Get ready to write a lot of cheques.

According to Global Affairs Canada, there are over 1,400 Canadians imprisoned in other countries, many victims of mistreatment by foreign governments.

If the Trudeau Liberals feel the need to compensate every one of them as they have war criminal Omar Khadr, Canadian taxpayers could be on the hook for $15 billion.

Just to handle all the paperwork, they’ll probably need a new ministry – Apologies Canada.

Of course, I’m being facetious.

The Trudeau government isn’t going to compensate most (any?) of the others as it has compensated Khadr.

They aren’t even trying very hard to get most of the others released.

So why the Trudeauites’ fixation with Khadr?

First, “progressives” love nothing more than to show off their political correctness, again and again.

In Khadr, the Liberals see the chance to show they are so tolerant they are even willing to kowtow to a Muslim with a terrorism conviction.

How very open-minded (and how out-of-touch with ordinary Canadians).

Regarding a settlement with Omar Khadr - the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians. There is no picking and choosing. pic.twitter.com/UNv6E5qGUp — Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) July 8, 2017

The Khadr case also permits them to assert their moral superiority over the Americans, not to mention poking the former Harper government in the eye.

But mostly, I think Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brains trust truly believed the $10.5 million payout to Khadr would be politically popular, that most Canadians would share their view that here was a poor, young man, an unwitting participant in the Afghanistan war, and a victim of America’s post-9/11 pre-occupation with homeland security.

They believed we would all line up behind the notion that Khadr’s settlement proves Canada is a tolerant, compassionate country.

(It’s the same thinking behind their rush to admit Syrian refugees without proper security screening and to leave our borders open to anyone willing to sneak across.)

However, polls show even Liberal voters strongly oppose this settlement.

Seventy-one per cent of Canadians surveyed oppose Khadr’s cash prize, according to Angus Reid polling, including 61% of Liberals. Just 29% of Canadians approve.

In this way, the Khadr case resembles that of U.S. infantryman Bowe Bergdahl.

After allegedly deserting his post in 2009, Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban and held for five years in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In 2014, then U.S. president Barack Obama traded five senior terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl.

He and his aides clearly believed bringing home an American PoW would make the president a hero.

Instead, they were taken aback by the outrage of citizens, including Democrats, over trading terrorists for an alleged deserter.

Justin Trudeau and his minions were likely shocked, too, that their Khadr settlement was widely unpopular.

It is so unfair compared to others’ treatment.

The Canadian government dismissed Capt. Robert Semrau from the army in 2010 for shooting a horribly wounded insurgent in Afghanistan, to put the enemy out of his obvious misery. Semrau’s conduct was labelled “disgraceful.”

Khadr confessed to killing a U.S. special forces medic (a confession he later disavowed), and rather than brand his actions as “disgraceful,” the Trudeau government gives him a $10.5-million bonus.

Most Canadians in jail abroad are there for drug or other criminal offences, but Amnesty International says several are political prisoners, subjected to torture.

Most of those being tortured were arrested for being champions of democracy or human rights, or because they were Christian missionaries.

They were not fighters for al-Qaida, as Khadr was.

The Trudeau government has its sensibilities and priorities screwed on backwards.