MONTREAL—Canada’s position on human rights issues is becoming harder and harder to predict, says Amnesty International’s newly appointed boss.

Salil Shetty said Monday that Canada is now taking drastically different positions in areas such as torture and the death penalty where it has traditionally been progressive.

“Generally speaking if you talk to most Canadians, there’s a big gap between what they believe Canada does and what the reality is in terms of government policy and actions,” Shetty said in an interview.

“It’s a G8 country, it’s a major world power and it has produced so many leaders on these issues, so it has (had) a trendsetting or agenda-setting role.”

Amnesty’s new secretary general said it’s hard to know where Canada stands on many issues.

“You could predict where Canada stood on many of the issues in the past and now you can’t be sure,” Shetty said before delivering a speech at the CIVICUS World Assembly, a gathering of civil society groups.

Shetty said Ottawa’s refusal to repatriate Canadian Omar Khadr is just one example of the shift in Ottawa’s policies.

Amnesty International has been outspoken in its support of Khadr, who is facing murder and terrorism conspiracy charges.

Shetty claims the case is a messy one: an unjustified arrest of a child soldier, an unfair trial and an unlawful detention.

With Khadr’s war-crimes case on hold for at least 30 days due to a lawyer’s illness, there’s a window of opportunity for the federal government to intervene, Shetty said.

“This is a golden opportunity for the Canadian government to do the right thing,” Shetty said.

“We haven’t seen them take as much initiative as they should have.”

Shetty also cited the rhetoric surrounding the recent arrival in Canada of Tamils aboard a ship along the B.C. coast, where the government has “human smugglers, terrorists, everything mixed up in one.”

That said, he applauded Canada’s initial efforts to process the 492 Tamils, but the optics and messages have served to paint all Tamils with the same “terrorist” brush.

“It’s completely fair for people to be cautious but to start creating an atmosphere of fear, that prejudices the whole process,” he said.

“Let’s not confuse issues and muddy the waters before they start.”

Shetty said a lack of access to information as well as crackdowns on dissent — such as the G20 protests in Toronto — only serve to add to that feeling of “non-transparency.”

“There’s a feeling there’s a real change for the worse in terms of the human rights approach of the Canadian government,” Shetty said.

“We expect more from Canada, rightly or wrongly.”

Shetty says Canada’s unwillingness to sign on to certain UN conventions such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — is another example.

“These are the sorts of things where Canada used to be first,” Shetty said.

Shetty began his new Amnesty job last month and comes as the non-governmental organization celebrates its 50th anniversary next year.