to Canada. The blast killed 329 passengers and crew members, including 280 Canadians.
More than 50 Canadians died in the September 11, 2001, attacks that claimed some 3,000 lives in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
"Canada should not be removing critical tools for fighting terrorism while terrorists are busy sharpening their tools to use against Canadians and other innocent victims," said Maureen Basnicki, whose husband was killed on September 11, 2001, in New York.
But opposition Liberal leader Stephane Dion, who struggled to unite his caucus on this issue, insisted "the two provisions have not proven to be useful in fighting terrorism thus far."
"I am determined to provide all the means possible to fight terrorism, but only while respecting human rights," he told reporters.
Harper accused the Liberals of "flip-flopping" and suggested their push to scrap the anti-terrorism measures would impede a federal police investigation of the Air India bombing, which continues after more than 20 years.
