Living up to obligations cheaper than settlements

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/07/2017 (3405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

 

“Mr.Khadr admitted to killing an American soldier while fighting with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2002. Canadians should not be forced to pay millions of dollars to a killer.”
— Wording from a Canadian Taxpayers Federation petition

In what The Canadian Press described as a “terse” joint statement by Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale and Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland yesterday, the federal ministers confirmed that the Liberal government has formally apologized to former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr, and further, that a financial settlement was reached outside court to end Khadr’s legal action.

It is the first — and likely only — time that this federal government has made any official statement of any substance since it came to light earlier this week that a $10.5-million payout to Khadr was imminent. 

“Today, we are announcing that the government of Canada has reached a settlement with Mr. Omar Khadr, bringing this civil case to a close,” the statement read. “On behalf of the government of Canada, we wish to apologize to Mr. Khadr for any role Canadian officials may have played in relation to his ordeal abroad and any resulting harm. We hope that this expression, and the negotiated settlement reached with the government, will assist him in his efforts to begin a new and hopeful chapter in his life with his fellow Canadians.”

At the end of a week of growing public outrage at the Liberal government for making such a “lavish” settlement to a man who Conservative MPs continue to label as an enemy combatant and, as the wording of the CTF petition above states, a “killer,” the Liberal message lacked both detail, and any comment from the prime minister and a chance to question him. No doubt, the Trudeau government has been attempting to distance itself from the Khadr situation, as they must be extremely fearful of how Canadians view this settlement.

Case in point, that CTF petition, which had called upon the federal government to revoke its $10.5-million settlement to Omar Khadr, a payout that it called “offensive” to Canadians. By July 6, only two days after news broke about the multi-million-dollar settlement, the CTF petition had gained more than 50,000 signatures, and grabbed a large number of headlines. 

Nevertheless, while the government’s handling of this situation has been absurd, outrage over the settlement remains misplaced, as we stated earlier this week. Those who lead the Canadian Taxpayers Federation should ask themselves a question — how much money would Omar Khadr have obtained from the Canadian government, and thus from Canadian taxpayers, had the government had not decided to settle Khadr’s civil suit out of court?

For there is absolutely no doubt that the Canadian government was going to lose a court battle with Khadr’s lawyers, should the case have gone forward. Three Canadian courts had already ruled in Khadr’s favour regarding the violation of his civic rights as a Canadian citizen. Goodale himself acknowledged to reporters yesterday that the federal government was left with a no-win situation.

The settlement he said, was not about giving cash to a child soldier because of what he may or may not have done on an Afghan battlefield when he was 15 years old. 
“It is about the acts and other decisions the Canadian government took against Mr. Khadr after he was captured and detained,” Goodale said. “Those facts are not in dispute and there is no doubt about how the Supreme Court views them. The government of Canada offended the most basic standards.”

In 2005, a Federal Court judge ruled that Canadian agencies, including the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), violated Khadr’s rights by giving information from interviews with him to U.S. investigators. The Supreme Court of Canada later ruled in 2008 that Canadian officials illegally shared information about Khadr with the U.S. 

And in 2010, though the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s order that the federal government must try to repatriate Khadr from Gitmo, it did declare that Canadian officials had violated Khadr’s human rights, and that he was at the time still threatened by the effect of those violations while in the U.S.-run prison.

Once back in Canada, Khadr and his lawyers filed a civil suit alleging that the Canadian government had violated a number of his Charter rights, asking for $20 million in damages. Call the evidence flimsy all you like, but the fact remains that in three separate decisions, courts had concluded that the Canadian goverment was in the wrong. No doubt the former Harper government must have realized this eventuallity, once Khadr was back on Canadian soil. 

And now the Liberals are wearing it, and the Tories get to rile up the partisan ranks and fan the righteous anger of uninformed public opinion against them. Bully for them.

Yet the reaility remains this: If Canadians want to see their federal governments — of all political stripes — stop making expensive settlements like the one for Omar Khadr, then as citizens we must force our federal politicians to live up to Canada’s international obligations on human rights, and hold them accountable when they don’t.

In the long run, it’s going to be less expensive.