Entitled, "Fortress Vancouver," the article is a warning of the government's intention to deepen its attack on democratic rights.

"Such aggressive measures are necessary, national security analysts and senior policy advisors across the continent say, to combat the recent confluence of threats from transnational people smugglers and, as the discovery of the Algerian bomb plot reiterates, foreign extremists operating within Canada," the article asserts.

Leading up to New Year's eve Vancouver cop spokesperson Anne Drennan said people should expect a considerable increase in police presence in the city. She said if people could not explain where they were going they wouldn't be allowed into downtown.

These events followed a scare campaign whipped up around the arrest of an Algerian, Ahmed Ressam, as he was driving his car into Washington State from Canada. The authorities claim Ressam possessed materials that could have been used to construct a bomb. This incident in particular is being used by Ottawa to gain wider acceptance of its secret police, The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). In the midst of a media barrage and hype about Y2K threats, CSIS director Ward Elcock has said that 50 "terrorist" organizations have a presence in Canada and that 350 individuals are being tracked.

This atmosphere has led to a stepped-up campaign against immigrants, with claims that a more selective and restrictive approach toward Canadian immigration policy be adopted. The Reform Party, a right-wing capitalist party and the official opposition in Canadian parliament has made this a central campaign.

The recent discovery of 25 Chinese migrants inside two cargo containers at the port of Vancouver has intensified this campaign. These are the latest of over 600 Chinese migrants that have come to Canada by boat since last summer. All but 85 are still imprisoned while their requests for refugee status are being processed. Only two have been accepted so far.

Efforts to further criminalize immigration, justify attacks on immigrant rights, and to get working people to accept cop intrusion into their lives have been accompanied by moves to increase policing of the Canadian-U.S. borders.

"Canada's been a staging point for terrorists for a long time," said Yossef Bodansky, a U.S. Congressional task force director. "There were key people in Canada who were part of the networks related to the World Trade Center bombers," he claimed. "There is a vast infrastructure, networks, probably several thousand strong, resilient, well entrenched [across the continent]. They can try again and again. They have enough people and resources to do it." Bodansky advanced his anti-Muslim views in the Vancouver Sun saying, "Muslim organizations....could have been the instrument to point fingers or restrain the radical minority from doing naughty naughty things. They don't do it."

Peter Duck is a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union at Fletchers Fine Foods in Vancouver. Ned Dmytryshyn is a member of the Machinists Union at Avcorp Industries in Delta, British Columbia.  
 
 
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