The Force Four Entertainment-produced series, called “Border Security: Canada’s Front Line” is currently on season two and has not yet been cancelled. Thankfully, though, the common sense of others won out in regards to one particularly exploitative episode.

The filming of a March 13 Vancouver construction site raid and the arrests of eight migrant workers will not air as part of the series. Also, there are now restrictions on where cameras are allowed. Filming is done away from the border and kept on the inland enforcement of those with “serious criminality.”

A memo from CBSA cites, “negative public response may continue,” as the reason for the episode’s cancellation. Such negative public response includes: Amnesty International, BC Civil Liberties Association, LeadNow, Council of Canadians, No One Is Illegal and the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), all of which have spoken out against the series, and wish for its cancellation. Thompson’s petition on change.org has over 24,000 signatures and an open letter addressed “To Force Four Entertainment, Shaw Media, Global BC, National Geographic, Canadian Border Services Agency, and all other producers, financiers, and broadcasters of Border Security: Canada’s Front Line,” has garnered 250 signatures from media professionals.

Diana Thompson, wife to Tulio Renan Hernandez , a worker who has been deported to Honduras told the activist group No One is Illegal: “We all feel extremely relieved by the news and are grateful to everyone who spoke out. We want this episode and the whole show cancelled.”

Picture from Diana Thompson's Change.org petition

The show, which follows CBSA, has been criticized for exploiting the confusion and language barriers of people. Or as the Border Security site says, “From confused visitors to phony immigrants.” National Geographic gets more dramatic while describing this trashy TV, “Passengers react in a variety of unpredictable ways—they lie, argue, play the victim, plead ignorance and even threaten legal action.  But they are no match for the investigative tactics of the CBSA officers.  After all, the law is on their side.”

Concerns about the show regard harming not only the dignity of fellow human beings but in some cases putting them further in harm’s way. A letter addressed to Toews from the CBA explains that those seeking refuge for themselves and their family may be endangered further, having their faces filmed for television. The letter also says what many are worried about: “We question whether those foreign nationals participating in the filming can be considered to have provided free and informed consent.”

Though people are asked to sign a waiver, they are filmed first, then asked while they are detained. Language barriers, confusion and fear that not signing will affect their release factor before signing.

Force Four Entertainment released a statement after the raid, saying they were being mis-characterized and that the show was not exploitative tabloid television but a documentary about the CBSA. However the letter originally sent to Toews for approval wasn’t trumpeting education but sensationalism calling the project a, “documentary-style reality television series.” The letter, fit for Tory propaganda continues, “It would be a valuable opportunity to promote important messages about Canada’s commitment to border security to give profile to the agency as a professional and effective law enforcement organization.” And so the show was approved and funded by our federal government.

Josh Patterson, executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association also appealed to Parliament Hill at a Vancouver news conference in March, “The federal government must respect the rights of every person it deals with, regardless of their immigration status.”

The show airs Mondays at 8 and 8:30 on the National Geographic Channel. For now.

Theoretically, the treaty will stop the free-flow of weapons to human rights abusers, with hopes of reducing the number of people (about 2,000) who die every day from arms violence.

Photo: facebook.com/ControlArms

The ATT is a huge victory for human rights groups Oxfam and Amnesty International, which, for the past two decades, have been lobbying for arms regulation. Desperately, they’ve been feeding us stats such as, “every year, we produce two bullets for every person on the planet”, and “bananas and MP3s are more tightly regulated by international laws than weapons”.

The push for regulation really gained momentum in 2003 when a group of Nobel Peace Laureates backed the effort.

So when 154 of 193 UN states voted yes for the treaty, benevolent leaders and humanitarians everywhere rejoiced. Amnesty tweeted (after a series of anticipatory updates): “We did it! 20 years of work for the Global #ArmsTready pays off.”

Well, not yet, it hasn’t.

For sure regulating the deadliest business in the world is a good thing, but first, a few factors have to line up.

Before the treaty is even ratified, 50 countries have to pass legislation in their own states agreeing to play by the rules.

The other problem, as you may have guessed, is that some of the top weapons exporters aren’t interested in regulating the trade. China and Russia, both among the “big six” arms exporters, didn’t show up to vote. We can bet neither will adopt the treaty, which is bad news, seeing as both are big dealers to the bloodiest conflicts in recent history. Russia, for example, is the top supplier to Syria, where anywhere from 62,000 to 120,000 have been killed in conflict since March 2011.

The idea, though, is that the arms trade treaty would prevent future disasters like Syria. That is, if all goes as planned.

At this point, exactly how the UN will keep weapons away from corruption is vague. The rules state that governments can’t ship arms if there’s a “substantial risk” of human rights violations or if shipment would provoke instability, hamper development, or support organized crime or terrorism. Governments will report details of their weapons trading to an “implementation support unit”—a watchdog of sorts—meant to keep governments in check via … penalties? fines? The enforcement method is yet (if ever) to be defined.

Although I’m not as optimistic as many treaty advocates, I won’t say the ATT is completely useless—it’s not. By documenting how governments trade arms—to whom and how many—we can red flag weapons that make their way to war lords. It creates boundaries between the black market and legitimate trading, which is essential for catching illicit dealers.

Sure the treaty is riddled with loopholes, but it sets international standards. Violating the standards could shame a country, hurt their reputation, and ostracize them from the global community. Is the treaty enough to stop genocide and instability? No. But it’s more than we’ve ever had.

Desiré Munyaneza

Quebec Superior Court judge André Denis made history on May 22, 2009, when he convicted Desiré Munyaneza of seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Munyaneza, he said, had “intentionally killed dozens” during the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and “raped several women and pillaged homes and businesses.” For the first time ever, a Canadian court tried and found guilty a citizen of another country for crimes committed outside of Canada. It was an important test of Canada’s Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act of 2000, which grants Canadian courts greater authority to try and punish war criminals residing in Canada, regardless of their nationality. The law itself and Justice Denis’s judgment sends a powerful message: if you commit monstrous crimes anywhere in the world, you will not be able to evade justice in the nooks and crannies of technicality and jurisdiction. Canadian justice is coming for you.

Just a day earlier, another Canadian court sent out a much different message. On May 21, 2009, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to consider whether or not suspected Taliban fighters in the custody of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan are entitled to the rights and protections of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association had asked the Supreme Court to judge whether the Canadian military had the right to hand Afghan terror suspects over to the indigenous government, where reliable reports were saying they were suffering torture and abuse. Amnesty and the BCCLA posed two questions to the court: “Does the charter apply … to the detention of non-Canadians by the Canadian forces…?” and, if not, would it apply if “the transfer of the detainees in question would expose them to a substantial risk of torture?” To which the Supremes said, merely: “Questions answered in the negative.”

So: which is it?

Is Canadian law so universal—so undeniably and cosmically just—that it applies to everyone, no matter their location or nationality, as in Munyaneza’s case? Or do our laws stop sharply at our borders, with no obligation to extend our protections to non-citizens in the custody of our government, as in the case of the Afghan prisoners? It’s one or the other—it can’t be both.

Canada’s lawmakers apparently want to keep the credit and deflect the blame. Canada is trying to make up for lost time on the war-crimes front—having earned a deserved reputation as a safe haven for Nazi war criminals in the late 20th century—and wants to strut its new tough-on-crime credentials to the international community. This is why Munyaneza was not deported back to Rwanda or the International Criminal Court, both of which have their own systems for prosecuting exactly these cases. We’re quite happy to take the convenient and comfortable position of condemning a well-known genocidaire and throwing him in our prison, a trophy we’ve awarded ourselves. But when it comes to the politically awkward prospect of extending our justice to alleged terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan, well, suddenly it’s complicated. Not good enough. Human rights are human rights—no exceptions. If our prosecutions are global, then so are our protections, and the Afghan detainees must receive those benefits. Will Canadian justice come for them, too?