By Monia Mazigh – So it is official: the emails of Hilary Clinton started flowing in the public arena. Today, the Globe and Mail reported the content of some of these emails and the discovery is shocking. Well not really! Shameful to be accurate!

Many human rights groups and activists knew that the Canadian government was preventing Omar Khadr from being repatriated to Canada but it was not known that the Americans at some point were very enthusiastic and excited about his return to Canada. One of the US officials, the State Department legal adviser, Harod Koh, exclaimed:

“So glad we got this done”. “After spending the last 10 years on GTMO (Guantanamo), at least this young man finally has another chance.”

This is in total contradiction with what Canadian officials tried so hard to make us believe. For instance compare that American reaction to the Canadian Justice Minister Vic Toews’s at the time Omar Khadr was brought back to Canada:

“I don’t agree he was a child soldier in the sense that he was somehow misled… the evidence is very clear. He was a convicted murderer, he’s a terrorist and that’s the basis I brought him back on.”

Even if it was the US officials who, at first instance, arrested Omar Khadr in Afghanistan, kept him in Bagram Base and later transferred him to Guantanamo, the Canadian position was never clear or principled. First the Canadian officials went to interrogate him, trying to “bribe” him to speak out with a burger in a Guantanamo room. Then the politicians, first under the liberal government and later under the conservative, have refused flatly to repatriate him. Canada became the only western country that didn’t repatriate its own citizen.

On March 24, 2012, The New York Times reported on the continued delays in Khadr’s repatriation, attributing them to the Canadian government. The petition initiated by Senator Dallaire gathered 35,000 signatures. Khadr was transferred into Canadian custody on September 29, 2012 to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada. Corrections Canada repeatedly refused to let journalists interview Khadr in prison. Toews justified this by claiming an interview could interfere with Khadr’s treatment plan, pose a security risk, or be otherwise disruptive.

Then former Prime Minister Stephen Harper kept launching one legal battle after another trying to keep Omar Khadr in prison and wishing him to be tried as an adult as opposed to a teenager, which he was at the time of his arrest.

So the question today is: why this vindictive attitude to prevent a child soldier from getting a “second chance”? Was Canada trying to please its US ally, even though they didn’t want Omar Khadr in Guantanamo prison anymore, or were they rather trying to please their political base and reinforcing their law and order agenda at the expense of Omar Khadr?

Today, Omar Khadr is a free man studying at university and trying to get that “second chance”. Meanwhile Vic Toews and Stephen Harper were never held accountable for their actions of political interference and perhaps obstructing or delaying the process of Khadr’s repatriation.

They should be held accountable. Canadians have the right to get answers!

By Monia Mazigh – The recent appeal by Bob Paulson the RCMP commissioner to the Canadian public about the urgent need to have warrantless access to our communication is worrisome for multiple reasons.

Fighting cybercrime is crucial as well as fighting all other forms of crimes but that never be done at the expense of our privacy rights. The excuses of fighting the horrible perpetrators of child pornography for instance cannot be used as a pretext, no matter how noble and genuine the reason is, to collect data on Internet users.

The climate of fear and uncertainty that followed the Paris attack shouldn’t be used as a carte blanche to ask the population for a warrantless access to their phones.

Most importantly, we have to refresh our memories here and remember that Canada has already many legal (frankly controversial) tools to fight what Mr. Paulson seems to be incapable of fighting.

Indeed since 2009, the Canadian government paired Bills C-46 and C-47 (two bills that previously didn’t pass) and tried to introduce them in Parliament. Both bills were intended to extend lawful access provisions and create warrantless police access to many aspects of Internet communications such as subscriber data. But that attempt failed.

In 2012, the government tried another time with Bill C-30. It claimed that this bill was intended to fight child pornographers. In reality, this bill again would allow Internet companies to give your name, Internet protocol address and a few other identifiers if the police asked for them, even without a warrant. Also this legislation would allow the government to facilitate centralized, wiretap-style surveillance.

At that time, Canada Justice Minister, Vic Toews, sparked a huge outcry with Bill C-30. In fact, he tried to use the controversial argument of: “you are either with us or with the child pornography supporters”. A huge public backlash ensued and the bill failed.

Finally, in 2014, the government came with Bill C-13: Protecting Canadians from Online Crime. The government introduced this legislation to fight cyberbullying. However, this new legislation does include provisions that permit an increased warrantless access to personal information and increase police spying power for our online activities. The official opposition at that time moved to split the Conservative cyberbullying bill (C-13) in order to put the focus squarely on legislative reform to make the distribution of intimate images without consent illegal. This would have ensured that other unrelated provisions were dealt with separately. But that last proposal didn’t pass and Bill C-13 became law with the support of the Liberals.

Mr. Paulson appeared to wonder why the public doesn’t trust the police. An easy answer is to look at all the errors the police committed in the past and the lack of accountability.

A way to increase or re-establish the trust with the police forces is to implement strong accountability mechanisms and not by asking for more warrantless additional powers that would open the door wide open to likely abuses and less trust.

Critical areas where the Canadian government needs to demonstrate commitment to upholding human rights in national security policies and activities were outlined today in a report on the anniversary of the October 2014 “Arar +10” conference.

Convened at the University of Ottawa on October 29, 2014 by Amnesty International and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, along with the university’s Human Rights Research and Education Centre and Centre for International Policy Studies, “Arar +10” reviewed the state of national security and human rights in Canada a decade after a public inquiry was established to investigate the rendition to Syria and torture of Canadian citizen Maher Arar.

From a range of panels key recommendations emerged.

• National security policy, law and practice must meet Canada’s international human rights obligations.

• Redress, including an apology and compensation, should be provided to Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abou-Elmaati, Muayyed Nureddin, Abousfian Abdelrazik, Benamar Benatta and Omar Khadr.

• Increased review and oversight of national security activities is required and legislation should promote integration among review bodies. Robust parliamentary oversight is a necessity.

• Ensuring due process for individuals suspected of being threats to national security prompted a number of recommendations. These included refraining from extending a class privilege over CSIS human informants, eliminating the restrictions on communication about confidential evidence between individuals named in security certificates and special advocates, and repealing the revocation of citizenship powers under the Citizenship Act.

• In the area of immigration, measures need to be taken to ensure that individuals appearing before the Immigration Division of the Immigration and Refugee Board know and are able to meet the case against them.

• The pervasive problem of exclusion, stereotyping and scapegoating of Canadian Muslims needs to be addressed by, among other things, encouraging and multiplying the joint efforts of diverse actors from different sectors of society, notably community leaders and organizations.

• Ensuring rigorous corroboration of information leaked to the media before it is made public, with ethics counsellors providing advice to reporters if there is any uncertainty about publication, as irresponsible and inaccurate reporting on national security activities can have a negative impact on individuals and human rights.

The conference’s recommendations are particularly timely as the new federal government prepares to introduce legal and other reforms reversing or revising national security and citizenship laws and practices.

Read the full report here.

Watch all the videos of the conference.

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