OTTAWA — The constitution does not give convicted Canadian citizens an automatic right to re-enter the country to finish serving jail time here, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Thursday.

Although the Charter of Rights guarantees all citizens mobility rights — or the right to enter and leave the country — the country’s top court concluded the federal government may legally refuse prison transfer requests by those seeking to leave foreign jails.

The case sets out for the first time the high court’s view of mobility rights in the context of international prison transfers.

It was a victory for the federal government, which has since further broadened its ability to turn down such requests.

The ruling was unanimous 9-0 in concluding the Conservative government acted lawfully in 2006 when it refused to accept the transfer of a Montreal drug dealer Pierino Divito. But the judges split in their reasons.

All judges gave a broad backing to the right of a Canadian citizen to enter and to remain in Canada as a “fundamental right associated with citizenship. Without the ability to enter one’s country of citizenship, the ‘right to have rights’ within that country cannot be fully exercised.”

Yet Justice Rosalie Abella, writing with five judges, said the prison transfer law does not breach the Charter or Rights and Freedoms’ guarantee of mobility rights in section 6.

She traced mobility rights back to the “cataclysmic rights violations of WWII,” and said the freedom of movement of citizens is among the “most cherished rights” of citizenship.

But international prison transfer agreements merely allow consenting states to return prisoners to their home to complete jail terms near family and support networks, said Abella. They do not confer on citizens “an automatic right to serve a foreign prison sentence in Canada if the foreign state consents,” Abella wrote, and there is no “obligation on Canada to administer the sentences imposed upon Canadian citizens by foreign jurisdictions.”

Abella said in each case ministerial discretion to refuse transfers for reasons of public safety or national security must be exercised “reasonably” — but the government’s reasoning was not challenged in Divitos’s case; only the overall constitutionality of the law was at issue.

Justice Louis LeBel, writing for three judges, said the prison transfer law does breach mobility rights of citizens, yet is a reasonable and justifiable limit on the freedom of movement of a convicted prisoner, allowed under s. 1 of the Charter.

“Ensuring the security of Canada and the prevention of offences related to terrorism and organized crime are pressing and substantial objectives,” that the law properly addresses, according to LeBel, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and the retiring Morris Fish.

In reality, the ruling was moot for Divito, the big-time drug dealer who brought the constitutional challenge. He had already finished his sentence in the U.S. But it has implications for future jailed Canadians abroad.

Divito, born in Italy in 1937, immigrated to Canada when he was 16, and became a Canadian citizen in his forties, in 1980. Long before that, he began racking up convictions in Canada for drug offences and organized crime.

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In 1995, in one of the country’s biggest drug busts, Divito was convicted of conspiring to import and traffic more than 5,400 kg of cocaine in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

In June 2005, after serving almost two-thirds of his Canadian sentence, Divito was extradited to the United States where he pleaded guilty in Florida to a conspiracy to possess more than 300 kg of cocaine with the intent to traffic.

In March 2006, he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. In sentencing Divito, the American court took his Canadian sentence into account and gave him credit for 145 months of time served. He applied in December 2006 to serve the rest of his sentence in Canada and was twice turned down as a danger to public safety here. When he finally completed his sentence in the U.S. he returned to Canada. He was rearrested here and has since completed the balance of the Canadian sentence as well.

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney posted his reaction to the judgment on his Twitter account saying: “We are pleased w/ the decision of the SCC. Cdns' safety is paramount in determining the intl transfer of offenders.”