The Challenges of Securing an Open Society

Abstract

The fifth anniversary of 9/11 has just passed. It is an appropriate time to take stock of how our world changed on that morning in New York City, because it did change. It is now hard to remember a time before 9/11 — a time before security became the filter or the screen through which our actions, our words, and our move- ments would be assessed and judged.

I remember the morning well. I was Minis- ter of Justice and Attorney General of Canada and was attending the annual federal/provin- cial/territorial meeting of Ministers of Justice and Solicitors General with my colleague Law- rence MacCauley, the Solicitor General. Our host was Michael Baker, Minister of Justice for Nova Scotia, and we were at the White Point Lodge, outside Halifax. We had just begun our morning session, when I received a note, tell- ing me that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.