The more Prime Minister Justin Trudeau argues he had no choice but to give Omar Khadr $10.5 million of taxpayers’ money and an apology, the less convincing he sounds.

Let’s look at the facts, as opposed to Trudeau’s rhetoric it could have cost the government up to $40 million had Khadr’s $20 million civil suit gone to trial.

The Supreme Court of Canada found in 2010 that the Jean Chretien and Paul Martin governments violated Khadr’s Charter rights in 2003 and 2004 by having CSIS and foreign affairs officials question him in Guantanamo Bay and give the information to the Americans.

This without Khadr, a youth, having legal counsel and knowing he had been subjected to sleep deprivation.

The fact remains Canada was a minor player in the Khadr case.

The major player was the United States.

It captured Khadr in Afghanistan following his 2002 firefight with American soldiers in which Sgt. Christopher Speer, a medic, was killed, and Sgt. Layne Morris was blinded in one eye, by a hand grenade.

It imprisoned Khadr in Guantanamo.

It set the terms of his captivity and the legal process under which he was tried.

Canada isn’t liable for what the U.S. did.

Its responsibility only relates to how much it additionally harmed Khadr, by questioning him in Guantanamo.

As for the argument Khadr was brainwashed by his father and was not acting of his own free will when, at the age of 15, he engaged in a firefight with U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Canada isn’t responsible for that, either.

Our government had nothing to do with Khadr’s radicalization inside what one of his own brothers described as an “al-Qaida family”.

It was Ahmed Said Khadr, Omar Khadr’s father, a confidante of Osama bin Laden, who sent his son off for weapons training in Pakistan under the Taliban and al-Qaida.

This after Khadr’s father was released from prison in Pakistan in 1996, where he was under arrest in connection with the bombing of the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad.

That happened after then PM Chretien appealed to Pakistan president Benazir Bhutto that the elder Khadr be treated fairly.

Finally, Khadr was repatriated to Canada in 2012, under the Stephen Harper government, after he agreed to a 2010 plea deal to serve one-year of an eight-year sentence in the U.S. and the rest in Canada.

This was just two years after the Supreme Court had ruled his rights had been violated by the Chretien and Martin governments.

That’s lightning fast in legal time, especially since the Supreme Court had overturned lower court rulings that the Harper government had to try to repatriate Khadr.

Three years later, in 2015, Khadr was paroled (prior to the end of his sentence in 2018), all factors the Canadian government could have cited in defending against Khadr’s lawsuit.

It’s likely the government would have been found liable for some damages given the 2010 Supreme Court ruling it violated Khadr’s Charter rights.

But Trudeau’s argument that the cost, had he chosen to defend Khadr’s suit, would have been more than $10.5 million and up to $40 million -- and that it had already cost the government $5 million -- appear to be numbers pulled from a hat, without supporting documentation.

Finally, as many Canadians -- 71% of whom oppose the Khadr deal -- have said, they believe Trudeau should have defended Khadr’s civil suit on principle, whatever the court’s ruling.

Exactly.