Wild About Writing

Before the ink has dried on the Harper government’s bill to allow victims of terrorism to sue their attackers and the governments that have supported them, our own Federal Court has ruled that the Canadian government has created its own victim of terrorism.

In a stunning ruling, Judge Russell Zinn has found that Ottawa deprived Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen enjoying sanctuary in the Canadian Embassy in the Sudan, of his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedom.

It did this by refusing to issue him a passport to return home, supposedly on national security grounds. Yet both CSIS and the RCMP say they have nothing on him.

Said Judge Zinn:

He (Mr. Abdelkrazik)  is as much a victim of international terrorism as the innocent persons whose lives have been taken by recent barbaric acts of terrorists.

There’s delicious irony in the fact that this ruling comes only days after introduction of the bill to allow lawsuits against terrorists. I’m convinced the bill is a meaningless ploy. There’s no practical rationale for it.

Under amendments to the State Immunity Act announced by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, victims would be able to sue individuals and organizations that commit acts of terrorism, as well as governments that support them.

It is retroactive to 1985, presumably to cover the Air India bombing as well as the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

But is there any real prospect of Osama bin Laden’s henchmen ever being hauled before a Canadian court? If they were, would they show up? If they did, would they pay up?

The bill will allow lawsuits against foreign governments that are on an official Ottawa list as supporting terrorism. The list doesn’t yet exist. This provision has been put in to prevent suits against friendly governments, such as the United States.

So what governments is Ottawa likely to put on it’s “go ahead and sue” list?

Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism (Columbia University Press) deals at length with the topic of rogue states that support terrorism.

The Taliban? They’re not a real government. Pakistan? A friendly ally. China? Not a chance. North Korea? Their terrorism is directed mainly at their own people. Hamas and the Gaza Strip? A sure way to help derail the Midweast peace process. Iran? Perhaps the one country that’s supporting anti-Jewish, anti-Western terrorism. But how would putting Iran on a new “axis of evil” list contribute to Barack Obama’s goal of meaningful dialogue with that country?

No, it’s just political hogwash — a meaningless gesture by the Harperites to curry favor from afflicted voters, knowing full well that nothing will ever come of it.

 Meanwhile, Ottawa has 30 days to bring Mr. Abdelrazik home.

The chatter over Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt’s forgotten “secret” papers — left by an aide in an Ottawa TV studio — obscures a much bigger problem in her department.

The Opposition has been doing its best to fry Ms. Rait, the attractive Tory newcomer from Halton, Ontario, over the forgotten documents. They’re demanding her resignation. Prime Minister Harper won’t have any of it. An aide made the mistake, not her, and she’s been let go.

It’s a good political tactic to insist that a minister be responsible for everything that happens on her watch. But this is a minor gaffe, and the demand that she quit is nothing more than political theatre.

Worse, it takes the spotlight off the real failure in her department over the breakdown of the nuclear reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada. The world depends on AECL’s Chalk River facility for 30 per cent of the isotopes needed in nuclear medicine.

Right now, patients are starting to lose out on vital life-giving diagnosis and treatment of cancers.

The problem’s been around for years. The Harper government has been singularly ineffective in dealing with it.

Mr. Harper fired the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Linda Keen, because she wanted to shut down the reactor for safety repairs. He called her a biased Liberal hack.

Now that the reactor has had to cease operations because of a heavy water leak, she’s been vindicated

First word was that it would be running again in a month. But now AECL officials say the shut-down could last much longer.

Experts say the problem goes back to the cancellation a year ago of a project to build a new reactor, called the Maples. The core of the proposed reactor was found to have fatal design flaws

A solution has been advanced by the U.S. National Research Council. Its advice: use a different kind of core that doesn’t rely on highly enriched uranium.

Minister Raitt’s missing papers, their contents since revealed by CTV, show that $351 million has been spent at Chalk River this year alone. Since 2006, the Conservatives have spent $1.7 billion in total on the troubled plant, incuding other functions besides the isotope reactor.

For all this money, we still don’t have a solution in a field of medical science where Canada has been a world leader. That’s the real scandal.