The Guardian view on the response to terror: the attack on Charlie Hebdo was a crime, not an act of war
Across Europe, these are dangerous times. Political and religious leaders must maintain the calm ...
Guess Stephen Harper does not agree with The Guardian ...
METRO VANCOUVER -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the international jihadist movement has declared war on anyone who does not share its views and countries that value openness.
Harper said the attack on a satirical newspaper in Paris was an attack on democracy and that Canadians must remain vigilant as they loudly and clearly exercise their rights and freedoms to show their intolerance for such heinous acts.
"The fact of the matter is this, ladies and gentlemen, that the international jihadist movement has declared war," Harper said Thursday during an unrelated announcement in Delta
"They have declared war on anybody who does not think and act exactly as they wish they would think and act," he said.
"We may not like this and wish it would go away, but it is not going to go away. The reality is we are going to have to confront it. That's what, obviously, we are doing in concert with our allies."
Harper said the government is aiming to provide additional powers to security agencies so they can identify potential terror threats and detain people if necessary.
"We want to make sure that we get a balance, that we protect the rights of Canadians and also the security of Canadians," he said.
"I anticipate that we will be moving forward very early in the new session with additional legislative proposals."
Police in Paris are hunting for two suspects after 12 people, mostly journalists, were killed at the offices of newspaper Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.
Harper said the gunmen "assaulted democracy everywhere" and demonstrations around the world have shown that people will not be intimidated by jihadists.
He said Canada is standing with other countries threatened by a jihadist army, which is occupying large parts of Iraq and Syria and has used its vast financial resources to escalate its threat "to a whole new global level."
"This is a movement that has declared war on Canada specifically and has shown it has the ability to develop the capacity to execute attacks on this soil."
Canadians are mourning with the people of France, the prime minister said, adding "the threats are real" in this country, too.
"If anyone doubted that, I think those doubts vanished on Oct. 22," he said of the shooting death of a soldier standing guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Ottawa, before a gunman who stormed Parliament Hill was killed.
"That was not the first incident or first visible manifestation of this threat in Canada," he said. "We had the Toronto 18 arrests several years ago, we had arrests around a plot to blow up Via Rail services, the B.C. legislature," he said, referring to an alleged plot to bomb the B.C. capital.
"The reality is that our security agencies are able, in the vast majority of cases, to identify threats that are out there and prevent them from coming to fruition."
Canada continues to use its mission in Iraq to eradicate the threat of the Islamic state, Harper said, as the military revealed Thursday that CF-18s carried out another seven attacks in that country over the last couple of weeks.
A decision to extend the air mission, which is due to end in April, has not been made, but prime minister said when the time comes one of the criteria will be "the kind of risk it poses to our country."
And Harper said the risk is significant. He said Canada is at war with the Islamic State and will do what is necessary to eliminate the threat it poses.
"This is a movement that has declared war on Canada specifically and has shown it has the ability to develop the capacity to execute attacks on this soil," he said.
His use of the word "war" is important because it carries specific, legal connotations and the government generally avoided using it during the long campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The word does not appear in the parliamentary motion which authorized the mission in Iraq.
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