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Canadian PM Caves In to Bush

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:

What Bush gave, through a letter from his Secretary of State Colin Powell to Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham, was an "understanding."

Not a treaty, not a binding covenant — not even a legal promise. As Powell's letter spells out, the "understanding" creates no new legal obligation for either Canada or the U.S. and certainly confers no new rights for private citizens like Arar.

It just says the U.S. will let us know, and even talk to us, before shipping another Canadian off to be tortured. But Powell's letter makes it clear that Washington continues to reserve the right to deport Canadian citizens anywhere it pleases.

[link via Damned Foreigner who is continuing to stay on top of the Maher case on an almost daily basis.]

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