The Toronto Star justly takes new Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin to task for his kow-towing to Bush in the wake of the Maher Arar affair:

When he became prime minister, he vowed, a Maher Arar scenario — where a Canadian citizen changing planes in New York was arrested, detained by U.S. authorities and deported to Syria to be tortured for a year — would never happen again.

"It's very, very important that the Canadian passport be respected and that effectively, Canadian citizens when they find themselves in this kind of difficulty, that if they're going to be sent home, they should be sent home to Canada," Martin said six weeks ago.

He called it "simply unacceptable" that the U.S. would deport a Canadian citizen to a third country and hinted broadly that if the Americans didn't come around, the Canadian government might have to rethink the practice of sharing security information with Washington.

Martin and Bush met yesterday in Mexico. Martin came away with far less than an agreement. He got bupkis-- a letter containing zero assurances: