Dear Mr. Rota,

As a constituent of the riding that you represent, Nipissing-Timiskaming,I am writing to you once again to ask that you stand up for human rights and civil liberties and vote No to Bill C-3 An Act to Amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Bill C-3 would perpetuate a two-tiered system of justice, one for citizens and the other for the hundreds of thousands of permanent residents and refugees who are in the process of becoming Canadian citizens. It is based on the unspoken premise that non-citizens have fewer rights and are more dangerous than citizens, and that it is somehow justified to subject them to procedures that we would immediately condemn as unjust if used against citizens: indefinite detention based on secret allegations, denial of the right to know and challenge the evidence used to justify detention, and so on.

For more reasons why Bill C-3 should be opposed see the PDF attachment to this email, a letter from The Council of Canadians to Liberal Leader Stephane Dion on why Bill C-3 should be voted down.

As both Conservative and past Liberal governments have repeatedly stated, deportation is the primary goal of the security certificate process. And while I personally disagree that deportation is the best solution you must accept and be well aware that the men currently under security certificates are now branded with the label "suspected terrorist".

Deporting men with this Canadian-made label to their countries of origin - Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco - inevitably means torture, possibly death. They will be tortured because *Canada* claims they are dangerous terrorists. We've locked them up for years without providing them adequate opportunity to prove their innocence. And that has perpetuated an aura of criminality which has stuck to them. Regardless of the gov't's intent, the act of deporting these men amounts to torture by proxy.

Can you live with that?

This is a personal issue for me as well. Through my involvement in maintaining the Justice for Mohamed Harkat Website since 2004 I have become friends with Mohamed's wife Sophie. I've had email correspondence with her and she tells me about the uncertainty she lives with every day. Will her husband be deported to an Algerian dungeon? Will he ever be given an opportunity to see the secret evidence against him? Will this house arrest nightmare continue for years and years?

Bill C-3 means this agony will continue indefinitely.

I have great sympathy for Sophie's plight and feel that her husband has been treated terribly by Canada and by the Liberal gov't in particular. Remember it was Denis Coderre and Wayne Easter who signed the security certificate against him back in Dec. 2003. And it was Ann Mclellan who callously said the words that Stockwell Day now repeats like a mantra: "If they don't like it they can go back to their own countries."

I watched the CPAC channel last night and saw that you stood in your place and voted in favor of Bill C-3 at second reading. I urge you to reconsider your position for the next vote which should happen in the coming days.

The Liberal Party is the "Party of the Charter", I am told. Is it a lie?

Regards,

Full Name and Address
North Bay, ON

P.S. I've written to you before on the matter of security certificates, specifically about long imprisoned security certificate victim Hassan Almrei when he was on hunger strike. I had no reply from you. I know you are busy and that the concerns of your constituents are many and varied and often conflicting. But please show the common courtesy of sending at least an autoresponse so I can know that my email has been received and considered.