This press release went out December 17. The Senate has since given its final approval of Bill C-36.

Chris Kringle in Cuffs under New Anti-Terrorism Legislation

Will explain that “It was all a terrible mistake” at 12:45p.m. at Centennial Flame, Parliament Hill, Ottawa

December 17 — Santa Clauses across the nation were arrested late last night in their homes as they slept. Spokespersons for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service explained to media this morning in a hastily arranged press conference that their best intelligence, including American sources, gave them strong reason to suspect that the Clauses were plotting a terrorist attack.

Luckily, they said, Bill C-36 is just about to be given final approval by the Senate. The police would not disclose the exact nature of the plot nor the timing but suggested an attack was imminent — expected sometime before the end of the month. According to the intelligence sources, the Clauses had been involved in suspicious activities across the country over the last two weeks.

It was these activities that first tipped off the police that something big was definitely in the planning. Police realized that information was clearly being passed to other cell members through hand waving during parades and in shopping malls where these Santas were regularly observed. Police refused to discuss the exact nature of the planned attacks as a matter of national security, and would only say they were part of a coordinated North American-wide terrorist action.

Civil rights lawyers contacted in several major centres said their hands were tied. They could not risk defending the Clauses, for fear they might end up in contravention of the new bill themselves if they represented these red-capped terrorists. Several commentators have suggested to Justice Minister Anne McLellan that a horrible error has been made, and that the matter needed to be looked into immediately.

McLellan said there was no mechanism available to look into the situation, but assured everyone that, if a mistake had been made, the Clauses would be released after seventy-two hours if no charges laid.

In what Prime Minister Jean Chrétien called “its reasonable approach to all this,” the government has agreed to have the main Mr. Claus appear at 12:45 p.m. today on the steps in front of the Centennial Flame, in order to defend his actions and explain that this is all a terrible mistake.

For more information on Mr. Claus’ appearance, please contact Betty-Anne Daviss at 730-0282 or Nancy Peckford at 237-1590, ext.320 or 231-1116.

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Betty-Anne Daviss is a Canadian midwife who has practised for twenty-five years on five continents. In 1990, she worked in the Afghan refugee camps on the border of Pakistan/Afghanistan. She is chair of Midwives and Mothers Watching Globally/Sages-Femmes et Meres Veillant l’Humanite/Parteras y Madres Velando Globalmente — a social-activist group that examines human rights and environmental issues affecting mothers and newborns.