The rush of politicians to embrace the cause of Maher Arar, the Canadian who was imprisoned and tortured in Syria, is a wondrous display of Canadian hypocrisy. According to U.S. sources, Arar’s name was passed to American law enforcement agencies by the RCMP. But Canadian responsibility for what happened to Arar extends beyond the Mounties to the Liberal government, and even to the opposition parties.
Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Jean Chretien insisted that the decision to deport Maher Arar to Syria was made in Washington, not in Ottawa. He’s only half right. Canadian blame in this sorry matter cannot be ducked so easily.
In the aftermath of the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the Liberal government, relentlessly pushed by the Canadian Alliance, and to a lesser extent by the Progressive Conservatives, was desperately anxious to convince the Bush administration that Canada was onside with the Americans in the war on terror and was taking every possible measure to ensure North American security.
To win merit points in Washington, the government played fast and loose with the rights of Canadian citizens. Sooner or later, there was bound to be a victim.
The Anti-Terrorism Act was rushed through Parliament in the autumn of 2001, alongside the Patriot Act that was enacted by the U.S. Congress. These pieces of legislation gave Ottawa and Washington enhanced powers to lock up people suspected of having terrorist links without charging them with an offence. The acts did an end run around the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the U.S. Bill of Rights.
In December 2001, Foreign Minister John Manley and U.S. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge signed the Smart Border Declaration in Ottawa. Among other things, Ottawa and Washington agreed to increase intelligence sharing between the two countries, in particular with respect to high risk travelers. What that meant was that Canadian authorities undertook to alert the Americans to persons about whom they had security concerns.
Members of the Liberal government cannot now claim, with any credibility, that they did not understand what this could mean for Canadian citizens, especially those of Middle Eastern origin. The mood in the United States in the aftermath of September 11 was unmistakably vengeful toward anyone suspected of having a link to terrorism. In the year before Maher Arar was arrested in New York City in September 2002, following a flight there from Zurich, there was public discussion about the merits of torture to extract information from terrorism suspects. Some Americans, regarded as liberals and civil libertarians, such as lawyer Alan Dershowitz, argued that the U.S. should consider establishing a judicial process for the use of torture in appropriate cases.
Long before Maher Arar was arrested in New York, commentators recognized that there was an obvious alternative to Americans doing the torturing themselves. The dirty stuff could be farmed out, it was reported in media interviews with unnamed officials in the Bush administration, to countries whose regimes were not at all squeamish about extracting information through the use of torture.
And while the Liberals were passing legislation and signing accords with Washington that threatened the civil liberties of Canadians, the official opposition, the Canadian Alliance, was pouring fuel on the flames. Far from warning the government that the rights of Canadians should not be jettisoned, even in the face of a terrorist threat, Alliance members repeatedly accused the government of not going far enough. In the fall of 2001, Stockwell Day, then leader of the Alliance, warned the Commons, while providing no evidence, that "we hear reports continually about suspect terrorists hiding in Toronto, or in Fort McMurray or simply roaming the countryside." Day demanded that the government abandon its "go-slow approach" and act to create a Canada-U.S. security perimeter to "enforce security and screening standards" to better protect North America. When he took over as opposition leader in the spring of 2002, Stephen Harper, accused the Liberals of not having "adequately addressed the matter of security in the context of continental security." As a consequence, Harper declared that "we continue to be subject to unique internal security and continental security dangers."
When the government, with the opposition egging it on, adopts a posture that signals the RCMP and CSIS that security matters more than civil liberties, someone is certain to end up as the fall guy. Maher Arar became just that when he stepped off the plane at JFK Airport. By then the trap had been set for him by the Canadian government and the opposition.
We need a public inquiry into the Arar case. What we don’t need are politicians pretending they are shocked by what has happened.
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