This letter from today's Star is a fitting response to all of the snarling and foaming coming from the mouth of newly-installed Conservative leader Andrew Scheer over the apology and compensation given to Omar Khadr by the Canadian government.
Re: Ottawa apologizes for violating Khadr’s rights, July 8
I read in today’s Star that Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer says Canadians are “shocked” by the Khadr settlement, which included an apology from the government and compensation of $10.5 million.
Scheer does not speak for me. This settlement was long overdue and much deserved. I, and most other Canadians, applaud it.
What shocked me was that the U.S. could assert the right to imprison in Guantanamo a child who was essentially a prisoner of war.
What shocked me was that successive Canadian governments, both Liberal and Conservative, failed to repatriate from Guantanamo that Canadian child citizen. Is Canadian citizenship of so little value that our government will refuse to go to the boards for its citizens?
What shocked me was that Canadian CSIS officials took advantage of the travesty of justice in Guantanamo and participated in those interrogations. But the Supreme Court of Canada has already ruled that this violated Khadr’s Charter rights.
What shocks me now is the insensitivity, inhumanity and complete disregard for the law shown by Scheer in a crass effort to make political hay.
Despite the impotent snorting and sputtering of the likes of Andrew Sheer and his fellow travellers, the facts about the apology and compensation awarded to Omar Khadr speak for themselves.
In today's Star, Adriel Weaver writes the following, which I am reproducing in toto.
Why we should embrace the Khadr settlement
Toronto Star 9 Jul 2017
ADRIEL WEAVER
Adriel Weaver (Goldblatt Partners LLP) on behalf of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA). Adriel served as counsel to CCLA in the 2010 Supreme Court Khadr case.
The Canadian government’s recent announcement that it would issue an apology and compensation to Omar Khadr has given rise to considerable controversy.
Much of the discussion and debate has focused on the question of what Khadr did or didn’t do. But while it’s easy to get caught up in arguments about Khadr’s own actions, which may never be fully resolved, we cannot afford to lose sight of the issue at the heart of the settlement: what Canadian officials did — and failed to do. There, the facts are clear. On several occasions in 2003 and 2004, Canadian officials interrogated Khadr at Guantanamo Bay. On one occasion, they did so knowing that he had been subjected to the “frequent flyer program” — three weeks of scheduled sleep deprivation designed to make detainees more compliant and break down their resistance to interrogation. They then shared the fruits of those interrogations with U.S. prosecutors.
There is no question that at the time these interrogations were conducted, the regime governing Khadr’s detention and prosecution was illegal under U.S. and international law. There is equally no question that by participating in that regime, Canadian officials violated Canada’s international human rights obligations and Khadr’s charter rights.
Those are the facts as found by the Supreme Court of Canada more than seven years ago. Yet even in the face of those findings, the government of Canada refused to seek Khadr’s repatriation and instead fought his return.
And while we like to think of Canada as a champion of human rights, it’s worth noting that every other Western democracy not only sought, but secured the return of its citizens held in Guantanamo Bay to their own countries. Canada alone failed to do so.
It’s a legal truism that a right without a remedy is no right at all. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association welcomes the settlement as a necessary step if Canada wishes to maintain that it values, upholds and adheres to its own laws.
The settlement not only compensates Khadr for the profound abuses and rights violations he endured, but also affirms Canada’s obligation to defend and promote human rights, and to take meaningful steps to admit and redress past wrongs.
As many have pointed out, Khadr is not the only person to have suffered gross human rights violations in which the Canadian government was at the very least complicit. This is all the more reason to embrace the settlement. The apology and compensation extended to Khadr are a hopeful sign of the government’s growing willingness to acknowledge and make amends for the historic injustices it has caused and contributed to.
Those efforts must continue.
There are those who choose to ignore facts that don't agree with their philosophy and worldview. Clearly, it is time for them to grow up.
In a democracy, it is hardly expected that we will all be of one accord on anything. Opinion and debate are the lifeblood of a healthy and free society. The problem arises, of course, when the debate is fueled, not by reason and facts, but by rancour and misinformation. Such perhaps is the price to be paid in the name of egalitarianism.
In her column today, Susan Delacourt discuses the flurry of opinion prompted by the Omar Kadhr settlement.
....the widely different views on Khadr were also an apt illustration of something not so constructive in 21st-century politics: polarization, and the increasing tendency of political partisans to divide the world into black-and-white, good-versus-evil teams.
The more that politics gets polarized, needless to say, the less we talk about finding middle ground or brokerage roles for political parties. We also don’t think much about changing minds or opinions.
This phenomenon of polarization and absolutism has, of course, been aided and abetted by the platform that social media provide for anyone with an opinion. Unfiltered and unrestrained by the conventions that sometimes make for balance in the MSM, one can snort and vent and pontificate on virtually any topic, secure in the knowledge that fellow travellers and purveyors of ignorance are but a mouse click away. Affirmation of even the most diseased views readily abound.
Polarized political people don’t debate to persuade the other side; they argue to prove who’s louder or more right.
Delacourt offers a better way, something well-worth consideration:
I was curious to see this week whether anyone did have a change of mind about Khadr after hearing the news of the potential $10-million payout. It seemed like a good case study for where journalism fits when political issues separate the public into sharply, passionately divided camps.
The good news, at least as I see it for my business, is that some journalism did make a difference this week amid the cacophony of opinion about Khadr.
I asked on my Facebook page whether anyone had changed his or her opinion about the settlement — for or against — because of something they’d read or seen in the media.
I got a lot of response: some of it privately, some of it posted on the Facebook page. Some people wanted to vent outrage; others told me that further information really had made a difference.
Generally, the extra information turned opponents of the Khadr settlement into supporters: maybe grudging supporters, but supporters nonetheless.
Some cited the work that’s been done by the Star’s own Michelle Shephard, author of the book on Khadr, Guantanamo’s Child, and part of the journalistic team behind the documentary of the same name.
The director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, Aaron Wudrick, made this telling observation:
Wudrick told me that people’s views seemed to be influenced by which part of the story they were focused on: Khadr’s experience in Afghanistan or his life in prison and the courts afterward.
Delacourt draws a very interesting conclusion from this entire experience:
In all, this small glimpse into a highly polarized debate in Canada this week persuaded me that we political journalists may want to tell more stories about how and when people change their minds. Rather than seeing endless panels on TV, with people expressing their strong opinions on some political development or another, what about having people talking about how their opinions changed?
Yet another example of the vital role conventional media still play in the health of a democracy.
