Intent For A Nation: What is Canada For. Michael Byers
on arbitrary arrest or detention set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and numerous multilateral treaties. In September 2006, after months of denials, George W. Bush finally admitted the existence of the secret prisons—and declared that they had been closed.
At the same time, the Post reported that “CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA’s approved ‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,’ some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention [on torture] and by U.S. military law.” The techniques include “waterboarding,” whereby a detainee is repeatedly submerged under water and made to believe that he or she will be drowned. In October 2006, a radio interviewer asked U.S. vice president Dick Cheney: “Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?” The vice president replied, “Well, it’s a no-brainer for me.”
Unfortunately, it appears that there has been a degree of Canadian complicity in the practice of extraordinary rendition, above and beyond the Arar affair. In December 2005, it was reported that seven airplanes linked to the CIA had recently used Canadian airports more than fifty-five times, including for refuelling stops in Newfoundland and Nunavut. Many more CIA flights have presumably crossed Canadian airspace, given that the shortest flight lines from the United States to Europe or the Middle East cross this country’s vast territory.
When asked about the matter, then prime minister Paul Martin said that he had “checked with the deputy prime minister, checked with the officials in charge, and there are absolutely no indications that anything of that kind is occurring.” For her part, the then deputy prime minister, Anne McLellan, said she was investigating the questionable flights. But she also asked for patience: “We are now in the process of following up on what we know about any of those, but as you can imagine, 55, it takes time to determine whether there’s anything unusual in relation to any of those named flights.”
It is likely that Martin and McLellan were simply trying to punt an embarrassing story past the federal election campaign that was then taking place. But it is also possible that they or their officials knew—or chose not to know—that the CIA flights were occurring, and that individuals on board were being involuntarily transferred to secret prisons or foreign intelligence agencies notorious for torture. If so, the politicians’ evasive language could be rooted in concern for their personal responsibility, not just under Canadian law, but also in foreign courts or even the International Criminal Court. For such actions would, again, constitute complicity in torture. Now that Martin and McLellan have ceased to be ministers and no longer benefit from the immunities attached to high office, they might think about avoiding foreign travel, at least to human-rights-respecting states.
I do not want to overstate the legal situation; these are only possibilities. At the same time, it is disturbing that such possibilities have been allowed to arise. There were—and still are—two simple and entirely appropriate responses to the U.S. practice of using extraordinary rendition and secret prisons: refusing to share intelligence that might be used for such purposes, and denying CIA planes permission to use Canadian airports or airspace until the matter has been properly investigated and resolved.
STANDING UP FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
There is no question that Canadians abhor torture. The deliberate infliction of severe pain and suffering is a particularly heinous crime. Indeed, the prohibition on torture, along with other fundamental human rights and rules of international humanitarian law, was established by a generation that knew all about pain and suffering. They had lived through two world wars, the rise and fall of fascism in Germany, Italy and Japan, and the Holocaust. Their commitment to preventing human suffering finds expression in the first three stanzas of the UN Charter of 1945:
We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained…
Today, one of the key questions facing Canadians concerns whether we still stand by that commitment, at a time when our superpower neighbour has been torturing people and outsourcing torture to other states. Was our commitment to prevent human suffering meant only for good times, not for those times when the going gets rough?
In December 2004, George W. Bush visited Ottawa and Halifax. Shortly afterwards, I had the opportunity to chat with a senior Canadian bureaucrat who had been involved in the trip.
“In his private meetings with the president, did Paul Martin raise the issue of torture and extraordinary rendition?” I asked.
“Are you kidding?” my contact laughed. “With 86 per cent of our exports going to the United States?”
I had heard the argument before, usually coupled with an assertion that the Americans will do what they want regardless of what we say. In the upper levels of the federal bureaucracy, it has become fashionable to be “realistic” about Canada’s inferiority vis-à-vis the United States. Yet fashion can get in the way of careful thinking—thinking that constantly re-evaluates its assumptions and analyses recent developments, such as Canada’s decision to stay out of the 2003 Iraq War. Personally, I am not convinced that Canada has much to lose by opposing those U.S. policies that diverge significantly from international opinion and violate international law. Indeed, we might have something to gain.
Canada is an influential country. Our influence is augmented by our middle-power tradition of multilateral leadership, which has always included promoting peace, defending human rights and championing international humanitarian law. Moreover, when we stand up to the United States, we rarely incur a penalty. We only gained by staying out of the Iraq War: saving Canadian lives, avoiding the ensuing quagmire and signalling to other countries that Canada remains an independent country—open, among other things, to its own diplomatic and trading relations. We might even have gained some kudos in Washington—a city dominated by bare-knuckle politics rather than quiet, Canadian-style consensus—by demonstrating that Canada is a grown-up country, that our support must be earned and never assumed.
When it comes to fundamental human protections, the recent pattern of law breaking by the United States creates an opportunity for Canada. For decades, Americans provided global leadership with regard to human rights and international humanitarian law. Since September 2001, they have abdicated that role, leaving space for an experienced, well-minded middle power such as Canada. But if we are to lead the way on this or any other international issue, it is essential that we remain on our best behaviour and not let standards slip in the way they have next door.
Finally, Canada’s record on human rights and international humanitarian law matters because we are a democracy. If our soldiers and politicians are complicit in torture, we, in a sense, are all torturers. Human rights require constant vigilance to defend against those who seek to violate or undermine them, or who simply take the easy way out by acquiescing to violations committed by others. Democracy, the most reliable mechanism for maintaining individual human rights, and the very essence of our society, also requires constant defending. At root, our respect for human rights and international humanitarian law should not be based on our relationship with the United States. It should be determined by who we—as Canadians—are, and what we intend to be.
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Afghanistan, Mission Impossible
APHOTOGRAPH of Canadian commandos shepherding Afghan prisoners out of a helicopter appeared on the front page of the Globe and Mail on January