By Haggai Carmon

Today, June 2, 2009, Canadian Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan introduced a bill that seeks to amend Canada’s State Immunity Act.

If the new legislation becomes law, countries that are deemed to be state sponsors of terrorism by the Canadian government will no longer be immune to civil lawsuits brought against them in Canadian courts by victims of terrorist acts.

Although Mr. Van Loan was not willing to name the countries that would be designated sponsors of terrorism – he said the list would have to wait until after the law was passed – he did give the public an idea of how judgments in favor of victims of terrorism would be executed. “The ministers of Finance and Foreign Affairs will have the discretion to identify the property and assets of those states within Canadian jurisdiction so that those assets may be used to seek compensation in the event of terrorist acts.”

“What this bill will allow people to do is sue, not just states that are designated as state sponsors, but also individuals who have been involved in supporting or undertaking terrorist acts and also organizations that have been involved in undertaking or supporting terrorists acts.”

The legislation covers terrorist acts going back to 1985, meaning that Canadians affected by the June 1985 bombing of an Air India flight which killed 329 people – mostly Canadian – could seek redress, as well as those Canadians affected by the 9/11 attacks in New York, which killed 24 Canadians.

The Canadian Coalition Against Terror is a group that represents the families of Canadians who have lost their lives in terrorist attacks. They have lobbied that such legislation be introduced for a long time.

The United States is the only other country that has a similar exception, passed in 1996, to its own Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA). Between 1996 and 2008, $19 billion dollars in damages have been awarded by U.S. courts to Americans suing state sponsors of terrorism, only 2% of which has been collected.