Madam Speaker, we live in a country that is the product of English criminal law. We have the Civil Code in Quebec. One long-held basic principle is that when someone is arrested, they must be charged as soon as possible and they cannot be detained if authorities cannot demonstrate a reasonable motive for detaining them.
In this case, when the Guantanamo facility was initially created because of the emergency situation, people sat back and watched, but months and years have since passed. Several years went by without any charges. Then a process was put in place. That process has now been suspended. The Canadian government's responsibility in that regard is not to say whether the American approach was good or bad. However, the fact is a Canadian citizen was caught up in this process, a child soldier who could have had his rights restored if the government had asked that he be repatriated from the beginning, so he could have defended his rights and assumed his responsibilities. In that sense, the Conservative government definitely went against everything that we regard as common practice.
There is a parallel of sorts between this situation and the federal government's refusal to defend a man sentenced to death in the United States. The death penalty has been abolished here and the Conservative government says it depends whether the individual was sentenced in a democracy or in a country that is not considered democratic, where it is unacceptable. The same is true for this case. The law must apply to everyone exactly the same way. I think that is important.