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Lots of ink is being spilled about Omar Khadr after the announcement of the Trudeau government's decision to settle the court case for 10.5 million dollars.  Across the country, the subject polarizes public opinion, media pundits and the political class.  Call-in shows are being flooded by angry voters.  And, a rare occasion, this issue resonates in both English Canada and Quebec.

The Conservatives and their allies are having a field day on social media, using hard-hitting language against the "new multi-millionaire terrorist" getting a "secret deal".   The Khadr case is extremely complex and it is easy to dismiss the legalistic arguments by playing on peoples' fears and emotions.

The Trudeau Liberals have not helped their case by the way they managed the file.  This was all done in secret, around the 150th festivities while Justin Trudeau was travelling far away in Ireland and then in Germany for the G-20.  Omar Khadr has been suing the Canadian government since 2013 for $20 million and Ottawa has already spent $5 million of taxpayers' money on legal fees.  After all of this, the government finally concluded that it would lose the case at the end of the day.

By settling now, the Liberal government is therefore saving at least $5 million.  But why didn't the government come to this conclusion from the start?  For starters, there is no way the Harper government would have not fought this tooth and nail to the end of time.  Some Conservatives are even suggesting that, in the case of a favorable ruling towards Khadr, they would have ignored the court and refused to pay.  Think about that for a minute.  This is the law and order Conservatives openly suggesting a rejection of the rule of law.

The Trudeau government could however have come to this conclusion sooner.  But they didn't.  They waited for the dog days of summer to leak the story, no doubt hoping the story would evaporate under the hard July sun.  They felt more backlash than they expected however, and sent Ralph Goodale and Jody Wilson-Raybould to hold a Friday afternoon damage-control news conference.  Goodale clumsily proceeded to blame the Harper Conservatives for the whole mess, conveniently ignoring that it was Jean Chrétien's government that first abandoned Omar Khadr and that Paul Martin's government continued to ignore him, thus failing in their responsibility towards a Canadian citizen.

Also troubling is the speed at which the cheque was cut and cashed, as the government appears to want to circumvent a concurrent legal fight put before the Ontario Superior court by the widow of Sergeant First Class Christopher James Speer.

The Liberals calculated that politically, it was probably better to do it this way than, say, having Justin Trudeau stand in Parliament to publicly announce the government was giving millions to someone most Canadians have little sympathy for.  That would have required political courage, the capacity to explain oneself with openness and transparency.  Trudeau's advisors certainly did not want him standing up in the House of Commons to respond to the inevitable barrage of questions that would have followed, giving much exposure to new Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer.

The Conservatives are going to try to keep this issue going all summer long and will try to pick it up again once Parliament in back.  The first 2019 attack ads are already being written.

The facts of the case are irrelevant.  Is Khadr the one who threw the grenade that killed Sergeant Speer in 2002?  Most assume so.  After all, he pleaded guilty, we are reminded all the time.  That he did so after being imprisoned and tortured doesn't seem to matter.  Nor does the fact he was a 15-year-old child at the time.  Or that he was transplanted to Pakistan and totally brainwashed by his fanatic family.  He killed a Special Delta Force medic after being injured and after everybody around him had been killed, but he should have known better.  Good 15-year-olds don't kill medics, only terrorists do.

None of this should matter.  What happened on the battlefield should be irrelevant.  Because despite the rhetoric, there is no denying that the government of Canada failed to live up to its obligations towards Omar Khadr during his detention at Guantanamo Bay.  Two Supreme Court rulings have found it was the case.  The rights of a Canadian citizen have been violated and, when this happens, there are very serious and sometimes costly consequences.  The point is, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to everyone.  It needs to be applied even more strictly to the bad guys than the good guys.  And by forgetting or ignoring this very fundamental fact, the Chrétien, Martin and Harper governments led to this outrageous payment.  The outrage, however, will be felt by the Prime Minister who had the least to do with Omar Khadr's rights being violated.

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