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But was Khadr, who, at last report, appears to be living a blameless and uneventful life in Edmonton, one of the worst criminals?

He was a child soldier, a teenager who was dropped by his truly monstrous father into the middle of a war zone. There’s no direct evidence he killed anyone, beyond an arguably coerced confession. But even if Khadr were the killer Stubbs claimed, at the time he was taken into U.S. military custody he was a minor and a Canadian citizen. He was entitled to every legal protection Canada could provide him. And indeed, Canadian courts subsequently found that Canada had fallen well short in that regard. Norris did nothing ethically questionable in taking his case.

Photo by Colin Perkel / The Canadian Press, nat_prod, nat_staging

But Stubbs knows that. She knows perfectly well that what she’s saying is provocative nonsense, with a pinch of xenophobia thrown in. Certainly, she has to remember how another Alberta politician, Stockwell Day, was sued for defamation after attacking the ethics of a defence lawyer who represented a client on child pornography charges.

So why is Stubbs digging up a tired February “outrage” — the appointment of a Toronto lawyer to the bench — and trying to make hay with it now?

Is she worried she’s getting less media attention than some of her more flamboyant Conservative colleagues? Is Andrew Scheer’s caucus engaged in some kind of summertime competition with MPs and senators egging each other on to say things that are more and more outrageous? It’s as though Conservative MPs are all squeaking away in a dog-whistle chorus, each trying to squeak more shrilly than the next. It’s trite Trump Lite politics. And Canadians deserve better.

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