Governments don’t make confessed killers rich without a reason. By failing to provide one, Trudeau leaves himself open to the suspicion that he sides with Khadr's sympathizers

The Liberal government’s decision to pay Omar Khadr $10.5 million was a political choice and until the government offers a coherent explanation—why now? why so much?—it deserves the skepticism and suspicion it’s received.

Until last week, Khadr’s $20 million lawsuit against the Canadian government had been proceeding slowly along the long path to judicial resolution—a path it’d been on for more than a decade. There was no court order requiring payment and the government could have continued defending the claim for years to come. That’s why reports of a sudden settlement caught everyone by surprise.

Distroscale

Everyone, that is, except the prime minister. Asked about the $10.5 million payout during his visit to Ireland, Trudeau made it sound as inevitable and ineluctable as the turning of the tides: “We are anticipating,” he said, “like I think a number of people are, that that judicial process is coming to its conclusion.”

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Trudeau made the payout sound as inevitable and ineluctable as the turning of the tides

Of course he was anticipating it. Despite the passive detachment of his answer, the payout was the prime minister’s decision.He would have approved the settlement, either expressly or tacitly, and certainly could have stopped it. The Attorney General doesn’t settle a high profile and politically incendiary case without signal checking with the PMO.

In the absence of any explanation from the government, media outlets filled the vacuum. Most justifications have focused on the 2008 and 2010 decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, which held that Canadian officials had been to some degree complicit in the mistreatment of Khadr when they visited him in Guantanamo Bay in 2003 and 2004. A CBC headline summarized this defence succinctly: “Why will Omar Khadr receive $10.5M? Because the Supreme Court ruled his rights were violated.”

Well, no, that’s not how civil lawsuits work. The Supreme Court said nothing about financial compensation. The furthest the Supreme Court ever went was to hold that “the appropriate remedy is to declare that, on the record before the Court, Canada infringed Mr. Khadr’s s. 7 rights, and to leave it to the government to decide how best to respond to this judgment.”

Photo by Tom Hanson / Canadian Press

At the time, the specific remedy Khadr sought was repatriation, which the government of the day duly granted. That government believed that Canada had satisfied any outstanding obligations to Khadr when it brought him home to serve the rest of his custodial sentence in Canada. If Khadr was owed further compensation at all, it was from the Americans and not Canadian taxpayers.

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Khadr’s best case for a further remedy was to prove in court that Canada had conspired with the Americans in his alleged mistreatment and that we are therefore liable along with them. He has not done this.

It is quite possible that Trudeau was advised by the Attorney General that, given the risk of a higher ultimate judgment and the costs of continued litigation, a $10.5 million settlement was as good as the government could hope for. If so, Trudeau could have just said that. Many Canadians might still object to the settlement on principle, or believe the government caved prematurely, but at least it would be an explanation.

Other commentators have defended the settlement by comparing it to the case of Maher Arar, to whom Canada apologized and paid $10.5 million in 2007. But the two cases are fundamentally different; if anything, the comparison raises questions about the size of the Khadr settlement.

Governments don't make confessed killers rich without a reason

In Arar’s case, a formal Commission of Inquiry found that Arar had been deported to Syria, where he was tortured, as a direct result of faulty information provided to the United States by the RCMP. Specifically, the inquiry found that “[t]he RCMP provided American authorities with information about Mr. Arar that was inaccurate, portrayed him in an unfairly negative fashion and overstated his importance in the RCMP investigation.”

In Khadr’s case, by contrast, Canada played no part in his capture in Afghanistan or his subsequent alleged mistreatment in Guantanamo Bay. Canada’s responsibility is at best attenuated and our liability far from clear, yet we are paying him the same sum as Arar, $10.5 million.

Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Governments don’t make confessed killers rich without a reason. By failing to provide one, Trudeau leaves himself open to the suspicion that he privately sides with those credulous Khadr sympathizers who accept his most lurid allegations of mistreatment while dismissing the inconvenient facts of his conviction, confession and apparently sincere apology to Sgt. Speer’s widow.

Until Trudeau provides a better explanation and makes clear his positions on Khadr’s guilt and Canada’s responsibility, it’s a reasonable suspicion.

National Post