Federal bill expected to outlaw act of encouraging a terrorist attack
Posted Jan 28, 2015 07:08:31 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
OTTAWA – The Conservative government wants to make it a criminal offence to encourage someone to carry out a terrorist attack.
The Canadian Press has learned that legislation to be tabled Friday is expected to create a new Criminal Code provision against advocating an act of terrorism.
A government source says an internal federal review of fatal assaults on Canadian soldiers last October uncovered a need for such a measure to prosecute extremists who encourage others to wage terrorism.
The provision would stop short of criminalizing the glorification of terrorism — for instance, simply posting an Internet video of a bomb going off.
But if the video also called for a similar attack on Canadians, that would fall under the new provision.
On Oct. 22, a rifle-wielding Michael Zehaf Bibeau shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, an honour guard at the National War Memorial, before dying in a hail of gunfire inside Parliament’s Centre Block.
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