Thank you very much for inviting me. I want to begin by saying, as Mr. Amyot has said, that human rights belong to everybody. They belong to terrorists; they belong to serial killers; they belong to people simply because of their common humanity.
I want to read you something, actually, that was said by Yuri Andropov, who was head of the KGB and then head of the Soviet Union: “Any citizen of the Soviet Union whose interests coincide with the interests of society feels the entire scope of our democratic freedoms. It is another matter if these interests in certain instances do not coincide” with the interests of society.
That is not a view we should be taking. We should not be awarding human rights to people who are doing good or who behave properly or act inconsistently with the interests of society; they belong to everybody.
I want to draw your attention to particular items. I want to draw your attention to the Foreign Affairs publication, A Guide for Canadians Imprisoned Abroad, which says, “the Government of Canada will make every effort to ensure that you receive equitable treatment under the local criminal justice system. It will ensure that you are not penalized for being a foreigner, and that you are neither discriminated against nor denied justice because you are Canadian”.
That undertaking, as I see it, from the Government of Canada is being violated in the case of Omar Khadr. He is being discriminated against because he's not an American. The Americans are not treated the way foreigners are treated in Guantanamo, and Canada is not ensuring that he would not be treated in a discriminatory way. It's not making every effort to ensure that he would be treated equitably.
Let me read you something else that comes from the American government, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Colleen Graffy, on March 12, 2006: “We have no intention of operating Guantánamo any day longer than we have to. If there is another viable alternative to deal with these detainees, then that's something we are obviously always looking at.”
Well, there is another viable alternative, repatriation in the case of Omar Khadr to Canada, and I see no reason, based on this statement, why the United States would not accede to it.
Let me read you something from a British case, because the British have been active in getting their nationals back, and there has also been some litigation about it. In the case of Abbasi, the English Court of Appeals says this: “it must be a 'normal expectation of every citizen' that, if subjected abroad to a violation of a fundamental right, the British Government will not simply wash their hands of the matter and abandon him to his fate.”
I would say that is also true or should also be true of Omar Khadr and Canadian citizens.
We have a number of international standards that, in my view, are being violated in the case of Omar Khadr. Bernard Amyot has referred to some of them. There's the issue of arbitrary detention, because there is no habeas corpus available for the people who are in Guantanamo. This was originally litigated in the United States in the case of Hamden, in which the Court of Appeals said habeas corpus did not apply. The Supreme Court overturned and said it did. The United States then enacted legislation to take away habeas corpus. That again is being litigated through the courts. The federal Court of Appeals has again said that habeas corpus doesn't apply.
The case was argued in the Supreme Court of Canada last December. I noticed that there was an amicus curiae from a number of Canadian professors and parliamentarians, including some of the parliamentarians in this room, and I commend the parliamentarians who joined in that amicus curiae. But this is not just a legal matter and it's not just a parliamentary matter; it's also a government matter, and it shouldn't be necessary for Canadian parliamentarians to litigate in U.S. courts in order for Canadian rights to be respected. The Canadian government should be making representations to that effect.
The guarantee against arbitrary detention is found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Both Canada and the U.S. are signatories. Canada is also a signatory to the optional protocol allowing for interstate complaints, and the United States also is a signatory to the optional protocol allowing for interstate complaints. So I hope that would not need to be used, but could be if necessary.
There's the issue of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Canada has signed and ratified it. The United States has signed it but not ratified it. But there is an optional protocol on child soldiers, which both the United States and Canada have signed and ratified. The U.S. has ratified the optional protocol on child soldiers, even though it hasn't ratified the convention itself. That optional protocol commits states to cooperating in the rehabilitation and social integration of child soldiers. It commits states to taking feasible measures to accord the person all the appropriate systems for their physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration. That hasn't happened in the case of Khadr, but it is an obligation, not just for the United States but for Canada. And Canada, by doing nothing about Khadr, is violating that obligation.
I join with Bernard Amyot and Mr. Waldman in calling upon Canada to meet with the United States and to ask them to repatriate Khadr to Canada.
Thank you very much.