Now for two months Cannon exiled a Canadian citizen, stating she was an ‘impostor’ (despite having multiple pieces of identification claiming she was who she said she was):

Mohamud, 31, spent a month visiting her mother in Kenya and was on her way back to Canada when an officer stopped her at Nairobi airport May 21, saying she did not look like her four-year-old passport photo.

At the crux of the matter was the size of her lips.

After spending eight days in jail she was released on bail with no travel documents.

Canadian consular officials said she was an “impostor,” voided her passport and sent the case to Kenyan authorities for prosecution.

As Mohamud showed various pieces of ID, volunteered fingerprints and garnered the attention of media across the country, the Canadian government maintained their stance that she was not the citizen she claimed to be.

The above quote is from this CTV article, which reveals that DNA now proves her identity, too.

Will the Canadian government apologize, and swiftly bring this Citizen home to her family? What actions will it take to remedy these grossly negligent acts, and ensure no other Canadian citizens are thus wronged?

I’m not holding my breath for sensible answers. But I have posed these questions to the ‘Honourable’ Cannon himself. You can too:

Hill Office:

House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A6
Tel: (613) 992-5516
Fax: (613) 992-6802
Email: Cannon.L@parl.gc.ca

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Also, this guy is clearly taking the child safety thing a little too seriously:

Officers said the victim was riding with his wife and had his 3-year-old son in a child seat attached to his bicycle when a driver approached him.

Police said the driver, Charles Diez, claimed he was upset that the victim was bike riding with his child on the heavily traveled Tunnel Road.

Diez pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting the victim in his bicycle helmet, according to police.

(via BoingBoing)

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I have found that Canada has engaged in a course of conduct and specific acts that constitute a breach of Mr. Abdelrazik’s right to enter Canada. Specifically, I find:

(i) That CSIS was complicit in the detention of Mr. Abdelrazik by the Sudanese authorities in 2003;
(ii) That by mid 2004 Canadian authorities had determined that they would not take any active steps to assist Mr. Abdelrazik to return to Canada and, in spite of its numerous assurances to the contrary, would consider refusing him an emergency passport if that was required in order to ensure that he could not return to Canada;
(iii) That there is no impediment from the UN Resolution to Mr. Abdelrazik being repatriated to Canada – no permission of a foreign government is required to transit through its airspace – and the respondents’ assertion to the contrary is a part of the conduct engaged in to ensure that Mr. Abdelrazik could not return to Canada; and
(iv) That Canada’s denial of an emergency passport on April 3, 2009, after all of the preconditions for the issuance of an emergency passport previously set by Canada had been met, is a breach of his Charter right to enter Canada, and it has not been shown to be saved under section 1 of the Charter. (68)

I agree with the respondents that a Court should not go further than required when fashioning a remedy for a Charter breach: Doucet-Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education), [2003] 3 S.C.R. 3. In this case, the applicant is entitled to be put back to the place he would have been but for the breach – in Montreal. (68)

The judgment is quite witty and well written. Some of my favourite passages (emphases added):

The memorandum of argument filed by the respondents implies that Mr. Abdelrazik, having voluntarily returned to his country of birth, despite the fact that President Omar al-Bashir remains in power, may be said to be the author of his own misfortune. There is truth in the suggestion that whatever his motivation for returning to Sudan, it was ill-advised; if there was any doubt, subsequent events have proved it. The wisdom or foolishness of his choosing to return to his country of birth is irrelevant to the application before this Court. Charter rights are not dependent on the wisdom of the choices Canadians make, nor their moral character or political beliefs. Foolish persons have no lesser rights under the Charter than those who have made wise choices or are considered to be morally and politically upstanding.

There is no direct evidence before this Court that Mr. Abdelrazik supports, financially or otherwise, is a member of, or follows the principles of Al-Qaida. There is no evidence before this Court as to the basis on which the United States authorities concluded that Mr. Abdelrazik has provided support to Al-Qaida and poses a threat to the security of the United States of America. There is no evidence before this Court nor, as shall be discussed later, that is currently available to Mr. Abdelrazik as to the basis on which the 1267 Committee listed him as an associate of Al-Qaida. The only direct evidence before this Court is in an affidavit filed by Mr. Abdelrazik in which he swears that he has no connection to Al-Qaida.

[A] petitioner seeking de-listing “should provide justification for the de-listing request by describing the basis for this request, including by explaining why he/she no longer meets the criteria described in paragraph 2 of resolution 1617 (2005)…” (emphasis added). Those criteria are the four criteria set out above in paragraph 49. For a person such as Mr. Abdelrazik who asserts that he never met the criteria and was wrongly listed in the first instance, it is difficult to see how he can provide the requested justification, particularly when he has no information as to the basis for the initial listing. Section 7(g)(iii) of the Guidelines further provide that if the request for de-listing is a repeat request and if it does not contain any information additional to that provided in the first request, it is to be returned to the petitioner without consideration. It is difficult to see what information any petitioner could provide to prove a negative, i.e. to prove that he or she is not associated with Al-Qaida. One cannot prove that fairies and goblins do not exist any more than Mr. Abdelrazik or any other person can prove that they are not an Al-Qaida associate. It is a fundamental principle of Canadian and international justice that the accused does not have the burden of proving his innocence, the accuser has the burden of proving guilt. In light of these shortcomings, it is disingenuous of the respondents to submit, as they did, that if he is wrongly listed the remedy is for Mr. Abdelrazik to apply to the 1267 Committee for de-listing and not to engage this Court. The 1267 Committee regime is, as I observed at the hearing, a situation for a listed person not unlike that of Josef K. in Kafka’s The Trial, who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed to him or the reader, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime. [...] I pause to comment that it is frightening to learn that a citizen of this or any other country might find himself on the 1267 Committee list, based only on suspicion.

(So you have to prove when you stopped beating your wife to be removed from the wife-beater list. Wonderful!)

An allegation that Canada was complicit in a foreign nation detaining a Canadian citizen is very serious, particularly when no charges are pending against him and in circumstances where he had previously fled that country as a Convention refugee. However, in my view, the evidence before the Court establishes, on the balance of probabilities, that the recommendation for the detention of Mr. Abdelrazik by Sudan came either directly or indirectly from CSIS. I find, on the balance of probabilities, on the record before the Court, that CSIS was complicit in the initial detention of Mr. Abdelrazik by the Sudanese.

[108] In my view, it is reasonable to conclude from the July 30, 2004 musings of the foreign Affairs official that Canadian authorities did not want Mr. Abdelrazik to return to Canada and they
were prepared to examine avenues that would prevent his return, such as the denial of an emergency passport. That conclusion is further supported by the extraordinary circumstances in which the Minister made the decision on April 3, 2009 to refuse the applicant an emergency passport.

[120] It was Canada’s view that it was illegal under the 1822 Resolution and the laws of Canada to financially assist Mr. Abdelrazik. Canada was also aware that he was impecunious. It is not unreasonable to suggest, as the applicant did, that in adding the condition that the itinerary be a paid one, Canada was ensuring that it would not be called upon to provide the emergency passport. The applicant submits that this added condition is further evidence that Canada never intended to permit him to return to Canada. The weight of the evidence supports that submission.

[127] Further, the respondents’ interpretation of the 1267 travel ban leads to a nonsensical result. According to their interpretation, the Resolution permits a citizen to enter Canada if and only if he happens to be standing at the Canadian border crossing, but it prevents that same citizen from reaching that border crossing as he cannot transit over land or through air to reach it. On the respondents’ interpretation the exemption that provides that no State is obliged to prevent its citizens from entry becomes meaningless as there is virtually no possibility that a listed person will be located at a border crossing and there is no possibility under current technology that he will be able to simply transport himself to the border crossing without transiting over land or through the air. Quite simply that could not have been the intention of the drafters of the Resolution.

(Love the Star Trek / transporter tacit reference there!)

[148] In my view, the submission that the applicant had not been denied entry into Canada by the Government of Canada was not accurate when made 6 days after the Minister had denied the
applicant an emergency passport. Whether or not the Etihad Airways flight scheduled for April 3, 2009 would breach the travel ban set out in the 1822 Resolution, there is no evidence before the Court that had Mr. Abdelrazik been in possession of an emergency passport issued by Canada that he would not have been on that flight and now in Canada. I find that the only reason that Mr. Abdelrazik is not in Canada now is because of the actions of the Minister on April 3, 2009.

[152] I agree with the Court of Appeal. In my view, where a citizen is outside Canada, the Government of Canada has a positive obligation to issue an emergency passport to that citizen to permit him or her to enter Canada; otherwise, the right guaranteed by the Government of Canada in subsection 6(1) of the Charter is illusory.

As I have noted throughout, there is evidence that supports the applicant’s contention that the Government of Canada made a determination in and around the time of the listing by the 1267 Committee that Mr. Abdelrazik would not be permitted to return to Canada. The only legal way to accomplish that objective was by order made pursuant to section 10.1 of the Canadian Passport Order. Rather than instituting that process then, Canada put forward a number of explanations as to why he was not being provided with an emergency passport, only some of which were accurate: he is on a no-fly list and commercial air carriers will not board him; he has secured an itinerary but not paid for the flight; he is listed on the 1267 Committee list and cannot fly in the air space of Member States; and lastly, when he had managed to meet the last condition set by Canada that he have a paid ticket, the refusal is necessary for the national security of Canada or another country. This was an opinion the Minister was to make only after the process prescribed by his own department was followed, giving Mr. Abdelrazik an opportunity to know of and address concerns. Not only was that not done, the Minister waited until the very last minute before the flight was to depart to deny the emergency passport, and although the basis of the refusal is indicated, he provides no explanation of the basis on which that determination was reached, no explanation as to what had changed while Mr. Abdelrazik resided in the Canadian embassy that warranted this sudden finding, and nothing to indicate whether the decision was based on him being a danger to the national security of Canada or on being a danger to another country. [...] In short, the only basis for the denial of the passport was that the Minister had reached this opinion; there has been nothing offered and no attempt made to justify that opinion.

It is simply not sufficient for the Minister to say that he has reached this opinion and “trust me” – he must show more; he must establish that it was “required”. While it is not the function of the judiciary to second guess or to substitute its opinion for that of the Minister, when no basis is provided for the opinion, the Court cannot find that the refusal was required and justified given the significant breach of the Charter that refusing a passport to a Canadian citizen entails. In this case, the refusal of the emergency passport effectively leaves Mr. Abdelrazik as a prisoner in a foreign land, consigned to live the remainder of his life in the Canadian Embassy or leave and risk detention and torture.

My hat’s off to that judge!!

Local Cache: The Abdelrazik Ruling

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“We, as a society, have decided to embrace all fears, and protect against them equally. The issue is twofold: the inability to do reasonable risk assessment on one hand, and the ability to pay for increased levels of vigilance on the other. Where they meet is our current society: people who pay for stuff they don’t need to avoid doing risk assessment, and to avoid upsetting peer standards. The question is, ‘Who benefits?’

Right on! Read the rest.

BTW, Lenore Skenazy’s book Free Range Kids, is available. I’ll have to get a copy myself…

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First, the immigration minister, Jason Kenney, bans a British MP opposed to the war in Afghanistan (and who has some sharp things to say about Israel’s behaviour) from entering Canada on flimsy ‘terror’ accusations.

Now comes the culmination of a Kafkaesque game being played on Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik by Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon and his higher-ups.

Abdelrazik, as some may know, was accused by RCMP/CSIS of some sort of terror charge after the Bush administration put him on a terror watch list. As a result, when he visited his ailing mother in Sudan, he was detained there and tortured, his passport revoked. Now that even the Sudanese have no crime with which to charge him, and RCMP/CSIS have cleared him, he would like to come home to his family.

Unfortunately, Harper’s cronies will have none of it. They will not charge him with anything, but are refusing to issue him a passport by setting arbitrary and difficult beurocratic hoops for him to jump through. First, our Government stated they would issue a passport if Abdelrazik obtained a reservation on an airline, in spite of his name being on a US no-fly list. He did that. The government then shifted the goalposts, asking for a fully-paid ticket from a destitute man taking shelter in their own embassy, being sure to highlight in the same breath that any Canadian who gives him money will be a Terrorist by association (even though Abdelrazik has been officially accused, much less convicted, of nothing).

Well, he managed that. The new rule set out by Lawrence Cannon? Abdelrazik was given a few days to get his name off the no-fly list, a feat the Canadian government was unable to accomplish.

The bottom line of this scenario, is that the government is refusing to issue a passport to one of its citizens for no legal reason. It seems his only crimes are being brown and Muslim.

Makes me wonder, can I trust my government to help me if I go abroad and something happens? After all, I don’t have an English-sounding name, and while I am Caucasian, I don’t share the religion of those in power. What recourse would I have in Abdelrazik’s situation? What could you, dear reader, do, in his shoes?

(local cache Globe Article: Globe – Abdelrazik Can’t Come Home)

(via Dawg’s Blog)

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Two hundred schoolchildren in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are “vulnerable” to Islamic radicalisation.

[...]

The programme, run by the Association of Chief Police Officers, asks teachers, parents and other community figures to be vigilant for signs that may indicate an attraction to extreme views or susceptibility to being “groomed” by radicalisers. Sir Norman, whose force covers the area in which all four 7 July 2005 bombers grew up, said: “What will often manifest itself is what might be regarded as racism and the adoption of bad attitudes towards ‘the West’.

(via BoingBoing)

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My 10-year-old son wanted the chance to walk from our house to soccer practice behind an elementary school about 1/3 mile from our house. He had walked in our neighborhood a number of times with the family and we have driven the route to practice who knows how many times. It was broad daylight – 5:00 pm. I had to be at the field myself 15 minutes after practice started, so I gave him my cell phone and told him I would be there to check that he made it and sent him off. He got 3 blocks and a police car intercepted him.

[...] They then found me at the soccer field and proceeded to tell me how I could be charged with child endangerment. They said they had gotten “hundreds” of calls to 911 about him walking.

Don’t cops have better things to do? Like, you know, catch real criminals?

From the same blog, another interesting story/comparison, Are We Overprotecting Our Kids to Death?:

The point is to contrast two scenes. The first, in town: A Mexican boy of about 8, sweeping his home. Not its floor. Its roof. With no guardrails.

Scene two, at the resort: Our own boys, 10 and 12, renting snorkeling gear: Mask, flippers, life jacket.

[...]

Do children really need all this protection? It’s hard to say no, when all around us are the means to prevent our kids from encountering even the least likely catastrophe.

But the parents of the Mexican boy sweeping the railing-free roof are protecting their child another way – protecting him from feeling helpless and timid. Deliberately or not, they are raising a child who is confident in a scary place, or, if not confident, then at least forced to be brave, which is how confidence grows. He also looked pretty cheerful. And he’s good with a broom.

That does raise the question, which is worse, the really, really, low risk of various physical threats, or the ubiquitous low self esteem, lack of initiative and resourcefulness that seems to be more and more prevalent?

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Notwithstanding one weird and horrifying murder aboard a prairie Greyhound bus last week, this editorial board refuses to be part of the great chain of hysteria that links hyperventilating news consumers, fear-mongering TV producers and pandering politicians. Here is our suggestion for what ought to be done to upgrade the security of bus transportation after the knife killing of Tim McLean by a fellow Greyhound bus passenger: nothing. Leave the system alone. Mr. McLean could have been murdered equally easily by a random psychopath in a movie theatre or a classroom or a wine bar or a shopping mall — or on his front lawn, for that matter. Unless all of those venues, too, are to be included in the new post-Portage la Prairie security crackdown, singling out buses makes no sense.

We propose a fundamental principle to be observed at the outset of this debate: Let’s not try to protect ourselves from crazy people by trying to out-crazy them. (How much happier the world would be now if a few more voices had said so after 9/11.)

Finally, some people with sense! (via Bruce Schneier)

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A quick regurgitation of interesting linkage that I may or may not talk about more in coming posts:

• Bruce Schneier highlights some wonderful satire from The Onion. While looking at those, I ran across this other one: New Wearable Feedbags let Americans Eat More, Move Less. Aaaah… the Onion. Nothing else quite like it!
• With shades of A Clockwork Orange, Dan Geer poses some questions in a talk (via Bruce Schneier):
  

  … How much security do we want?
  A world without failure is a world without freedom. A world without the possibility of sin is a world without the possibility of righteousness. A world without the possibility of crime is a world where you cannot prove you are not a criminal. A technology that can give you everything you want is a technology that can take away everything that you have. At some point, real soon now, some of us security geeks will have to say that there comes a point at which safety is not safe.

  Reading the rest of his talk [Local Cache] (also available as a video) highlights many, many other interesting issues. With some evolution thrown in! Well worth the time, IMHO…

• Crossing borders at the US – and with ACTA in the works, likely worldwide – is inviting every Joe Blow border guard to snoop on your private data on the computer. Here’s some advice on securing your data. I like TrueCrypt, myself.
  This is all the more relevant now that official documents have been released that say the border guards can confiscate your electronic devices (and papers, books, etc), keep them for as long as they want, and share the information with anyone they want. (via BoingBoing)
  Guess I won’t be going to that fascist state any time soon…
• And a cost-benefit analysis of “The War on Terror” – entitled “The Quixotic Quest for Invulnerability: Assessing the Costs, Benefits, and Probabilities of Protecting the Homeland”. Says basically what many have been saying – preventing terrorism is costly and the cost of that in fear and civil liberties is too high. (via Bruce Schneier)
• Don’t Talk to The Police (and Part 2) – Google Videos of a presentation on why you should never, ever, talk to the police when they “just want to ask you a few questions”. Via Bruce Schneier, with interesting commentary at his blog.

… and I have a lot more, but I’ll save it for another post. Or ten.

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On second thought, considering the sheer idiocy of the CYA attitude in administrations far and wide in this country, it’s really not that unbelievable.

As discussed widely on the web, some poor mother was scared out of her wits and subjected to a CAS investigation because a teaching aide working with her autistic daughter got a tip that she was being sexually abused. Where did this come from? A psychic she visited!

The school administration took this as ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect child abuse and ran with it to CAS. Luckily, the child in question had a GPS device with audio recording capability to prove she’d never been assaulted.

But, a psychic?! Those charlatans? Come on now, they may be fun in a fair, but an allegation of child abuse is no laughing matter. Why hasn’t this psychic been hunted down? (Obviously the school administration is more to blame here, but still, ‘for entertainment purposes only’ disclaimers – whether explicit or tacit – shoudl only go so far).

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