Sometimes I fear Canada is becoming a sap of a country.

Then I remind myself that qualities of fairness and compassion are precisely what makes us a beloved, envied nation.

But there are occasions when the brightest minds — by which I mean individuals who sit on our court benches — get it dreadfully wrong.

As Ontario Superior Court Justice Shaun O’Brien did last year, rewarding the widow of a notorious — and deported — Palestinian terrorist an insurance claim on her dead husband’s life.

Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad was a member of the Lebanon-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. On Dec. 26, 1968, he and another man stormed an El Al passenger plane as it prepared to take off after a layover in Athens. Dashing out of the transit lounge, Mohammad sprayed the aircraft with a submachine-gun while his accomplice threw half a dozen hand grenades. A 50-year-old man was killed and two passengers injured, including a woman who leapt from the plane when the door was opened.

The assailants were arrested by Greek authorities who said later the men intended to destroy the jet and murder all the Israeli passengers aboard. Mohammad was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Four months later, however, another PFLB terrorist cell hijacked a Greek plane, demanding Mohammad’s release. Which he was given.

After bouncing around the Middle East and Spain, Mohammad entered Canada illegally in 1987 with his wife and three children, failing to disclose that he’d been convicted of a terrorist crime. Yet Mohammad applied for and was given a social insurance number. It would take Canada 26 years to successfully expel him, as Mohammad exploited all the interminable legal avenues available, including applying (and being rejected) for refugee status. Mohammad argued he would be vulnerable to assassination if returned to Lebanon. An adjudicator ruled Mohammad had been granted permanent residency status on the basis of misrepresentation of material facts.

The case, which cost taxpayers millions of dollars, exposed flaws in Canada’s immigration system and would be cited as an example of this country’s inability to control its borders.

Mohammad died in Lebanon of lung cancer in 2015.

But Mohammad, who’d been living in Brantford, Ont., had taken out a life insurance policy, with his wife as sole beneficiary, in 1987, using that fraudulently obtained SIN. When his widow, Fadia, submitted the claim — $75,768.78 owed, all required premiums had been paid — Manufacturers Life Insurance Company balked on the grounds Mohammad had lied about his past when the policy was purchased.

The wrangle ended up in court, naturally.

The policy, underwritten by North American Life Insurance Company, had passed to Manufacturers, which argued that Mohammed had “fraudulently misrepresented his status as a legal citizen or legal permanent resident in Canada” by providing a false SIN on the application form, contrary to “good faith duty.” Yet the form, which contained a long list of questions, did not explicitly ask about citizenship or immigration status. It provided only a box for the SIN, which Mohammad filled in.

The lower court judge, O’Brien, did not accept that Mohammad misrepresented his status by entering his SIN. North American didn’t ask, Mohammad didn’t tell.

“I do not accept that, in providing his SIN, Mohammad misrepresented his immigration status,” wrote O’Brien. “Mohammad did not provide his SIN as proof of anything, nor in response to a question. He wrote it in the space provided because he was asked to do so.”

Further, O’Brien added, under immigration law an individual can be considered a lawful permanent resident even if the permanent residency is later revoked. Indeed, Mohammad continued to receive Canada Pension Plan contribution referencing his SIN long after the federal government had begun deportation proceedings against him.

O’Brien ruled against Manufacturers, ordering them to pay Mohammad’s widow the entire amount plus $9,500 in legal costs.

The ruling was preposterous. Mohammad was a known terrorist, convicted of manslaughter, who’d slipped into the country under false pretenses and ginned the system for a quarter-century to thwart extradition.

“I was a freedom fighter — not a terrorist,” Mohammad, who was born in Palestine in 1943, told the Star in 2008. “I was fighting Israel, the enemy of (my people).”

That’s a justification for violence that has resonated among Israel-loathers through the decades. In many quarters it still does, with proposals for Palestinian statehood repeatedly rejected while an issue that once seized the public fades from interest.

Last week, Ontario’s Court of Appeal reversed the lower court decision, siding with Manufacturers because Mohammad had lied about his past and that falsehood was indeed relevant.

“In our view, the motion judge made a palpable and overriding error in finding that the deceased’s failure to reveal his past activities did not constitute a failure to reveal material facts that violated the policy,” the appeal judges wrote.

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Further: “It is clear to us that the deceased intentionally hid his past activities from the appellant (the insurer), just as he hid them from the Government of Canada when sought entry to this country.”

The appeal was allowed and the previous judgment set aside, replaced with a substitute judgment dismissing the action by Fadia Mohammad.

It’s difficult to cheer for an insurance company. But in this case: Rah-rah-rah.