STUDENTS HAVE RIGHT TO PRIVACY

It makes me shudder how easily most Canadians give up their basic
democratic freedoms.

A good illustration of this is a freshly minted program at Edmonton's
junior and senior high schools that allows principals on a whim to call in
an EPS drug dog and handler to sniff schools for contraband.

On the surface this might not look all that evil. Everyone wants safe
schools that are free of drugs, weapons and crime. That's a given.

The spin on this program is that it's all part of a wider initiative to
make schools a safe, happy place.

Edmonton Public Schools' Corinne McCabe says her board signed on to the
drug-sniffing program just this week while Catholic schools went for it
just before Christmas.

"Over the last several months we've been working with city police and
Edmonton Catholic schools to use a passive drug dog in a program," says McCabe.

"It's a dog that's never been trained to be an attack dog. It's just a very
gentle dog (a Lab named Ebony).

"We'll use the dog primarily in an educational role. It might be for a
presentation or to search an unoccupied part of the school.

"There's no intention for the dog to be searching individual students."

Well whoop-de-do - a nice gentle Lab. School officials obviously miss the
point. This type of approach is a huge infringement on privacy rights we as
Canadians have - rights for which war veterans fought and died.

I'm not exactly the only one to see the inherent flaw in this program.

It's readily apparent to Stephen Jenuth of the Alberta Civil Liberties
Association.

"I think one of the things that makes us a democracy is our right to
privacy," says Jenuth. "That allows us to walk the streets freely and say
things that are unpopular with the government."

Jenuth doesn't like the drug-dog program one bit, nor do I.

"It's a creeping problem that really bothers me. Students should be
offended by it and there should be an outcry in Edmonton or wherever it
happens."

Now the knee-jerk reaction might be this: If students have nothing to hide,
why should they care if a gentle police dog randomly sniffs lockers and such?

The same argument could be extended to a whole host of things.

If you've got nothing to hide and you aren't a criminal, what's wrong with
allowing police on a whim and with no just cause to search your vehicle or
your house?

If you have nothing to hide, what's wrong with letting police or government
officials open your personal mail, put you under surveillance or read your
e-mail?

While nobody likes to see drugs in schools, a program in which there are
random searches erodes one of our basic democratic rights, I think.

McCabe says various school councils were consulted prior to the program's
initiation, as were high-school principals. None of these types had a
problem with the program.

She admits the Alberta Teachers Association wasn't consulted - but when the
Sun contacted its president, Frank Bruseker, he didn't have a big problem
with the program either. I wonder if educators and officials would feel
gung-ho if, say, the drug dog was used to randomly sniff teachers' offices?

Hey, why screw around. Why not just require all teachers and students to
subject themselves to mandatory urine tests to find out who's doing drugs?

The thing that really frosts my butt is the fact there didn't seem to be a
burning need to bring in this random sniffing program. Schools have long
had the right to open up student lockers if they have good reason to
suspect there's something illegal in them.

So why is a special drug-sniffing dog needed? Are city schools that rife
with drugs? Is there an epidemic?

"It would be absolutely irresponsible to pretend there's not a drug problem
in our schools or in the rest of society," says McCabe, giving the perfect
political answer. She couldn't or wouldn't say if public schools have a
drug-use crisis.

So, if the drug problem is no worse in schools than society, why invade the
privacy of all those good students who already just say no to drugs?

That's a good question that nobody seems to be able to answer.

It's time students and all Canadians began fighting harder to protect their
basic freedoms before we have none left.

It's all enough to make the average war veteran spin in his grave.