Khadr’s payout could be bad news for Liberals
We’re still in the early innings, but it would appear Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pieties about the sanctity of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms aren’t quite a match for the blow-back over his government’s decision to cough up $10.5 million and an apology in a secret deal with Guantanamo Bay’s loudly-arguedabout former inmate, Omar Khadr.
Canadians are so put off by the deal — 71 per cent of respondents in an Angus Reid public opinion survey say it was the wrong thing to do — that even three in five Liberals agree with Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer that the case should have been fought in court to the end.
The agreement settles a lawsuit Khadr’s lawyers filed in 2004 alleging Canadian officials collaborated with U.S. military interrogators at Guantanamo in a way that “offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects,” in the words of a Supreme Court of Canada ruling.
The public mood should not be expected to soften unless Trudeau manages to dispel the impression that the deal was a kind of hush money designed to make the Khadr problem go away and head off the scandal that would emerge from the evidence in a hard-fought court trial.
Khadr’s civil suit was focused on the unconstitutional conduct of the Liberal government in the 20022003 Chrétien-Martin period. Liberal heavyweights from that epoch helped formulate the Khadr settlement.
On Friday, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale attempted to fault the previous Conservative government: “The Harper government could have repatriated Mr. Khadr or otherwise resolved the matter.”
But that falls flat, and not just because Goodale was a cabinet minister in 2002-2003. In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed with Stephen Harper’s government that it was entitled to drag its feet in Khadr’s repatriation.
The Liberals have also been insisting the payout should be understood as a cost-saving measure, because Khadr was certain to win.
The Liberals’ main talking points are variations on Trudeau’s theme: “The Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians, every one of us, even when it is uncomfortable. When the government violates any Canadian’s Charter rights, we all end up paying for it.”
There’s little in the Angus Reid findings to suggest that Canadians disagree with this eminently defensible but point-missing piety, or require instruction in the principle that governments should generally make restitution when a citizen’s rights are ignored or trampled. But there is a lot in the poll’s findings to suggest Canadians are skeptical about the degree of injustice Khadr is ordinarily said to have suffered.
Asked if they believed Khadr had been treated fairly or unfairly, 42 per cent answered they weren’t sure or couldn’t say, 34 per cent said Khadr had been treated fairly, and 24 per cent said he had been treated unfairly. While roughly four in 10 Canadians said they’d have offered Khadr neither apology nor compensation, another one in four said an apology alone should suffice.
As for Trudeau’s hopes to get on with his political agenda, this sorry business looks like bad news.
During the 2015 election campaign, public opinion polls showed a majority of Canadians supported the Conservative proposition that the wearing of niqabs and other such face-veilings should be prohibited during citizenship oaths. In several speeches, Trudeau went out of his way to defame the proposition.
Trudeau wasn’t punished for it. He was rewarded at the polls for his pluck and obstinacy. If, in place of an honest accounting of what went into the Khadr deal, all we get from Trudeau is another series of florid and extravagant speeches about the Charter of Rights, you never know.
It just might work.