The Silence of the Dams: Canada’s Faux-Green Genocide

 

 

 

 

By Matthew Behrens

     Across the land known as Canada, a growing number of Indigenous nations are under renewed attack by colonial governments conducting devastating invasions in the name of green energy and “reconciliation”. While forced relocations, flooding of traditional territories, destruction of traditional country food webs, a legacy of poisoned water, and criminalization of land and water defenders have a lengthy history, the 2020s represent a dangerous decade in which the growing demand for non-fossil fuel-based energy sources is being played off against the creation of national sacrifice zones in Indigenous territories.

Last summer, Manitoba Hydro began the flooding of 45 square km of Cree lands at the massive Keeyask dam, which the energy utility acknowledges will result in “loss of inland and shoreline habitats. Birds and animals will be displaced from flooded areas. …[There will be] changes to traditional harvesting areas and travel routes on both water and land, a loss of culturally significant areas, and there is a potential for loss of unknown heritage resources.”

In a sickening new twist, this was done in the name of solemnly acknowledging the genocidal acts it was about to undertake.

“Manitoba Hydro recognizes and values that Cree culture, spirituality and wellbeing is grounded in respecting the relationship and balance between people, land and water, and all other living things, and that [dam] impoundment and its impacts cannot be separated from the larger environment,” the massive energy utility explained in a press release. “We acknowledge that there will be environmental and cultural loss to our partner First Nation communities as a result of the required changes to the land. We will continue to work with the communities to understand and share knowledge of project effects from both Indigenous and technical science perspectives.”

     A glossy handout from Manitoba Hydro takes great efforts to claim that these losses are “being acknowledged,” which appears to be the new governmental rationale for invading and destroying Indigenous nations. Because “cultural ceremonies” have been held at the Keeyask site “to acknowledge the changes to the environment and surrounding ancestral lands,” Manitoba Hydro seems to conclude that these devastating changes are in fact beneficial. There is even a subsection titled “Honouring the Water Element” that explains the Nelson River, which is being destroyed by Manitoba Hydro, “is a significant part of everyday life for the partner First Nation communities…and has sustained a way of life for centuries.”

 

Gaslighting Partnerships

     Beneath the noble sounding, gaslighting language of “partnerships” and “honour” is a very different reality. Earlier this year, Tataskweyak Cree Nation (TCN) asked the United Nations to undertake action to fix the nation’s drinking water, which has been under a water advisory since 2017. Among the reasons the water is undrinkable is because of the presence of cyanobacteria, which the Centres for Disease Control note are “are among the most powerful natural poisons known.” In a support letter, NDP MP Niki Ashton reminded the UN that “COVID-19 has made action more urgent now than ever. COVID-19 has compounded the impacts of the chronic infrastructure deficits which fuel the water crises in First Nations. Many First Nations across the country are unable to comply with public health directives, as clean water is not available from the tap. Again, First Nations have been forced to pay the price of Canada’s inaction, as the virus has disproportionately impacted First Nations.”

TCN, along with Curve Lake First Nation and Neskantaga First Nation, are all part of a class action lawsuit against Canada for “failing to address prolonged drinking-water advisories on First Nations reserves across Canada.”

     Last summer, a number of Indigenous women from TCN occupied a piece of land that was about to be flooded. It hosted the sacred site of a monument to Leon Kitchekeesik, who at age 7 fell through the Nelson River ice and whose remains were never found. A monument had been placed at the last place loved ones had seen Leon, and while community members did plan on moving the monument to higher ground, the Keeyask dam builders began plans to flood the area around the sacred site, and, without checking in with the community, removed the memorial and put it into storage. Leon’s sister, Marilyn Mazurat, told CBC that “We needed our time with Leon. My heart broke because it was like losing him all over again. I was so angry. They basically desecrated his resting place.”

     Manitoba Hydro wrote  to MP Niki Ashton – who had raised the urgent concerns regarding impoundment while the families were gathered in the flood zone –  that it “acknowledges that the removal of Leon’s cross is a deeply emotional and difficult process for the family, and we have taken care to demonstrate understanding and respect in all interactions on this matter.”

     Members of Leon’s family called for the memorial cross to be returned to its original home, “Leon’s Island,” declaring they would move it when they were ready to do so, and a more suitable location could be prepared. To prevent any further desecration, a number of them occupied the area to try and prevent the flooding. They asked Manitoba Hydro to delay flooding, but the utility refused.

The pain the community suffered was almost incalculable. Janet McIvor, another of Leon's siblings, referenced a Keeyask Dam site sign that included the word respect. "Why are they writing that word when they haven't shown respect to us? They should remove that sign.”

 

Colonial Divide and Rule

I spoke with a group of TCN members the night the occupation began.     Impoundment of Keeyask had already begun, and there were urgent messages being sent to Manitoba Hydro to stop, as any further release of waters could drown Leon’s loved ones. Crowded around a cell phone, community members shared their stories about the lack of consultation, their frustration at being treated as mere tokens, and the rifts that had been created in the community by the colonial corporation’s divide-and-rule gamesmanship.  An example of Manitoba Hydro’s wolf in sheep’s clothing approach was holding ill-attended meetings where Manitoba Hydro acknowledged in advance of this project that there would be significant harmful effects. These include major impacts on their right to hunt, trap, and fish; there’d be a loss of their historical connection to the land; a loss of traditional food previously harvested in the impacted areas; and a loss of sharing and traditional practices connected to the land.

Also in attendance at that meeting was Meg Sheehan of the Northeast MegaDam Resistance Coalition, who noted “we were told [by TCN members] that when Hydro looks at their communities, they don’t see human beings, only dollar signs. Because of Hydro’s unaccountable and dangerous practices, the water and fish in their lakes is unfit for consumption and dangerous for swimming, with anyone going into the water suffering a punishing skin reaction.”

Sheehan pointed out that in addition to the significant impact on traditional ways of life and the country food web at a time of major food insecurity, Manitoba Hydro adds insult to injury by sending exorbitant hydro bills that are beyond the reach of community members. “Imagine someone who never gave their consent to Hydro to invade their lands now receiving a monthly bill that can be over $1,000 just because they use some of the energy that was, in many respects, stolen from right out under them,” she said.

Notably, Keeyask was initiated by the former NDP government of Gary Doer, who at the time exulted that ““hydroelectricity is Manitoba’s oil.” Such green energy triumphalism, however, cannot hide the devastating impacts of megadams, especially on the Indigenous peoples disproportionately impacted.

 

Blood Megawatts

Across Canada, the construction and operation of megadams has caused and will cause even more methylmercury poisoning of traditional country foods relied upon by local communities. Canadian dam builders – engineers, financiers, cement and construction companies - have a similarly destructive record around the globe. Electricity from large (over 30 MW) hydrodams is dirty energy, what Sheehan calls “blood megawatts.” Science shows they are a major source of methane, a greenhouse gas accelerant far more dangerous than carbon dioxide. They destroy Indigenous cultures, biodiversity, and carbon-sequestering forests. They have disrupted and disturbed millenia-old migratory patterns of fish and other wildlife that make up the country food webs of millions of people worldwide.

The 1997 report of the World Commission on Dams concluded: “At the heart of the dams debate are issues of equity, governance, justice and power – issues that underlie the many intractable, problems faced by humanity….In too many cases an unacceptable and often unnecessary price has been paid to secure those [dams’] benefits, especially in social and environmental terms, by people displaced, by communities downstream, by taxpayers and by the natural environment."

During last summer’s standoff at Leon’s Island, Manitoba Hydro was eventually forced to back down on impoundment until the family could gather one last time at the sacred site. Canadian Mennonite magazine interviewed Mazurat shortly afterward. She said at the time, "I have a hard time accepting the fact that the next time I go down it won’t be there. All that I’ve known and loved will all be under water.” 

The $13.4 billion Keeyask dam, like its brother dams at Site C and Muskrat Falls, is an exorbitant financial sinkhole, known to locals as “Keeyask-atraz” for workers because of “a prison-like environment plagued by fear, intimidation, drug and alcohol abuse and discrimination.”

A report from the province’s Clean Environment Commission described the effects of the Manitoba Hydro man camps that invaded northern Manitoba beginning in the 1960s and the subsequent epidemic of sexual abuse against Indigenous women. The report authors heard from many members of Makeso Sakahikan Inninuwak (aka Fox Lake Cree Nation), including Franklin Arthurson, who testified that his late wife had endured a decade of residential school abuse only to return to her occupied homeland: “She came home from a hellhole called residential school to another hellhole called Hydro project.”

"They just came in and took over. We were pushed aside," Marie Henderson told the hearing. "It even got to the point where they said we were squatters in our own land, because they wanted the construction to be built."

The report also quoted a member of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation who “stated that in the pre-development era, residents had everything they needed. Fish were abundant, the water was healthy, and the land was teeming with wildlife. The community was self-sufficient. She recalled how community members had been promised that hydroelectric development would bring them low-cost electricity. Now, she said, the water is polluted; the cost of power, astronomical. She felt that Manitoba Hydro played with people like a ‘predatory animal.’”

The predatory animal known as Manitoba Hydro has played a significant role in promoting similarly devastating projects like Labrador’s notorious Muskrat Falls megadam. An inquiry into the Muskrat Falls disaster concluded that a key report commissioned by Manitoba Hydro was “plainly and obviously improperly influenced and biased in favour of the project.”

 

Martial Law at Muskrat Falls

Muskrat Falls became the remarkable site of sustained resistance to the megadam, and the jailing of Indigenous elders sparked international outrage. Opposition was so strong that the only way the government of Newfoundland and Labrador (backed with $9.2 billion in support from Ottawa) could push the project through was to essentially declare a judicially-stamped state of martial law via a draconian injunction enforced with the firepower of the RCMP and Canadian military. For over four years, Inuit and Innu water and land defenders were delivered a clear message through the barrel of a gun: you will be indefinitely jailed if you return to protect your traditional territories.

In June 2019, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and hazardous substances and wastes, Baskut Tuncak, called on the federal government to use its leverage to address concerns about lack of proper consultation with Indigenous people as well as the expected methylmercury poisoning.  “I urge the Federal Government to use its leverage as the largest investor in the project to review whether UNDRIP compatible procedures were followed for all affected indigenous peoples, and to prevent the release of methyl mercury,” the rapporteur said.

While colonial bean counters’ main concern seems to be the doubling of Muskrat Falls megadam’s cost – over $13 billion – those on the ground continue to raise a substantial list of objections, pointing out that governments ignored key recommendations from a Joint Review Panel composed of provincial and federal representatives. The project proponent Nalcor (a provincial crown corporation) submitted an incomplete Environmental Assessment that excluded a major downstream area, Lake Melville (a significant cultural and nutritional source sustaining Inuit life since time immemorial, Labrador’s largest body of water and one designated an Ecologically and Biologically Significant Area by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat).

A major source of worry is the documented concern from a four-year Harvard University study that a failure to clear the 101 sq. km reservoir impoundment area of vegetation, trees, brush and topsoil would exacerbate the already significant risk of the neurotoxin methylmercury bioaccumulating in the Indigenous country food web, rendering it unsafe for consumption for 30-35 years. This was followed by a failure of the federal and provincial governments, as well as Nalcor, to abide by the majority recommendation of their own Independent Experts Advisory Committee to mitigate methylmercury poisoning by requiring that “Nalcor undertake targeted removal of soil and capping of wetlands for the reduction of both the amount and duration of methylmercury production in the Muskrat Falls Reservoir.”

Additional concerns include the worry about mass-casualty flash flooding from a catastrophic dam break. The conclusion of a study by Swedish quick clay expert Stig Bernander on the North Spur (an unstable natural formation being relied upon to hold back the full reservoir) cautions that “the safety and reliability of the Muskrat Falls dam have not been demonstrated.” Were such a flash flood to occur, it would also have longer-term effects that would poison the area for centuries, given it would dredge up and spread toxics from already existing contaminated sites.

 

A Failure to Seek Consent

Ultimately, as at Keeyask and other major megadams, Muskrat Falls proponents failed to engage in the process of free, prior and informed consent with all Indigenous peoples affected, as prescribed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

From the very beginning, project proponent Nalcor and the province of Newfoundland and Labrador have also sought to downplay the threat of methylmercury poisoning in the traditional country food web of Indigenous peoples affected. The issue has always been addressed by project proponents and funders through the language of mitigation – containing or avoiding a risk that will result from the dam’s construction and operation – instead of asking whether the risk is too great to begin with.

Last fall, one of the authors of the Harvard report, Ryan Calder, who has continued to monitor the project’s effects, found that the methylmercury levels were rising, as expected, to concerning levels, but Muskrat Falls defenders again downplayed the threat posed to the Inuit and Innu who, as austerity is imposed on Labrador, will need to rely even more on their increasingly poisoned traditional country foods.

Despite the ongoing disaster of Muskrat Falls – which has saddled the province with such a crushing debt that there are now recommendations to impose austerity on the residents who are also facing a doubling or tripling of hydro bills – there are disturbing signs that the federal and provincial governments are teeing up yet another megadam that would further desecrate Labrador.

The proposed Gull Island Megadam project on the Grand (Mistashipu) River is slated to be three times the size of Muskrat Falls. flooding 232 square kilometers of pristine boreal forest and exposing  communities to the third highest levels of methylmercury of 22 proposed new dams across the land. Gull Island’s primary purpose would be to meet the “green energy” demands of the Northeast U.S. and will require controversial new transmission corridors that have prompted significant protest south of the border. A reference in last fall’s throne speech to a so-called Atlantic Loop (a hypothetical regional electricity grid ) is a worrying sign that Gull Island, despite opposition from Indigenous people and many settler residents, is going to be forced through in the same brutal manner as Muskrat Falls. 

 

 

Where Colonial Judges Sit

As if to pave the way for Gull Island, the last of the arrested Labrabor Land Protectors – Indigenous and non-Indigenous land and water defenders – were sentenced for “civil contempt” in January. The same colonial judge who had issued the draconian injunction in 2016 expressed his incredulity that those trying to maintain their lives, their livelihood, their culture, their very identity, would somehow thumb their noses at the so-called “rule of law” that allegedly undergirded the prohibition on trying to stop the impending disaster.

To ensure the continued operation of Muskrat Falls –  what many have called an act of genocide in the making, one similar to the mercury poisoning at Grassy Narrows – the judge demanded undertakings that all would continue to obey the draconian terms of the injunction for an additional two years, on top of the four years that this group had already been under strict conditions.

Like the Manitoba Hydro PR team that insisted the destruction of Indigenous territories at Keeyask was done in the spirit of reconciliation, so the judge in Labrador echoed such rhetoric. As CBC reported, the judge “said the protesters did not seem to understand that the contempt of court was nothing to do with Muskrat Falls, the environment, Indigenous rights, reconciliation or ownership of land — issues he said that are very important to the court and to society — but rather, the charges had to do with the actual actions, not the motivations of the protesters.”

But as one of the protectors, Denise Cole, responded, “That’s not reconciliation; that’s like a tap on the head saying, ‘I appreciate that you think that you’re right. I’m here to tell you you’re wrong and in my era of reconciliation I won’t punish you as much as I could.’ That's really the breakdown of it. I'm not arrogant, but I'm aware this is a very broken system and there's still a tremendous amount of work for us to do."

Cole told CBC that "two worlds collide" when a colonial court feels threatened by Indigenous people trying to protect themselves from genocidal projects. “We all sort of go under the belief that we have these constitutionally protected rights as Canadians, and then we realize that there's a lot of ifs or buts. From him, it’s that I don’t respect him and the court enough, but for me he’s talking about my creator who has given me a responsibility to next generations and to my culture, to the land and to the water — there's a responsibility that I hold there, and it tells me that he still doesn’t get that. Which is a shame.”

In the same manner genocidal actions are ongoing with the complicity of Labrador’s colonial courts, the government of Manitoba is following in the footsteps of draconian legislation passed in Alberta. Legislation is being considered that would criminalize Indigenous land and water defenders and supporters when they raise their voices against the green genocide of Manitoba Hydro. Bill 57, the Protection of Critical Infrastructure Act, broadly defines as infrastructure anything that makes a “significant contribution to the health, safety, security or economic well-being of Manitobans” and can include projects under construction. To prevent protests, megaproject profiteers can get from any provincial court a “critical infrastructure protection zone” declared that would prevent access to the sites or blockades while creating the infamous and useless protest bubble that has a history at various sites across North America.

"[Bill] 57 would silence our voices and just make us conveniently protest over there in the corner far away from where the heart of the issue is," said Lisa Currier, with Idle No More and an organizer of a protest against the legislation.  Notably, members of Tataskweyak Cree Nation blockaded access to Keeyask earlier during the pandemic out of concern that 1,000 outside workers coming into the region would be spreading Covid-19.

 

UN Says No to Site C

Meanwhile, the NDP BC government of John Horgan is continuing with similarly disastrous plans at Site C, a megadam which the United Nations insists should be stopped due to its violation of Indigenous rights. When Horgan announced that BC would forge ahead despite massive opposition and the failure to secure the consent of Indigenous peoples, he famously declared, “When it comes to reconciliation and working with Indigenous leadership, look,  there has been over 150 years of disappointment in BC. I’m not the first person to stand before you and disappoint Indigenous people.”

Hence, Horgan fell back on the Manitoba Hydro strategy of acknowledging the harm he was committing to because, well, that’s always been the way, so one more attack on Indigenous rights shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.

Earlier this year, West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Wilson wrote to Horgan, demanding a halt to Site C construction and calling for the NDP to “abandon the pretext that the Site C dam can be constructed and operated with infringing” the nation’s treaty rights. Wilson pointed out that Site C, like Muskrat Falls, faces major geotechnical issues, is wholly unnecessary, and violates Treaty 8, which is supposed to be in effect “as long as the river flows.” Wilson pointed out that at the time of the treaty being signed, “it would have been incomprehensible that the agreement would later be argued to authorize the blockage of the Peace River with a series of three massive dams and sprawling reservoirs…the Indigenous treaty partners would not, could not, and did not, agree to the destruction of their lands.”

If Site C goes ahead, it will flood 5,500 hectares of land, desecrate sacred sites, destroy ancient forests, disrupt wetlands, contaminate land-based medicines and poison fish with methylmercury. As Wilson mentioned, this will compound the damage wrought by two previous dams upstream. Needless to say, this does not square with the government’s 2019 passing of legislation promising to respect the core principles of UNDRIP, which the BC NDP has simultaneously celebrated and refused to respect ever since.

In Quebec, the Innu First Nation of Pessamit, the Atkamekw First Nation of Wemotaci and the Anishnabek First Nation of Pikogan went on record last summer in opposition to the New England Clean Energy Connect Project, another Orwellian-named initiative that plans to profit from the megadam power that relies on what the three Nations point out is a massive infrastructure of “33 production structures, 130 dams and dikes, 10,400 km2 of reservoirs, and tens of thousands of transmission, distribution and road lines [that] have been illegally installed on our lands and waters.” The Nations have never been compensated for Hydro-Quebec’s occupation, which “has destroyed traditional family units and upended the socio-economic stability of” their communities.

While BC, Quebec and Labrador are traditionally viewed as the major hydropower players, protests against the Burleigh Falls dam in Ontario erupted earlier this year as well. As always, at the heart of protests was the utter failure to properly consult, in this case with the Kawartha Nishnawbe. In a petition with over 30,000 supporters, they point out that when Burleigh Falls dam was first built in 1912, it resulted in the forcible relocation of Kawartha Nishnawbe’s people. They have never “been compensated for the theft of our land and we have been treated as nothing more than “squatters” in our own land ever since. Despite numerous court rulings recognizing that the Kawartha Nishnawbe is a Mississauga community with Treaty rights under the Treaty of 1818, “Canada has ignored these rulings and continued to act as if Kawartha Nishnawbe does not exist.”

     Back in Manitoba, water defender Angela Levasseur, from O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation (aka South Indian Lake), has been tirelessly campaigning to stop Manitoba Hydro from further flooding her community. She too began a well-publicized petition that seeks to prevent the utility from winning what she names a “licence to destroy”, and is urging the federal government to intervene given the province’s failure to engage in any respectful dialogue, much less seek free, prior and informed consent.

But Canada’s largest federal political parties refuse to touch the megadam issue. While the Conservatives were behind the initial push for Muskrat Falls, the Liberals are more than willing to sacrifice Indigenous rights in the mistaken belief that such dams will help them meet climate change targets. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has refused to come out from a self-imposed cone of silence on Muskrat Falls and Site C (perhaps to placate the BC NDP), and has historically been missing in action on Manitoba Hydro violations as well (again, perhaps a nod to his provincial NDP counterparts, who approved Keeyask). Singh rightfully embraced the calls for justice at Grassy Narrows, where a half century of mercury contamination has left profound and lethal effects, but he won’t touch the very same issue where the contamination is getting underway but easily preventable.

With political parties unwilling to address the dangers posed by megadams, it will fall as always to the Indigenous front-line defenders who are refusing to allow further encroachments on and destruction of their territories, as well as their allies, to expose the faux-green genocide being undertaken so people can think that driving electric cars and running their laptops on non-fossil fuel electric power are somehow contributing to a better world. As governments will attempt to pit green energy advocates against Indigenous peoples, the issue is not an either/or binary. Rather, we need a more nuanced discussion about the kind of society we need to create in order to fully honour and respect Indigenous rights while ensuring that we do not continue to engage in the kind of megaproject fiascos that ultimately replicate the very colonial violence to the earth that requires us to consider alternative energy sources in the first place.  

 

(photo: from Peter Stockdale: Rita Monias and Flora Jane Ross before they arrested on Parliament Hill for demanding that the Canadian government and Manitoba Hydro end  genocidal dam building in their traditional territories)

 

A 3-part series of this piece appears in rabble.ca in July, 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

 

 

 

 

 

His Own Private Stasi: How Canada’s Police State Occupies the Harkat Home

By Matthew Behrens

            When Ottawa refugee Moe Harkat tries to enjoy the quintessentially Canadian experience of visiting a family cottage, he has to stage an elaborate dance to satisfy the requirements of one of the most intrusive and insidious state interventions into anyone’s private life in Canadian history.

            Each day spent at the cottage, Moe has to check in with a surveillance team of officers from the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), who have been following him since 2006. That’s when Moe was transferred to the strictest house arrest conditions in Canadian history after being held 3.5 years without charge on secret allegations he has never been allowed to see, much less contest.

The dystopian dance works like this: three times a day, Moe walks out of the cottage and up a hill. Parked at the top of the hill is a car with dark-tinted windows, and inside are two fully-kitted CBSA officers (bullet proof vests, weapons at the ready) who  sit there all day to confirm he is at the cottage. He waves at them and they wave back. Moe heads into town to search for a pay phone – never easy to find in an age dominated by the cell phone – because he has to “report in” from a landline. Once at that pay phone, he calls the guys in the surveillance car he waved to a few minutes earlier, to confirm he is at the cottage. They thank him, he hangs up the phone, drives back to the cottage, waves at the men in the surveillance vehicle he just called to confirm he is at the cottage, and tries to relax from this maddening bit of spirit-breaking repression. He has to do this two additional times that day. It’s a cruel exercise straight out of the legendary film Cool Hand Luke, where such repetitive, degrading punishments are meant to make someone’s “mind right.”

This is but a fraction of the daily repression faced by the Harkats, who married in 2001 and had never heard of International Human Rights Day until Moe was arrested on that landmark occasion, December 10, 2002. As self-described human rights superhero and Liberal MP Irwin Cotler proudly rose in the House of Commons that day to bloviate about the Magna Carta, “the lifeblood of a democracy,” the “right to life, liberty and security of the person,” and celebrations of “not only of who we are but what we aspire to be,” Moe wasn’t exactly basking in the self-congratulatory glow of the foggy platitudes that normally pepper the House floor with a nauseating odour. Instead, he had entered a made-in-Canada Twilight Zone, a darkened room in which any attempt to brighten his surroundings meant an endless search for a light switch that had long ago been removed.

 In 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the “security certificate” regime under which Moe had been held was unconstitutional, but in a page out of  Kafka’s The Trial, Ottawa simply reworded the state security allegations against Moe, and has carried on with its persecution of him ever since. The Supreme Court heard another challenge to the endless violation of Harkat’s rights in 2014, but in a poorly written, illogical decision, reversed itself from its 2007 findings and upheld the star chamber proceedings. That judicial rubber stamp opened the door to the current proceedings designed to deport Moe to torture in Algeria.

 

Stasi-Like Surveillance

            Having lived with such a collection of multi-layered traumas would make relaxing at the cottage a significant challenge under the best of circumstances. But added to the fear and trauma faced by Moe and his wife Sophie is the permanent insertion of a surveillance regime reminiscent of the Stasi (the notorious former East German secret police) that operates like a nightmare from George Orwell’s novel 1984.

In day-to-day terms, that humiliating regime involves constant attacks on Moe and Sophie’s dignity, involving things most of us take for granted: the ability to use a laptop, purchasing a cell phone, making a U-turn without being reported to the police, getting a job that does not need pre-approval from the CBSA, not having to explain to neighbours why unmarked (but clearly obvious) police cars are constantly parked outside of their residence. The CBSA has Moe’s online passwords so it can check his email account and log any websites he visits.

Moe was held first in solitary confinement for over a year in 2003 at the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre. He was designated a terror suspect by an alarmist media that was willing to take at their word Moe’s accuser, the scandal-plagued spy agency CSIS. Long before Harkat’s arrest, CSIS (the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) was well known for exaggerating the scale of alleged threats (documented for years by the Security Intelligence Review Committee) , withholding exculpatory information, acting on information from torture, and relying on the word of untrustworthy informants who failed lie detector tests and sometimes engaged in sexual relations with their CSIS handlers (as Moe was later to learn occurred in his own case).

Moe was denied a toothbrush for 10 days, prevented from walking and breathing fresh outdoor air for six months, not able to shave or enjoy any reading material (not even a Koran) for over four months, allowed only one shower per week, and prevented from any contact visits with Sophie. The only human touch he knew was a violent one: strip searches and handcuffing. He was then transferred to the infamous “Guantanamo North” compound in Kingston, ON, where other Muslim men subject to “security certificates” were also held under brutal conditions that led to lengthy hunger strikes and protests that became the focus of then Prime Minister Paul Martin’s cabinet meetings and intensive House of Commons debates. At that time, it seemed like anything would be better than the indefinite, arbitrary detention these detainees and their families were suffering.

 

The Prison Moves In

In June, 2006, Moe was transferred to a house arrest regime that moved the prison to his home, and made his wife, Sophie, both captive and jail guard. As a “surety,” Sophie had to promise the Federal Court that she would monitor every move Moe made and ensure his compliance with a lengthy list of degrading conditions. If Moe wanted to start up the barbecue, he could not go outside unless Sophie went outside first and monitored his walk outdoors. He was forced to wear an uncomfortable GPS monitoring unit strapped to his leg for almost 8 years, and had to pay for a phone line connected to the system. He was not allowed to ever be alone inside or outside the home. In what could only have felt like the most humiliating infantilization, Moe had to apply in advance for his allowed three weekly “outings,” which could include doctor’s visits, groceries, or anything else that was subject to final approval by a CBSA bureaucrat who had the power to arbitrarily deny any outing.

When Moe and Sophie’s “outings” were approved, they could only last four hours, and they would be closely followed by clearly identified CBSA officers who, in all of their gear, looked just like police officers. This ensured all onlookers that the Harkats were a source of suspicion. Any minute beyond 4 hours could lead to an allegation of breached conditions and a return to prison.  The notion of an evening out for dinner and a movie – again, taken for granted by so many – would necessitate ensuring the movie was under a certain length, the restaurant had fast service, and enough sureties were available to accompany the couple so someone could monitor Moe in the event Sophie had to use a public restroom. Eventually, in its magnanimity, the Federal Court did allow Moe and Sophie to use public washrooms and change rooms, but only as long as they went into them together.

Staying in was no picnic either. Two surveillance cameras were installed inside the couple’s home to monitor entrances. All of their mail and phone calls were intercepted by CBSA (including solicitor-client calls, which CBSA regularly recorded despite this clear violation), no wireless devices were allowed, Sophie had to keep her computer under lock and key, the couple were the subject of a curfew, and any visitors to the house required pre-approval from the CBSA. In practice, that meant no one with uncertain immigration status or who came from a country with a secret police would be comfortable visiting the Harkats. Among those the Harkats needed to submit for visitor approval were a newborn nephew and Sophie’s 80-year-old grandmother.

Because CBSA intercepted the mail and took their time making photocopies of everything before dropping it off at the Harkat home, the couple were stopped and ticketed by Ottawa police because they did not receive their new license plate sticker in time.

CBSA would call at all hours of the night if the GPS were not working or show up at their door. They parked for hours in front of the Harkat home and also on their personal driveway. Many of their immigrant neighbours were fearful of the Harkats as a result, and several filed complaints or ended up calling police with their concerns about the sinister-looking, dark-tinted vehicles always idling their motors.

 

No Birthdays for Moe

When Moe turned 40, a church basement birthday party was organized with 80 people, all of whom submitted their biographical details to the CBSA. All were approved, but Moe was still denied entry because attending his own birthday party was deemed “too political.” Instead, he had a more modest supper with Sophie’s mother, followed to and from the restaurant by 4 CBSA vehicles and 8 officers.

On a number of occasions, officers raided the house, usually in advance of a court review where the Harkats sought to remove some of these conditions. One of those searches was deemed illegal by the Federal Court: Sophie was in the shower at the time as 16 CBSA officers, 2 Ottawa police, and 3 RCMP agents with sniffer dogs conducted a massive operation, the fruits of which they were forced to return.

One summer, Sophie’s mother was kicked out of a campground after CBSA entered and told the property manager that a “terrorist” would be visiting the site.

Maintaining a two-decade relationship under such circumstances is, needless to say, tense. Often, Moe tries to over-compensate, doing things to ensure he is seen by those surveilling him to reassure them he is in compliance with his conditions. Whenever family are gathered, Sophie says she gets upset with Moe, because he is constantly reminding everyone of the conditions he has to follow. “He’s reminding people constantly,” Sophie told the Federal Court in 2017. “It’s a headache. It’s a source of conflict between the two of us. Try to go out and have fun when you have two CBSA agents following you. I’m upset or he’s upset.”

 

Federal Court Rubber Stamp

Despite all these indignities and rights violations, the judges hearing Harkat’s appeals for some basic human decency continue buying into the racist myths that underlie a deeply embedded Canadian hatred of Muslims.

Indeed, the degrading conditions are based on the racist notion of Super Muslim: that Moe, like his fellow detainees, was so desperate to communicate with terrorists or do something awful that he had to be monitored every second of every day, despite the fact that no allegation has ever been made that he has even considered being involved in an act of violence. Things that happen in the normal course of a day for most of us – driving through a yellow light or speeding up to pass someone on the roadway, for example – are attributed nefarious purposes and labeled "counter-surveillance techniques" by the cunning detainee and his wife. The racism shown by the Federal Court in always deferring to CBSA and CSIS and never looking at Moe’s consistent compliance with 15 years of impossible conditions  was on display last year, when Judge Roussel wrote an appalling decision in which she noted that Mr. Harkat had “complied with his conditions of release since his release in 2006 and that, in order to fully embrace the values of his adopted country, it was important that he be given the opportunity to obtain gainful employment.”

Of course, it is impossible for Moe to get full-time work when any job in which he could be employed – working at Home Depot, for example, or an auto parts supplier – would require him submitting to the CBSA the make and model of every cashier’s computer or hand-held device he needed to use as part of the job. It’s not easy to get hired when you have to explain to your potential employer that a government agency requires this information to ensure that following up on a customer’s inquiry about toilet fittings would not somehow be a ruse to communicate with some terrorist halfway around the world.

The Courts and CBSA are not just needlessly afraid of Moe. They also don’t like Sophie, who happens to be a very outspoken woman who has been crystal clear that her husband is innocent and that the system that continues to oppress them is simply wrong. In other words, the psychological torture which has been so oppressive to both of them has not ultimately worked, because they are not broken. They are still fighting, largely due to the rock that is Sophie Harkat. Her poignant testimony in court is regularly ignored or dismissed. Because she simply stands up for her rights while complying with conditions anyone would consider ridiculous, CBSA has told Sophie that she is “difficult” and “too feisty.”

When in court, Sophie has discussed the humiliation of her work as a crossing guard when little children she is helping get safely to school ask her why the police always seem to be at her house. She has also asked why, if the Court has already approved her and trusted her to supervise her husband, there needs to be constant physical monitoring of the couple whenever they are at home or go out.

But even for a couple as solidly in love and dedicated to one another as Moe and Sophie are, there must be so many times when one or both is at the point of breaking. While many of the most oppressive conditions have since been eliminated due to lengthy and costly court reviews, their effects have been life-changing. The couple who wanted to raise a family suffered numerous miscarriages and severe declines in mental and physical health.  Sophie, formerly a well-paid marketing worker, was forced into poverty as she fought for her husband and also dealt with potential employers who, upon googling her last name, were suddenly no longer interested in hiring her.  The last costly court review of conditions took over two years of litigation, leaving the couple still having to deal with unique challenges like finding a cell phone that does not act as a GPS tracker for the government but which still needs the approval of the CBSA.

 

Court’s Deference to Injustice

Meanwhile, the judges of the Federal Court refuse to admit their preferential option for the powerful and their clear bias against this couple. They give a free hand to the incompetent bureaucrats and paper pushers who make a fortune in overtime enforcing the conditions. In a 2017 hearing, Harkat’s lawyer Barb Jackman asked a CBSA supervisor whether he had ever seen the outdated 2009 threat assessment on Moe (which concluded he was at the low end of risk). The supervisor admitted he had not seen that, nor the court decision on Moe’s security certificate.

“How would you know if Mr. Harkat presented a threat to the security of Canada when you’re monitoring him, if you don’t know what the threat is?” Jackman asked. “How can you say the risks are neutralized by compliance with the conditions when you don’t know what the risks are…You don’t really know what the risk is.”

The sheepish supervisor replied, “I agree I don’t really know.”

Nowhere in the ultimate court decision keeping the Harkats living in this dystopian nightmare was there any acknowledgement of such brazen incompetence.

            At the same hearing, Jackman presented a list of names of individuals with whom Moe is not allowed any contact.  The supervisor in charge of protecting the free world from Moe had no idea who any of the individuals were, had never seen pictures of them, and did not know where they lived or whether or not they were alive. How, Jackman asked, could the CBSA ensure compliance with these conditions if they had no clue about these people? Again, the answer was a sheepish admission that they could not.

            When asked why CBSA tends to monitor the Harkats on the weekends when they should be able to enjoy themselves, the CBSA supervisor conceded that it had nothing to do with national security and everything to do with overtime pay. The supervisor also agreed that nowhere in the conditions of release does it state that Moe is to be followed by CBSA officers, but that it’s “a part of our job, to monitor people released on conditions.”

            “Is that in writing anywhere?” Jackman asked.

            “No,” replied the supervisor.

            The supervisor was asked whether, if the court were to relax the bail restrictions, CBSA would continue to follow the Harkats to family funerals, weddings, and the cottage. He replied that they would.

            “And why would that be, if the court believes that it’s not necessary to put him under those kinds of restrictions any longer?”

            The supervisor had no answer, but it served as another reminder that the agency is one of the few federal bodies without a proper oversight body. CBSA is a law unto itself, just like its Gestapo-like cousin ICE in the U.S., which regularly flouts the law in testosterone-fueled attacks on the rights of refugees.

 

White-Framing Repression

This thumbnail overview of the Harkats’ daily life illustrates how easily mini police states akin to the former East Germany are inserted into a self-described democratic system. They persist and grow because they are very clearly targeted at racialized individuals and communities who, in a racist society like ours, are automatically deemed suspect. And the benefit of the doubt always goes to government agencies, no matter how often they lie, cheat, deceive, and exhibit sheer incompetence.

Those with lengthy post-9/11 memories will recall that many marched and spoke out vigorously against so-called anti-terrorism measures when they were first introduced, but most of that was within a white, middle class framework. White environmentalists, church groups and unions feared being tarred with the terrorist brush, but once it became obvious that they would not be impacted, most  public opposition to such measures disappeared. That white-framing was in evidence from the former Privacy Commissioner George Radwanski, who in 2002 was speaking out against the proposed no-fly lists. When the late Senator Ted Kennedy found he was on a no-fly list, there was outrage that such a match could have been made by airport officials. When things settled down and it was almost exclusively Muslims who were being pulled aside for secondary questioning, those concerns largely vanished. Nonetheless, in opposing no-fly lists, Radwanski ultimately betrayed a white Ottawa bureaucrat’s incapacity to see beyond his world to, for example, the streets of Toronto, where privacy protections never existed for racialized communities.

            “We’re not a society where the police can stop you on the street and say ‘your papers please,’” he told the Toronto Star, blithely unaware that this was exactly the daily experience for Black, Indigenous and South Asian people. Indeed, as the Star noted in 2013, “in a city of less than three million people, police filled in 1.8 million contact cards between 2008 and 2012, with details on more than a million people.”

            Because Moe, a Muslim man, has been baselessly demonized as a terror suspect, there remains a reticence to speak out against the fact that his every waking moment (and many of his dreams) are occupied with his own private Stasi. A psychological assessment of Moe, which was provided to the Federal Court, dovetails with similar evaluations of those who lived in the former East German dictatorship.

            "There are times when Mr. Harkat has experienced recurrent visions on a virtually daily basis over several months of being arrested, incarcerated, deported and tortured,” the report reads. “Sometimes he has visions of being shot by CBSA due to a misunderstanding, minor misstep or accidental violation of his bail conditions. Often, he has been troubled by insomnia and recurrent nightmares with the same themes as his daytime visions. Energy has been chronically low and concentration impaired such that reading is limited to no more than five minutes at a time. Appetite is chronically poor to a point where he has to force himself to eat even one meal a day."

            Such devastating findings are never considered when reviewing Moe’s conditions. The conditions must, the Federal Court insists, remain in place until he gets his mind right. There remains no real acknowledgement that, as Moe’s assessment finds, “he is frustrated around secret sources of information being used against him, including of an informant who failed a lie detector test. He has been frustrated that phone-tap evidence was used against him even though the recordings were destroyed and only summaries of the transcripts presented, including of conversations that he was supposedly involved with for which the details are not remotely familiar to him."

            The risk to Moe is significant, with the expectation of “further permanent neurobiological changes that will be more refractory to treatment and recovery the longer they continue. This risk is not only to his mental health, but his physical health as well. Chronic stress is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular events (heart attacks and strokes), and suppressed immunity, including susceptibility to infections and cancer. There are also costs to his wife and family, financial costs, including to the Canadian taxpayer, and loss of Mr. Harkat's potential contributions through work."

            The danger here is not to Moe and Sophie alone. Rather, their case illustrates only one of the most extreme examples of repressive governmental responses to the justifiable demands to release refugees, immigrants, and anyone else held in the incarceration complex. Recall that in 2006, anything seemed better than Guantanamo North. It turned out that the cure was just as bad as the illness.

 

The Jail Comes to You

Instead of sending people to jail, we now bring the jail to you. Such a solution is  often introduced as one that results in significant cost savings. The CBSA, which has no hard caps on the indefinite detention it is allowed to hold refugees (often extending for years), has established an “Alternatives to Detention” framework that, as described by Constantine Gidaris in “Rethinking confinement through Canada’s alternatives to detention program,” creates a paradigm in which “the mind is subject to confinement without the confinement of the body…. the deprivation of liberty, mobility, and autonomy that is experienced within conventional carceral enclosures is also experienced outside them, albeit in different degrees.”

Gidaris examines the electronic monitoring program (EM) of CBSA which collects and analyzes “real-time location data” of detainees released with the kinds of tracking monitor that was strapped to Moe for eight years.  Every movement is recorded and uploaded to a monitoring centre “while seemingly providing detainees with a greater sense of freedom, mobility, and autonomy.”

The CBSA also celebrates its surveillance programs including Voice Recognition,  which “uses biometric voiceprint technology to enable individuals to report to the CBSA through a cellular telephone or by using a landline telephone, at agreed upon intervals.” As part of it National Immigration Detention Framework, the CBSA’s initial enrollment capacity of the program – which should be renamed “extension of detention by other means – is 800 for its “Community Case Management and Supervision” program, built with the cooperation of a number of social service agencies, 10,000 for Voice Recognition (a massive piece of data collection and retention with profound privacy rights issues) and 20 for electronic monitoring.

Electronic monitoring is standard for immigration detainees stateside. It’s part of a larger expansion of the prison into the community documented by Michelle Alexander in her must read book on mass incarceration, The New Jim Crow. She refers to it as “e-incarceration”, which “turns entire communities into open-air digital prisons,” peopled by a racialized caste of outsiders who represent big profit margins to the companies involved in developing these technologies of control. Often, it is the individuals themselves who must pay for the “luxury” of not being held behind real prison bars. While Alexander notes that for most people, the concept of house arrest is preferable to the penitentiary, “what does it mean for the future of our communities to celebrate reforms that convert our homes into prisons? Or that turn our neighbourhoods into digital concentration camps patrolled by drones?”

The digital concentration camp that is the home of Moe and Sophie Harkat is not being staffed and enforced on some secret remote island. It happens in broad daylight in one of Canada’s largest cities. It is well documented in approving decisions of the Federal Court of Canada. It is covered occasionally in the media. And it is opposed by over 67,000 people who have signed a petition calling for an end to this nightmare. Yet it will remain in place, and serve as the precedent for expanding those camps, without our concerted, continued resistance. The Harkats are planning further legal challenges to their indefinite detention as well as the illegal efforts to deport Moe to torture. To learn more about how to offer political and financial support, visit www.justiceforharkat.com