Canada to criminalize public terror threats

Canada will introduce new anti-terror laws that will make it a crime to promote terrorism against Canadians online or elsewhere, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday.

The laws will also allow authorities to detain individuals suspected of involvement in a terror plot for up to seven days without charge and empower Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country’s spy agency, to directly thwart attacks.

Work on the laws began in October, after a gunman killed a soldier at Canada's national war memorial and then stormed Parliament. The attack in Ottawa came two days after a man, said to be inspired by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), ran over two soldiers in a parking lot in Quebec, killing one and injuring the other before being shot to death.

Under current laws, people suspected of being involved in a terrorist plot can be detained for up to three days. The new laws will make it a crime to call for a terror attack against Canadians in general. The laws also extend the detainment of suspects to up to seven days, provided police secure a judge's permission.

The new laws will also allow CSIS to directly approach terror suspects in order to disrupt their plans. CSIS is currently permitted only to collect intelligence and pass the information on to police.

Authorities will also be able to remove terror-related material from Canadian websites.

The penalty for breaking the laws will be a maximum of five years in prison.

"We cannot tolerate this any more than we tolerate people that make jokes about bomb threats at airports," Harper said. "Anyone engaging in that kind of activity is going to face the full force of the law in the future."

The new laws have to be passed in parliament, but Harper's Conservative government has a majority of the seats, so passage is all but guaranteed.

Harper said armed groups have declared war on Canada, and it would be a grave mistake to ignore their threats.

"Over the last few years, a great evil has been descending upon our world, an evil that has been growing more and more powerful: Violent jihadism," Harper said. "It is one of the most dangerous enemies our world has ever faced."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press