“Omar Khadr’s rights as a Canadian and as a child were not respected. He was abandoned in his Guantanamo cell by the Harper Conservatives. He was not treated in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. His repatriation comes too late, but it is nonetheless welcomed,” said Elizabeth May, Green Party of Canada Leader and MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

Khadr has spent nearly a decade in Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He is the first person since the Second World War to be prosecuted in a military Tribunal for war crimes committed while still a minor. He was convicted, after confessing under torture, and remained there even though he was to be returned to Canada to serve out the rest of his prison term.

Joe Foster, Human Rights Critic for the Green Party of Canada, questioned, ”How can we, as Canadians, stand by when our values for justice and human rights have been violated? Can we allow our feeling towards the Khadr family prejudice our sense of what is fundamentally right?”

The 2012 Green Party Convention during its policy deliberations stated: “We will require that any evidence gained by illegal or unlawful means, including by torture, shall not be admissible in either open or closed court hearings.”

The post Khadr Repatriated But Far Too Late appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Elizabeth May: Madam Speaker, in the context of his very helpful comments about Bill C-30, I ask the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis about the following.

I put it to him that in the last number of years we have seen a sequence of decisions that have undermined the charter, the rule of law and respect for these institutions, beginning with the elimination of the Law Reform Commission, including the elimination of the court challenges program, as well as the government’s ignoring of the decision of the courts relating to the charter rights of Omar Khadr.

In that context, I wonder if we are seeing, as this opposition motion seems to suggest, a lack of understanding of the critical importance of the charter in our daily lives.

Francis Scarpaleggia: Madam Speaker, that is an interesting comment and it may be very true.

Canadians look to the government for guidance on issues and to reaffirm values such as those in the charter. Yet we see the government not being enthusiastic about supporting the charter or the rule of law. For example, we saw the Minister of Public Safety, I think for the third time in six weeks, being told by the court that he was wrong in refusing a prisoner transfer. In fact, he had no legal basis for making his decision.

Therefore, when we have a minister of the crown constantly forcing the courts to override him, that leaves a question in the minds of many Canadians as to whether our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is indeed sacrosanct.

The post Opposition Motion—Charter of Rights and Freedoms appeared first on Elizabeth May.