Mr. Speaker, we do not want to interfere with the legal process. We want to do what that legal process invites us to do and, indeed, requires us to do.
This is something that we should have done under the previous American administration but we kept saying that it was premature. Even though during that previous American administration we had both an American supreme court decision and a Canadian Supreme Court decision that warranted his repatriation, we did not move.
I am saying that what President Obama has done has opened the door for us to now do it. In terms of where the proceeding should take place, there should be no doubt. All these violations, regrettably, occurred under the American system, under which he languished for six years.
We should finally repatriate him as a Canadian citizen, as a child soldier under international humanitarian law so that he faces justice here. In doing so, we would be taking another person off the hands of the decision makers in the American administration.
Why have European governments lined up to take detainees at Guantanamo Bay to their countries, even though they have no connection to these detainees? It makes it easier for President Obama to address that issue. We have a Canadian citizen who has languished there for six years and we cannot bring ourselves to repatriate our own citizen who is the only western national still in that prison system.
At this point I cannot understand on what basis the government continues to act in this way. It would seem that justice and politics would require them to alter its position.