Time for Trudeau to act on war resisters
Almost exactly a year ago, Justin Trudeau told an audience during an election campaign stop in Winnipeg that he backed the idea of allowing Iraq War resisters from the United States to remain in Canada.
“I am supportive of the principle of allowing conscientious objectors to stay,” Trudeau said, adding he was committed “to restoring our sense of compassion and openness and a place that is a safe haven for people to come here.”
Again, just two months ago in Toronto, the now-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when asked about the war resisters issue, said “it’s one that we are looking into actively as a government.”
Trudeau’s words were cheered at the time by the handful of asylum-seeking American soldiers and their supporters scattered across Canada who have been trying unsuccessfully for up to 10 years to become permanent Canadian residents. Were those just hollow words? It’s a fair question because despite his hopeful remarks, Trudeau has done absolutely nothing to carry through with his commitment to compassion and openness for Americans fleeing a war that Canada itself opposed.
That’s in stark contrast to the record of his late father, Pierre Trudeau, who as prime minister permitted tens of thousands of U.S. draft dodgers to stay in Canada during the Vietnam War era in the 1960s and 1970s.
In September, though, Justin Trudeau will have a good opportunity to put his words into action. He has until Sept. 16 to let a federal court know if his government will continue to pursue the Harper government’s policy of opposing war resisters’ cases to stay in Canada.
The case involves four war resisters, or deserters as their critics describe them, who are to have a judicial review of their cases heard in November in a Toronto courtroom.
Most of the estimated 200 American soldiers who originally came to Canada in protest to serving in the Iraq War have long since been deported back to the U.S. or left voluntarily.
Over the past decade they had run into a solid wall of opposition from the former Harper government, which actively tried to deport them and had gone so far as to introduce Operational Bulletin 202, an order that classified war resisters as criminals and made them ineligible for Canadian residency.
In 2008 during a minority Tory-led Parliament, the House of Commons passed a non-binding motion calling for Ottawa to permit asylum and permanent residence for American war resisters. Harper paid absolutely no attention to the motion and continued to press ahead with deporting the deserters.
Today, 15 resisters are still in Canada, living in a legal limbo that means they cannot put down permanent roots and may well end up in a U.S. prison for military desertion if they are forced to go back home.
Deportation is still a real threat unless Trudeau steps in.
With the September deadline fast approaching for a decision by Trudeau, supporters of the Iraq War resisters are stepping up efforts to make the public more aware of the issue.
The largest group, the War Resisters Support Campaign, which was founded in 2005, is urging Ottawa to stop deporting U.S. war resisters, stop pursuing their cases in court and rescind Operational Bulletin 202.
Such moves would likely be highly popular with Canadians.
Indeed, an online poll conducted May 30 to June 2 by Insights West found that 63 per cent of those surveyed agreed with allowing the war resisters to become permanent residents. Some 21 per cent disagreed and 16 per cent said they were undecided. The support was fairly evenly distributed across the country. Last weekend in Vancouver, NDP MP Jenny Kwan held a small news conference in which she released a letter signed by other NDP MPs in the province calling on Trudeau to reverse the Harper government’s policy of trying to deport resisters.
Joining Kwan was Rodney Watson, a former U.S. soldier who served in Iraq and has spent the past seven years living in asylum in the First United Church in east-side Vancouver.
Watson, who has a son who can only visit him in the church, appealed to Trudeau on behalf of all the other war resisters to act on their behalf.
“I can see it in your eyes that you have far more compassion in your heart than Stephen Harper had, or ever had, for any war resister,” Watson said, pleading for Trudeau to “do the right thing and allow me to be free to be with my Canadian-born son.”
Watson is right — with a September deadline approaching, it is time for Trudeau to do the right thing.
Allowing the 15 U.S. deserters still in Canada to stay here is the humane and compassionate response.
Bob Hepburn’s column appears Thursday.