Mr. Speaker, the Federal Court in its decision on the Abdelrazik case that the government had breached the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in its treatment of Mr. Abdelrazik and that the Canadian government should take immediate action so that Mr. Abdelrazik would be returned to Canada was clear in its findings of fact and conclusions of law. In addition, however, its factual findings and legal conclusions actually bring shame to the government. I will give some examples.
The government promised Mr. Abdelrazik a passport and then it renegued. Our security agencies cleared him of terrorist ties and then our government called him a security threat. Our government heard a UN official say Canada can bring Mr. Abdelrazik home but then it argued in court that it could not because the United Nations stood in the way.
The government instructed Mr. Abdelrazik that he needed to get his name off the UN watch list though it knew that this was effectively impossible. The government continued to argue in Parliament that it could not comment on the case for weeks and months in debates before the House because the matter was before the courts, and yet the matter was before the courts because the government itself had breached the rights of a Canadian citizen.
It is not surprising that the court called it disingenuous for the government to argue that Mr. Abdelrazik should apply to the United Nations committee for de-listing. It also held, on the basis of the evidence before it, that “CSIS was complicit” in the detention of a Canadian by a foreign government.
Had it been necessary, the decision stated, the court would have no hesitation finding that the government had acted in bad faith. It also stated, “There is no reason to challenge the applicant's assertion in his affidavit that he was tortured while in detention”.
From the beginning, as the court stated, the process that got Mr. Abdelrazik listed recalls the situation “of Josef K. in Kafka's The Trial, who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed to him or the reader, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime”. In the end, the court had so little faith in our government that it ordered Mr. Abdelrazik to be physically brought before it to prove that he was finally on Canadian soil.
While at this point there is a security review of the actions of CSIS and while Mr. Abdelrazik has sued the Canadian government and officials for damages for the reasons to which I have referred, some disturbing questions remain, questions that can only be addressed and resolved by a complete judicial inquiry.
I will list only some questions for reasons of time. They are as follows. Why was the Canadian government so committed to refusing passage home to a Canadian citizen, a position that appeared to have no basis in law and, indeed, violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as the court said?
Why did the government risk a third straight adverse decision in which the courts admonished it for failing to come to the protection of its citizens? Why did the government invoke dubious security considerations in its defence, ignoring the fact that its own security services, both CSIS and the RCMP, openly stated that they had no information connecting Mr. Abdelrazik to terrorism?
Why did the government appear to acquiesce to both the detention and the torture of a Canadian citizen? Why did it seek to bring about Mr. Abdelrazik's detention to begin with? If Canada turned a blind eye to torture, who knew, who approved it, how high up did it go?
There is a whole series of questions, but I want to close by saying the following. When Canadians travel abroad, they should leave their country confident that their government will stand behind them, that whatever accusations other countries make against them, their government will work to ensure their rights are protected and that, as a bare minimum principle, their government will not be an obstacle to their safe return home.
Only a judicial inquiry will be able to address these questions and satisfy the necessary accountability at this point of what the government knew, when it knew it and why it acted in such a way so as to systematically violate the rights of a Canadian citizen.