Bhagat Singh Brar and Parvkar Dulai on Canada’s no-fly list lose appeal

Bhagat Singh Brar and Parvkar Dulai on Canada’s no-fly list lose appeal

Ottawa: A Canadian court has thrown out a bid by two Sikh extremists to get off the country’s no-fly list, saying there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect they will threaten transportation security or travel by air to commit a offence.

The Federal Court of Appeal in its ruling this week dismissed an appeal by Bhagat Singh Brar and Parvkar Singh Dulai after they lost a constitutional challenge of their no-fly designations under Canada’s Secure Air Travel Act.

The two were not allowed to board planes in Vancouver in 2018. The ruling says the act empowers the public safety minister to ban people from flying if there are “reasonable grounds to suspect they will threaten transportation security or travel by air to commit a terrorism offence.”

“At some point, the appellants tried to fly. They could not,” the ruling says. “They were on the list and the minister had directed that they not fly.”

The appellate panel found that based on confidential security information, the minister “had reasonable grounds to suspect that the appellants would travel by air to commit a terrorism offence.”

In 2019, Brar and Dulai went to the Federal Court of Canada to have their names struck from the list.

But Justice Simon Noel ruled against them both in 2022. The limits imposed on Dulai, he ruled, “were the result of evidence-based suspicions that he could fly abroad in order to plot a terrorist attack.”

“The Government of Canada must enact laws that protect national security and intelligence activities in a way that respects rights and freedoms and encourages the international community to do the same,” Noel ruled.

In their appeal, both Brar and Dulai argued the impairment of their rights as a result of being placed on the list was not “minimal” and therefore unjustified.

However, the appellate court ruled the legislation was justified and that confidential portions of the court process were procedurally fair.

The Secure Air Travel Act deals with “national security, international relations and global co-operation to prevent terrorism” and is “not directed to past events that are tangible, certain and known,” the appellate court found.