Mr. Speaker, for six years now Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, defined as a child under the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, has languished in Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, the Khadr case constitutes a case study of ongoing violations of international humanitarian law in general and the fundamental principles of the rule of law in particular, including arbitrary and illegal detention, denial of procedural due process in no presumption of innocence, denial of the right to counsel, denial of the right to trial within a reasonable period of time before a fair and impartial tribunal, coerced interrogation, and cruel and unusual punishment in detention. I could go on.
Moreover, as leaders of the bar associations in Canada, in the United Kingdom, in France and elsewhere pointed out a year ago, the United States Military Commissions Act of 2006, enacted after we were no longer in government and which the present government had to address and deal with, wrongly subjected individuals to trial by military commission on the sole basis of their status as aliens, criminalized conduct retroactively, permitted military commissions to consider coerced statements, denied defence counsel access to evidence that might be essential to a proper defence, et cetera.
In a shocking assault on the rule of law, and this again took place while the present government was in power, the United States authorities at the time even stated that they may continue to detain Omar Khadr even should he be acquitted under the standing violations already set.
Yet none of this moved the government to act--not the violations, not the military commissions, not this outrageous statement to which I just referred, not the fact that Omar Khadr remained the only citizen of a western state still detained in Guantanamo after all other countries had repatriated their nationals.
On a personal matter, I would like to make a statement for the record, because reference has been made to the member for Mount Royal's position. I first wrote six years ago, in the National Journal of Constitutional Law, a critique of “the prosecution by the U.S. of the war in Afghanistan and its unprecedented initiatives, including the proposal for extraordinary military tribunals and the legal limbo of security detainees”, stating that, “Canada has become implicated in this legal limbo respecting security detainees”.
At the time, I discussed the case with the minister of foreign affairs, Bill Graham, to whom reference has been made and who was responsible for the file. He said on behalf of the government that we were continuing to press the United States to ensure that Khadr's rights would be protected. That was the government's position while I was in cabinet.
However, that was a very different position then from everything that occurred thereafter. There was no Military Commissions Act yet at the time. There were no military commission tribunals. All other western countries had not yet repatriated their nationals. We did not know the full disclosure of all the violations that had taken place of international humanitarian law and the rule of law. All this became known and all this took place under the watch of the current government. The current government has to now wear it and bear the responsibility.
This is the most important point. An important and welcome development occurred when on just the second full day of his presidency, President Obama issued an executive order to ban torture and to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. This decision, demonstrating the commitment of the Obama government to the rule of law as an overriding priority for the incoming administration, had important implications for Canada-U.S. relations in addition to the important substantive and symbolic value with respect to the overall rule of law in the Khadr case.
Indeed, it should have altered the entire Canadian government's calculus with respect to the case of Omar Khadr, who remained the only western national imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Unfortunately, the government did not appreciate this fact. Indeed, the government continued to cling to the incomprehensible incantation that pressing for Mr. Khadr's repatriation was “premature”. All these things I have referred to took place when we were no longer in government.
The Conservative government continued to say that it was “premature” even after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees like Mr. Khadr were denied their due process rights, even after the Canadian Supreme Court held that the Guantanamo process violated international law, even after evidence of coercive interrogation and brutality in detention emerged, and even after it became clear that the incoming American administration would shut down the facility. Even in the face of all these clear and compelling findings of fact and conclusions of law, the Conservative government still failed to act and has the gall to come before the House to try to lay it on the previous administration.
What a shame. The Conservatives should bear the responsibility, because all these things have taken place while you have been in government, and you have the responsibility to act for the Canadian people.
The Conservative government still continues to wait, while President Obama has preferred to act. During a recent question period, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon was asked how the Canadian government could--