The House of Commons was several hours into a debate Monday over a government-sponsored counter terrorism bill that would give authorities extra powers of arrest and detention when the RMCP announced they had foiled an al-Qaeda-backed plan to attack a Toronto-area passenger train.

At issue is S-7, the Combating Terrorism Act, which would authorize police to pre-emptively detain Canadians and hold them for up to three days without charging them.

Late last week the Harper government, citing the Boston bombings as a reason, cleared the legislative schedule for Monday and Tuesday to conduct third readings of S-7, a bill that has been moving relatively slowly through Parliament.

The bill would also allow authorities to imprison a Canadian for up to 12 months if the person refuses to testify in front of a judge at an investigative hearing.

The legislation would also make it a federal crime to leave or try to leave Canada for the purpose of committing terrorism or attending a terrorist training camp.

Some of the measures in S-7 have previously been law in Canada but expired because they were so-called sunset provisions introduced in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The sudden renewed focus on the terrorist threat facing North America shifts the political conversation both in Parliament and around dinner tables to territory where the tough-on-crime Harper Conservatives feel their credentials are strong. Recent months have been trying for the Tories as they drifted from one controversy to another – from aboriginal anger to foreign workers – with few high-profile items left on its agenda.

Monday’s arrests “demonstrate that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said a short while after Mounties began explaining the arrests. “Preventing, countering, and prosecuting terrorism is a priority for our government.”

Critics, however, say the thwarted train attack demonstrates that authorities can disrupt terrorist schemes without requiring additional powers that would further encroach on civil rights.

The Conservatives invoked Boston on Monday as they sought to justify the measures.

“We must ensure – it’s so important – that Canada has the necessary laws and tools to prevent such a heinous attack,” Candice Bergen, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, said in the Commons. “We have to ensure that the evildoers are met with the justice that they deserve otherwise we as parliamentarians have failed our most basic duty: that is to protect Canadians.”

The legislation would also make it a federal crime to leave or try to leave Canada for the purpose of committing terrorism or attending a terrorist training camp.

The bill is supported by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals but opposed by Thomas Mulcair’s New Democrats, who say its measures are unnecessary and ineffective intrusions, citing the detention provisions.

“The key question that needs to be asked is this: is S-7 necessary or are our current laws sufficient? Today’s arrests show that our police force can fight terrorism with existing tools,” NDP foreign affairs critic Paul Dewar said.

York South-Weston NDP MP Mike Sullivan said former Progressive Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker, a champion of civil rights, “would be rolling over in his grave” if he knew of this bill.

Paul Calarco, a member of the Canadian Bar Association’s national criminal justice section, said his organization believes the legislation “does not add in any substantive way to the tools that already exist in the Criminal Code.”

The use of investigative hearings where people would be forced to answer questions on threat of imprisonment is “totally contrary to our civil liberties traditions.” Mr. Calarco said. It’s not clear this was effective when it was last on the books, he said.

The Conservatives said, however that there would be careful protections against indiscriminate use of the detention provisions.

Mr. Calarco said the proposal to make it an offence to leave Canada to commit terrorism or attend a terrorist camp unnecessarily duplicates existing prohibitions under the law.

“If you’re leaving the country to go to a terrorist camp … you’re going there to learn how to commit a crime, to perform the activities of a terrorist organization, so you’re already guilty of either conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, possession of weaponry,” to name a few, Mr. Calarco said.

“Repetitive legislation is not necessarily helpful to what we’re dealing with.”

Today, the new proposed domain name whois standard becomes the hottest subject of a general public consultation. And this domain name whois policy will see the CIRA to pursue in collecting complete information from dot-ca domain name owners, however, it will create only a little amount of the details that are available to the general public in its web-based domain name whois lookup directory.

Along with such introduction, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority itself have assumed that this new domain name whois standard will ensure greater privacy protection barriers under the dot-ca regime than are recently accessible with so many other internet domains just like the dot-com. In some reports about this matter proposed by the CIRA, it is noted that the president of the CEO of CIRA had mentioned that this new standard for the domain name and whois privacy is all about protecting the people’s fundamental right to privacy in the virtual reality. Along with that statement, the president of the CEO of CIRA also mentioned that since the internet is a wonderful and transformative force, it is then right to take some great care to ensure that such dimension serves the people, and not the other way around.

With such main reason for introducing this new standard for the domain name whois privacy, the group further maintains that this policy then sets a new standard among the internet domains. And in particular, the new standard for domain name whois privacy states that for those who register a dot-ca domain name, it is only the domain name, registrar’s name, registration date, “last change” date, notice about adjustments in status of the domain name and server IP numbers/names will be accessible through whois. It further holds that the policy for organizations with dot-ca designations will not be changed, so the same date will continue to be accessible through whois. And lastly, the new policy holds that CIRA will pursue to ensure that all registration data is available to law enforcement agencies.