Here is what Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day said at the Senate anti-terrorism committee to justify Bill C-3 last week.
"As you know, there is an organization whose motto is "nobody is illegal." I disagree with that notion. There are some people who are illegal. Every organization has the right to make their own claims and speak freely, and I appreciate that they are
robust organizations, but some people should be declared illegal."
No One Is Illegal strongly disagrees with Day. He seems to be a bit confused. To say that anybody is inherently illegal is absurdity at its height, since illegality has never been, nor will it ever be, some natural human characteristic. Illegality is constructed by the state through the law, hardly a feature of some individuals and not others. It is no coincidence that racialized people are those most often deemed illegal since Canadian nationalist practices are premised on white supremacy, or the idea of a white nation threatened by racial outsiders. Therefore, No One Is Illegal looks to point to the processes through which illegality is constructed- how the Canadian state makes people illegal through its policies and practices- in order to challenge how illegality is naturalized in the Canadian imagination.
