Madam Speaker, recognizing the time, I will be drawing this debate to a close over the next 10 minutes. I want to cover some very specific points and perhaps summarize some of the positions on both sides of the House.
The first position that the Canadian government, both the current one and the previous one, should have taken is a fundamental one, that we have, as an absolute first responsibility, the responsibility to protect our citizens. That is the social contract under which all democracies function. It is the absolute fundamental principle on which we operate. We have no right being here if we do not believe that and do not follow through on that in all the opportunities we are given.
We have failed so far with regard to Omar Khadr. We have not carried out our responsibility, both this administration and the previous one.
The international law is clear, our domestic law is clear, and so is the domestic law of the United States of America. Guantanamo Bay breaches all three of those legal regimes. That has been found by the Supreme Court in the United States and by the Supreme Court in Canada. This is not something that is debatable anymore.
That is the point that is being missed by the current administration. They seem to think they can ignore those findings of fact and that determination of law that the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States have made.
Those principles of law have been recognized by every western democracy in the world. Every western democracy in the world that had their citizens at Guantanamo Bay got them out a long time ago.
We are the only western democracy that had a child soldier at Guantanamo. We are the only western democracy that has done absolutely nothing to get its citizen out of what was a centre for torture and a gross misapplication of legal principles that have guided both the U.S. system and the Canadian system for centuries.
We could have used habeas corpus. That goes back hundreds and hundreds of years in our legal system, but they have breached that repeatedly. It is well recognized, yet we sit here today debating and hearing from the government side that somehow that system is a just system.
We just heard it a minute ago from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety, who stood in the House, as has been done so often, hundreds of times by this point, and said that is a just system. When every court that the government is supposed to pay attention to has found just the opposite, it continues to maintain that position.
As I stood to speak, I could not help but think that I spoke on this same concurrence motion in the last Parliament, which was thwarted by a technical manoeuvre by the government at that time to come to a vote. I invited the Conservatives at that time to get some courage and challenge the Bush administration and say to them, “We are going to protect our citizens and you have to repatriate him. We will deal with him. There are criminal proceedings that have to be taken against him. We will deal with him here in Canada.”
They know they can do that. They have any number of opinions that tell them they can do it. What did they do? They ducked the issue by avoiding the vote that particular day.
The situation remains the same today. They still have one more opportunity to do what they are supposed to do, protect a Canadian citizen.
There is a whole other dimension around this issue beyond this individual case of Mr. Khadr. At any given time, when citizens of Canada are in custody in other countries, Canada has historically said to those other countries: These are the circumstances; they should be repatriated; Canada will take them back. Canada has done that in a number of different ways over its more than one century of history.
Because of the type of conduct we have seen with regard to the Khadr case and in several other ways under this administration, the credibility that Canada has built and maintained up to this point with other countries, that it will go to the nth degree to protect its citizens, has been eroded.
I cannot think of how many times I have had international delegations inside or outside Canada ask me what our government is doing. They say Canada was a leading advocate for the international protocols and treaties around child soldiers, but when we are faced with it in regard to one of our own citizens, we abandon him; we abdicate our responsibility to advocate the policies contained in those international protocols.
So Canada's credibility is being eroded internationally. It will take some rebuilding. This motion today is one of the steps to do that. It is the opportunity for a majority of the House of Commons to say both to the government and to the U.S. administration that Omar Khadr should be repatriated. Canada will deal with him here, in cooperation, probably, with U.S. authorities, but he should be repatriated.
If Omar Khadr is repatriated and Canada is going to deal with him in the criminal justice system, it will apply the international protocol with regard to child soldiers.
Canada will recognize the evidence that has been gathered by the U.S. Was it gathered under torture? All the evidence seems to say yes. Some of the people who worked at Guantanamo are coming forward now publicly. They knew Mr. Khadr while they were there with him and are saying yes, he was mistreated to the point of torture.
Canada will take that into account. We will apply the values and standards built under both the British and the French systems that are incorporated into Canada's legal system now. That is what we should be doing, not standing in the House day after day repeating this mantra that nobody else in the world believes.
The world does not believe that Guantanamo and the military commissions set up there are a just system. Nobody in the world believes that, except perhaps the Conservative Party, the government of the day.
When Australia had an individual who was charged with a serious crime, it arranged to have him repatriated.
I want to take issue with a colleague from the Liberals. When I asked the hon. member about this, he said that with the former Bush administration Canada could not have done this. I do not except that.
Britain, France, Germany, and Australia got their people out. Did Canada? No, because it did not make any attempt to get Omar Khadr out. So he still sits there, languishing.
We do not know what the outcome is going to be. However, the outcome of this motion today is at least a message that a majority of parliamentarians in Canada are saying to both the government of the day and the administration in the U.S. that in fact we want Omar Khadr repatriated. Canada commits to the U.S., as is in the report, that it will deal with him and prosecute him if that is appropriate. Canada will prosecute him according to international and Canadian law.