I think that the government of the time made all reasonable efforts to free Mr. Arar from Syria, and Mr. Justice O'Connor made that point quite clearly in his report. He does not really criticize the Canadian government, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, our consular officials, and others, in terms of the actions they took to try to get Mr. Arar out of Syria.
Mr. Justice O'Connor talks about the fact that he had some concerns around the one-voice letter and what happened or didn't happen. But overall, he felt that the Canadian government discharged its obligations and responsibilities, in relation to getting Mr. Arar out of Syria and letting the Syrians know we wanted him back. In fact, Prime Minister Chrétien wrote such a letter to the Syrians.
In a sense, we didn't even need some kind of statement from the RCMP that Mr. Arar was completely innocent. What we wanted was Mr. Arar, as a Canadian citizen, out of Syria and back in this country. We believed that it was singularly inappropriate for the United States to deport a Canadian citizen to a third country, without even consulting Canada about that deportation. So we wanted him back.