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PP RUEHGA RUEHHA RUEHMT RUEHQU RUEHVC
DE RUEHOT #1578/01 3572136
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P 222136Z DEC 08
FM AMEMBASSY OTTAWA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8896
INFO RUCNCAN/ALL CANADIAN POSTS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEILB/NCTC WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY 0014

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 OTTAWA 001578 
 
SIPDIS 
 
S/CT FOR R.SHORE AND NCTC 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PTER PREL ASEC CA
SUBJECT: CANADA: 2008 COUNTRY REPORTS ON TERRORISM 
 
REF: STATE 120019 
 
¶1. (U) During 2008 Canada secured its first convictions under 
the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act.  In September, a Toronto court 
convicted a 20-year-old man, whose identity is protected by 
the Criminal Youth Justice Act, for conspiring in a group 
plot to bomb several Canadian targets, including Parliament 
Hill, Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters, and nuclear 
power plants.  The individual faces as many as 10 years in 
prison, but the court had not set a sentencing date at 
year,s end.  The man was among 18 arrests in 2006 in 
connection to the alleged conspiracy.  The government dropped 
charges against seven alleged co-conspirators, but ten of the 
accused awaited trial at year,s end. The remaining 
individuals face charges including participation in alleged 
terrorist training and terrorist financing.  In a separate 
trial in October, a Canadian judge convicted Momin Khawaja of 
five charges of financing and facilitating terrorism and two 
criminal code offenses related to building a remote-control 
device that could trigger bombs.  Police arrested Khawaja in 
2004, accusing him of conspiring with a British al-Qaida (AQ) 
cell in a thwarted London bomb plot in that same year. 
Khawaja faces a maximum of two life terms, plus a consecutive 
58 years at his sentencing on February 12, 2009.  In both 
cases, the judges upheld the constitutionality of Section 38 
of the Canada Evidence Act, which allows Canada to protect 
sensitive foreign government information from public 
disclosure. 
¶2. (U) Police in Quebec arrested Said Namouh in September in 
connection with the arrest in Austria of three members of the 
Global Islamic Media Front, an AQ-linked propaganda and 
recruitment organization.  Police charged Namouh with 
plotting a terrorist attack against an unspecified foreign 
country but found no direct threat to Canada.  Namouh remains 
in custody pending a January 31, 2009 bail hearing.  Working 
in cooperation with French authorities, in November Canadian 
police arrested an Ottawa university instructor in connection 
with the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue, which killed four 
people.  In June and October in separate immigration cases, 
the Canadian Border Services Agency deported two alleged 
&Basque Homeland and Freedom8 (ETA) terrorists back to 
Spain to face criminal charges following a request from the 
Spanish government. 
 
¶3. (U) Two important pieces of legislation that the 
government introduced to Parliament in October 2007 met 
different fates during 2008. One bill to amend the 
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow for continued 
application of &security certificates,8 which have been in 
use for several decades as a way to detain, pending 
deportation, foreign nationals deemed to be a security 
threat.  The bill provided for a group of cleared &special 
advocates8 to challenge the evidence on behalf of the 
accused and for an initial judicial review of detainees in 
the first 48 hours of arrest and at six month intervals. 
Parliament passed this bill, which entered into force on 
February 14, ahead of a February 23 deadline that the 
Canadian Supreme Court had imposed after ruling that the 
government's use of secret evidence in certificate 
proceedings and detention reviews was unconstitutional.  Five 
individuals are currently subject to security certificates. 
The government dropped one individual's certificate.  The 
government has released four of the certificate holders from 
detention subject to conditions on their movement; one 
individual under a certificate remains in custody.  Legal 
Qindividual under a certificate remains in custody.  Legal 
challenges to the security certificate regime are on-going. 
 
¶4. (U) The second bill was part of a mandatory review of the 
2001 Anti-Terrorism Act. Two provisions of the Act ) 
investigative hearings permitting police to apply for an 
order requiring a witness to appear before a judge and answer 
questions, and preventive arrest, whereby police may bring an 
individual before a judge in the early stages of terrorist 
activity to disrupt a potential terrorist attack ) had 
sunset clauses and lapsed in February.  Although the Senate 
had passed this bill, the Commons had not when Prime Minister 
Stephen Harper dissolved Parliament to hold a October 14 
national election. The government has not made a public 
commitment to reintroduce the bill in the new Parliament, and 
the ruling Conservative Party did not include this 
legislation in its election campaign platform.  The 
Conservative election platform did, however, pledge to pass 
legislation allowing Canadians victims of terrorism to sue 
state sponsors of terrorism for monetary damages. 
 
¶5. (U) Under the statutory definition in Section 22 of the 
United States, Canada does not provide safe haven to any 
terrorist organization. 
 
¶6. (U) On December 12, Canada and the United States renewed 
 
OTTAWA 00001578  002 OF 003 
 
 
the bilateral agreement on emergency management cooperation, 
updating a 1986 accord.  It establishes the basis for mutual 
assistance in sending supplies, equipment, emergency 
personnel, and expert support in response to natural and 
man-made incidents, including those related to terrorism.  It 
provides for integrated responses and relief efforts during 
cross-border incidents.  It delineates a comprehensive and 
harmonized approach to emergency management and establishes a 
framework for a joint response to emergent threats. 
 
¶7. (U) United States-Canadian counterterrorism cooperation 
took place in a number of established fora, including the 
terrorism sub-group of the Cross Border Crime Forum, the 
Shared Border Accord Coordinating Committee, and the 
Bilateral Consultative Group (BCG). The BCG, which met in 
January, brings together U.S. and Canadian counterterrorism 
officials from over a dozen agencies on an annual basis to 
coordinate policies on terrorism, to share information, and 
to engage in joint counterterrorism training.  Under the 
auspices of the BCG, the United States and Canada broadened 
cooperation on a joint Counterterrorism Defense Plan, 
including a table top exercise in May. 
 
¶8. (U) In Afghanistan, Canada's presence has grown to a 
2,750-person battle group that is taking the fight to the 
Taliban insurgency in Kandahar province as part of the 
International Security Assistance Force's Regional Command 
South.  It also continues to provide a Provincial 
Reconstruction Team for stabilization and development 
efforts.  Canada is leading a major initiative to improve 
cross border coordination between Afghan and Pakistani 
authorities, including police and military, and to enhance 
the capacities of the units that work to secure the border 
from insurgent and terrorist crossings.  As of December, 
Canada had lost 103 soldiers, one diplomat, and two aid 
workers killed in Afghanistan.  It has suffered the highest 
proportion of casualties to troops deployed for any NATO 
member in country.  During the October national election 
campaign, Prime Minister Harper re-affirmed that Canada's 
combat role in Afghanistan will end in 2011. 
 
¶9. (U) Canada helped other countries address terrorism and 
terrorism financing with its Counterterrorism Capacity 
Building Program, a $12 million a year program to provide 
training, advice, and technical assistance to counterpart 
agencies. Through this program, Canada provided assistance to 
several countries in the Caribbean to draft new 
counterterrorism legislation, intelligence training for 
border officials on the Afghan-Pakistani border, and 
financial intelligence training to officials in India. 
Through its Cross Cultural Roundtable and Muslim Outreach 
program, Canada has actively engaged its citizens in a 
dialogue on a broad range of national security issues, 
including terrorism. The Muslim Communities Working Group in 
the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade 
continued its efforts abroad to enhance Canada's 
relationships with the countries of the Muslim world, 
focusing on the promotion of democratic governance, 
pluralism, and human rights. Canada currently has two 
projects under the Organization of American States, (OAS) 
Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism: a capacity 
building program on document security; and, fraud prevention 
in El Salvador for all the countries of Central America, the 
Dominican Republic, and Mexico.  Canada sponsors projects on 
combating identity theft as part of the OAS, Hemispheric 
Security Group, port security in Jamaica, and hemisphere-wide 
QSecurity Group, port security in Jamaica, and hemisphere-wide 
cyber-security. 
 
¶10. (U) In December, Canada renewed formal counterterrorism 
research and development (R&D) activities with the United 
States by extending a 1995 Memorandum of Understanding.  The 
agreement between Canada's Department of Public Safety and 
the U.S. Department of Defense allows the countries to pursue 
joint technical requirements for combating terrorism across a 
spectrum of activities, including chemical, biological, 
radiological, and nuclear countermeasures, physical security 
and blast mitigation, explosives detection, and 
countermeasures for improvised explosive devices.  Canada 
also pursues science and technology goals with the U.S. 
through the Public Security Technical Program, which began in 
¶2003. 
 
¶11. (U) During 2008, Canada significantly expanded and 
refined its Chemical, Biological, Radiological-Nuclear, and 
Explosives (CBRNE) Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI). 
 The CRTI integrates people and knowledge from the Canadian 
scientific, technology, law enforcement, national security, 
public health, policy, and first responder communities to 
pursue innovative approaches to counterterrorism through 
CBRNE science and technology.  The broad program is based on 
 
OTTAWA 00001578  003 OF 003 
 
 
an annual risk assessment and priority setting process and 
covers areas including CBRNE detection and identification, 
criminal and national security investigation capabilities, 
emergency casualty treatment for CBRNE events, food safety, 
public confidence, and socio-behavioral issues. 
 
¶12. (U) In February, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) 
released a Mutual Evaluation on Anti-Money Laundering and 
Combating the Financing of Terrorist Finance (AML/CFT) in 
Canada.  According to the report, Canada has strengthened its 
overall AML/CFT regime since its last evaluation in 1997, but 
Canada's regime was generally insufficient to meet FATF 
recommendations.  Following the FATF report, Canada in June 
amended the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and 
Terrorist Financing Act (PCMLTFA) to bring Canada more in 
line with international standards, including the FATF,s. 
The PCMLTFA amendments introduced a risk-based approach as a 
key element of the compliance regime, allowing reporting 
entities to asses their own vulnerabilities, identify high 
risk areas, and allocate resources appropriately.  The new 
legislation also required new client identification and 
record keeping for real estate agents and brokers, and 
established a national registry of money service businesses 
to bring transparency to the sector and ensure legal 
compliance.  In December, the government gave Canada's 
financial intelligence unit the power to issue administrative 
monetary fines in addition to assessing criminal penalties. 
 
¶13. (U) In March, Canada charged an alleged Tamil Tiger 
fund-raiser under the country's laws against raising money 
for terrorists.  Ontario resident Prapaharan Thambithurai 
stands accused of raising money for the World Tamil Movement. 
 His trial is pending, and he remains free on bail.  Canada 
added the group to its list of designated terrorist 
organizations in April 2006.  In November, the Minister of 
Public Safety announced that Canada had completed the 
mandatory two year review of listed terrorist entities, and 
decided that the forty-one entities previously on the list 
should remain on the list. 
 
¶14. (U) Embassy point of contact is political officer Kurt 
van der Walde, telephone: 613-688-5242 or email: 
vanderwalde(at)state.gov. 
 
Visit Canada,s Economy and Environment Forum at 
http://www.intelink.gov/communities/state/can ada 
 
BREESE