mahir arar

Canadian Sami Kahil, his wife and two young sons were looking forward to a Mexican sun vacation as their plane took off from Toronto’s Pearson Airport. Instead his wife and sons were turned back in Mexico shortly after they landed while dad had his passport confiscated and was held in a detention centre.

By all accounts Edward Allen does not own a gun, is not a member of a militant political entity and has no allegiance to a foreign country. But the four-year-old has a tough time getting on a plane, unless he is subjected to some heavy security checks.

Welcome to the world of the No-fly list. In America thousands of innocent travellers have lost money, have had their vacations destroyed and travel plans in disarray all because of the list which is littered with mistaken identities and mismatched names. Now Canada plans to have its own list, which is guaranteed to create turbulence at airport counters. Called “Passenger Protect” the list will ban people considered an immediate threat to air safety from getting onto a plane.

Decisions would be made on a case-by-case basis using classified and public information collated by the RCMP and the Canadian spy agency, CSIS – both of whom are responsible for wrongly linking Canadian engineer Maher Arar to terrorism which resulted in him being sent to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured. Under “Passenger Protect”, if your name is on the roster or if you have a name that mistakenly matches one on the list, you will be automatically prevented from getting an airline ticket.

Ottawa plans to spend about $14 million over five years and about $3 million annually thereafter and expects the Canadian list to include 1,000 names. The list, compiled using secret information not scrutinized by Canadian courts, will be synchronized with the monstrous American No-fly roster which some reports say has 120,000 names.

How you get on the list will remain a mystery.

How you get off the list is guaranteed to be a nightmare.

Given the amount of security checks imposed on us and the fact that if you slightly off-white the chances of you getting random sampled at the airport is high, one has to wonder why this no fly list is necessary.

Civil rights groups and privacy commissioners across Canada are sounding the alarm that “Passenger Protect” will violate an array of values that we cherish as Canadians.

They rightly believe that the no-fly list represents a serious incursion into the rights of travelers in Canada, rights of privacy and rights of freedom of movement and association.

Chances are more than good that if your name matches someone on the list, you will be denied the rights of due process because there are no clear criteria for inclusion or exclusion and no actual appeal process. If you are mistakenly put on the list, you will be subject to unreasonable searches, carry the stigma of detention and prevented from traveling.

Canada’s Passenger Protect Program is also expected to rely heavily on religious and racial profiling. There is a fundamental irony in creating this list of Canadians deemed too dangerous to fly. That’s because these same Canadians will be allowed to walk on our streets with no hassle. There is no compelling argument that further measures are necessary to deal with threats to airline safety.

The expected benefit of any such list is marginal and speculative. So go tell your MP to swat the Canadian No-fly list.