TML: I'm not advocating a 'canadian style' medical system for the US. I do think all Americans should have access to medical service but I also think it has to be an 'american' solution. My point was some democrats 'say' they want a single payer system and they bemoan the fact that the military is anti-Democratic, pro-Republican. My suggestion was a way to combine these two issues. While I have some reservations about the universality of american health care I don't think canadian health care is 'better' just a little more egalitarian.

I found the answer to my question about the lack of criminal charges against Abdurahman Khadr. His admitted training took place in '98 and C-36 isn't retroactive.

Kevin: You may not find this to be an "embarrassment", but I'll explain why the federal government shouldn't feel the same way. Abdurahman's father, Ahmed Saeed Khadr, and his mother, Maha Elsamnah, are alleged to have created charitable organizations in Canada to funnel money to terrorists, starting in 1990. Ahmed ends up in a Pakistani prison because he was the financier for a suicide bombing in 1995 that killed 17 people at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad (presumably using tax-deductible donations from Canada). Our PM, until this Friday, gets Ahmed released when he visits Pakistan in 1996 (Couldn't do anything for Bill Sampson and Maher Arar, but I digress). Abdurahman's mother and sister are currently living in Pakistan, and are having problems with the Canadian Passport Office, apparently they have been requesting replacement passports a little too frequently. No one is quite sure where Abdurahman's father and older brother, Abdullah, are today, some reports have them killed in a battle with American troops at some point in time in Afghanistan, or they may be hiding in Pakistan right now. Abdullah is alleged to have been the commander of an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, and father Ahmed is sought after by the Americans, presumably so they can interrogate "the highest ranking Canadian in Al Qaeda." Not to forget Abdurahman's baby brother, Omar, who is still being held in Guantanamo Bay, and who allegedly killed a U.S. medic who was tending to Omar's wounds from a battle with American troops in Afghanistan. Still not embarrassed?

Charles: I'm not arguing that C-36 is a good piece of legislation, it is definitely flawed, but I think it is a serious problem if the government hasn't the slightest intention of taking action against terrorism. Hell, Chretien even signed a UN accord prior to 9/11 that Canada would take measures to fight global terrorism. The three year review of C-36 will come up in about 12 months, but so far not one charge has been laid under this legislation, so I suspect the next step is to simply let a parliamentary committee kill the bill by never completing the review. The part of the criminal code that deals with treason doesn't cover stateless terrorist groups at all, so unless a terrorist attacks the Queen, a Canadian soldier or an RCMP officer, there is very little Canadian courts can do about Canadians involved in terrorism outside our borders. This is our national security that these elected twits are fiddling with; they have spent billions to improve our security, and have nothing to show for it.

I find it interesting that Abdurahman's lawyer has quit . This is purely unsubstantiated conjecture, but it seems to me that lawyers like Rocco Galati make a career out of quickly jumping in to represent newsworthy clients, and claiming government prosecution, even before any charges have been laid, in order to get first dibs on a Legal Aid contract, or some other government handout that is available to protect the very same people the government is supposedly persecuting. As soon as there is no money to made, the press conference chasers quit the case. There is a lawyer, whose name escapes me, who had a real good racket going with a number of First Nations groups. Wherever there was a standoff with police, this lawyer was there to make sure it got maximum exposure. Indian bands and various aboriginal NGO's may not have money for housing or sewers, but they always have money for lawyers.

Ok Bruce I'll concede the point. But I'd feel a whole lot better if I knew who paid for the study.

Rick, Kevin hits closest to the answer.It's the politics of ethnicity and religion. Ottawa passed C-36 in the veritable blink of an eye, because of the accusation (propaganda?) that Canada's liberal immigration policies were soft on terror. After 9/11 the border was closed and Cellucci was relentlessly echoing the message from Washington.

Abdurahman was sent to Afghanistan, like Arar to Syria, because he was no threat to the US and Ottawa didn't want him. C-36 is basically an internment plan for Muslims. Internment and closed borders is, historically, a Liberal legacy. Remember, Japanese camps and none is too many. Or Laurier's shift from Sifton to Mowat to effectively align Canadian immigration policy along racial lines.

Effectively, C-36,like the notwithstanding clause is a paper tiger, enacted to appease. Beyond that was C-36 really necessary to address the terrorist threat? It argueably is the most draconian piece of legislation Canada has ever past.

cynical joe - Your embedded assumption about universal, govt. provided care is that it would actually work. Maybe the reason they don't take this obvious road is that the underlyng program actually doesn't work.

The different (and superior) demographics of the population of Canada are going to give different results than the US. The US population has worse habits, much more varied genetics, and just scales larger than Canada and most of the other existing 'working' universal healthcare systems.

Cecil Turner - Ok, full pie in the sky dreamer time. We're off to 2020 land. A massive 2nd space elevator for bulk cargo has just been built and orbital cost just sunk from $10k/lb (pre first elevator) to $200/lb (after 1st elevator) to $100/lb. Why not loft tanks in orbit with something like this or this for a quick return to a hotspot anywhere on the planet. Yes, you too can have 100 tanks parked at any commercial airport in your country in a matter of hours. The concept does seem to make security planning for tyrants somewhat difficult.

This stuff is obviously expensive and supply will have to be by air at first which will not be cheap either. The question is does this buy you enough either in military capability or at the diplomatic bargaining table to be worth the ungodly expense? It's the Diego Garcia depot in orbit, essentially.

There's nothing stopping you from doing this today but the eye-popping cost figures. Radical changes in lift changes a lot of things, military included.

RGlasel-

Perhaps the reason authorities have not rushed to charge Abdurahman is that it's unwarranted. Perhaps the facts of the case don't support it. Perhaps the Canadian government predicts a public backlash if the broad club of C-36 was exposed to scrutiny in the public media?

Unless you have more information than I do neither of us has enough information to reach a conclusion as to his guilt or innocence or the merits of his incarceration.

It seems reasonable, since he admitted it, that he took weapons
training. That in itself is insufficient and, as a sole criteria, would lead to the arrest of a huge proportion of immigrants. I don't know that the place he took weapons training was 'operated by a
terrorist group'. The wording I recall was 'associated with', or some other equally vague words.

I, personally, don't find him a "huge embarrassment" nor do I think he should be "removed" for personal associations or being imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.

It's possible I am just poorly informed in this case but are there any facts to support charging him? Is there some level of proof that he is a terrorist? What level of confidence is required before he can be charged ( reason to believe, or probable cause )?

--
KevinG

Re: Defence procurement/Martin's vision of foreign policy

Defence procurement, like any government procurement, has always been the other white meat, and not just in Canada. The flap about the Boeing plane leasing deal in the US shows how pork-y defense spending can be over there. (Though you could argue that since the US devotes greater resources to defence, it can afford to waste more supporting the economy of Alabama.)

As far Canadian humility, you won't see any of that under Martin. He is a big time internationalist and he has virtually no domestic policy interests (other than Parliamentary reform, and that nebulous 'urban agenda').

Chretien really didn't care about the rest of the world, and made international committments only when those committment would play well back home. Martin only cares about the rest of the world, and may go so far as to make committments that are relatively unpopular with Canadians. If the Canadian Forces are pissed about overcommittment now, they ain't seen nothing yet.

I'm guessing because he would have been a minor at the time of the offense, Rick. The intersection of the Young Offenders Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act has to be murky at best. I'm sure they've looked at it and figured that after two years in Guantanamo, he'd never get more than "time served" anyway.

Charles: By avoiding parts of due process in Guantanamo Bay, the Americans have the luxury of evicting prisoners whenever they like, and they get to drop them off wherever they like. Sending Abdurahman to Afghanistan suggests the Americans may have wanted to trail him, to see if he searched for his father, who is definitely a person of interest to the Americans. Now that Abdurahman is back in Canada, after going on a tour of Pakistan, Turkey and Bosnia, presumably there is no longer a reason to track his movements, so why not charge him, and hopefully incarcerate him for a few more years?

I really don't understand why the Canadian government doesn't remove a huge embarrassment and charge him under C-36. The section I quoted goes on to include training at a facility operated by a terrorist group as an indictable offense, even if the terrorist group doesn't actually commit any acts of terrorism. C-36 looks like a pretty formidable piece of legislation to me, so why not use it?

I am reading "Understanding Canadian Defense". Some of it takes serious concentration to figure out. (I like Flit-sized chunks of info.) And then some things just strike you so. Like the idea of having the world's second biggest army.

Chas., please could you just read the book before passing your judgment? (ex-Col.) Brian Macdonald, who I know personally, is in no one's pocket, and the report has very harsh words for the way Canadian defence procurement has been used for regional development purposes in this country.

I'm so sick and tired of people like our former PM yammering on about how anyone who thinks seriously about military issues in this country must therefore be on the take. Trust me, their facts are correct and their basic numbers all are roughly what I'd have said, too. And hopefully you don't think I'm shilling for an arms manufacturer.

Angua, if this country can go through Sept. 11 without increasing its military budget, then it will go through just about anything. We've already had the last Prime Minister make lavish promises of support (Congo, Israel) and retracting after being told the cupboard was bare. No one really cared.

I've never been wholly convinced that we should spend more, actually... the $12B scenario I outlined would allow us to live within our means, avoid any disasters costing soldiers' lives due to neglect, and the sun would still rise the next day.

What drives soldiers nuts is the constant screwing around at high levels, the putting off of any uncomfortable or costly decision as long as possible... the Sea King saga being the classic example.

To answer your question, historically, the deciding factor in military reform has been a PM with a strong defence policy vision. Trudeau had one, much as soldiers hated it, but he did enact profound change. Mulroney's, which involved throwing money at the regions through the defence budget, was also a vision of a sort. Chretien has never had one... despite combat activity on his watch greater than at any time since Korea; that's why we're drifting now. Martin's a one-termer, so I don't expect anything great coming down in his time in, either.

I hope there are still national ambitions out there that Canadians would ascribe value to, and open their pocketbooks for. But in the absence of one, maybe the best thing is to bring spending in line with what Canadians think the military's really worth to them. And, unfortunately, I believe that, in dollars, that's roughly where we are now. All these pretensions of playing some greater role in the world are what's distorting the organization and wasting money. We're a little country, of minor significance; maybe it's time we stopped preaching to Americans to show more humility, and show a little ourselves.

BruceR: What would it take to get Canadians to take defense or the military seriously? I am not being rhetorial. It seems to me that a couple of extra billion is not that huge in context. Most taxpayers wouldn't notice it. (Hey, I'd pay double.)

So -- what? A Prime Minister saying "We would like to send soldiers to conflict A (say Afghanistan, something most Canadians supported), but we can't"? (Is there a Prime Minister willing to say that?) A threat of an invasion from the US ("It's all about the water!")? The Spanish attacking some Newfie fishers? A natural disaster of note?

Edited by author 12-05-2003 12:38 AM
If that was the case Rick, why did the Americans release him?

I am surprised no one in this forum has said much about Abdurahman Khadr, who has now returned to Canada after being evicted from Guantanamo Bay. I finally dug into C-36, our anti-terrorism act which obtained royal assent in 2001, and for the life of me I can't understand why this particular member of the Khadr clan hasn't been charged under Section 83.18 which states: "(1) Every one who knowingly participates in or contributes to, directly or indirectly, any activity of a terrorist group for the purpose of enhancing the ability of any terrorist group to facilitate or carry out a terrorist activity is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years."

Subsequent subsections provide a couple of different ways that Mr. Khadr's admission that he spent time at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan should get him into a court of law. Any ideas why he hasn't been charged?

TML:

Not sure where you're going with the cost thing. Much of the cost is sunk cost anyway (i.e., the aircraft and pilots are already paid for). Strategic planners generally don't worry about cost (though obviously the bean counters do).

The real problem with 100 tanks from the North is that you'd have to trade off 100 plane loads of supplies from CONUS (and it's actually much worse than that, since you have to supply each tank once it arrives). Normally the heavy stuff goes by ship and the time critical stuff goes by air. (And personnel by chartered airliner.) So you're trading a couple hundred flights of various critical supplies--and usually we don't have that sort of excess capacity.

I could never understand why Democrats don't use the military to get 'single payer' health care into the US. My suggestion is that Democrats define whatever level of care they want to be standard under a universal system, and make it available to all serving members of the US military. Then expand it to reserves and then to all veterans. This way has the advantage of helping military members and their families and making them less hostile to democrats, showing the country that universal coverage is desirable, leaving the republicans to either fight it and split off a sizeable military vote, or make an even sweeter offer to keep the military vote in the republican stable.