A Last Chance To Do Right Thing For Abdelrazik

A federal judge today ruled that the government’s refusal to hand Sudanese-Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik proper documentation to return home is a violation of his constitutional rights, and has given the government 30 days to bring him back. This is the strongest rebuke of the government yet, in dealing with the man who is stranded in the Canadian consulate in Sudan:

“The refusal of the emergency passport effectively leaves Mr. Abdelrazik as a prisoner in a foreign land, consigned to live the remainder of his life in the Canadian Embassy or leave and risk detention and torture, wrote Justice Russel Zinn.

The father of three has been confined to the embassy in Khartoum for more than a year, saying he fears he will be captured and tortured if he ventures outside.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, under pressure from his political opponents in the House of Commons to end the “national disgrace” of refusing to help Abdelrazik, would not commit to his immediate return.

Nicholson hinted that the government could appeal the decision, saying he will seek legal advice from his officials.

“After we’ve had a chance to review the advice of the Department of Justice, we’ll take action,” he said.

The mystery of why Mr.Abdelrazik is not being issued a passport remains one that only the federal government seems to understand. I already wrote in detail before, on the history of why he is not considered a threat to Canada, and also why there is no compelling reason not to issue his documentation to return. In early May, government documents obtained under the freedom to information Act showed that Mr.Abdelrazik was originally imprisoned by Sudanese authorities at the request of unidentified Canadian intelligence officials.

Unfortunately for the general public, information on the affair is very hard to come by indeed. In a briefing to former Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier in early 2008, the entire eight-page report was blacked out, including the page numbers. It seems even more odd that the Conservative government seems to be obfuscating here, when the incident that led to the arrest and detainment at the request of Canadian authorities came during a time of Liberal governance. What the current government seems to know about reasons why Mr.Abdelrazik can’t return, it isn’t saying. And a federal court doesn’t agree with what it is saying.

Canada had always said that Abfousian Abdelrazik needed to get his name removed by a U.N. no-fly list in order to return to Canada, but even the United Nations has said that it would not apply to a Canadian government returning one of it’s citizens; indeed the British government has already done so with one of it’s own citizens – a convicted terrorist, unlike Mr.Abdelrazik who has never been charged with anything. The RCMP and CSIS have also now fully cleared him from any ties to terrorism. The Canadian government also reneged on their own promise that he could return if he bought a plane ticket, but they refused to give him proper documentation when private citizens did just that on his behalf. And finally, even Sudan offered to fly him home on their own aircraft, but again, the government refused.

Now the federal court has taken the bold step of asserting full power over the repatriation of Abousfian Abdelrazik, and has demanded the government show proof within 15 days that it has made arrangements to bring him home within 30 days. Mr.Abdelrazik has been ordered to appear in court in Montreal on July 7.

The federal justice, Russel Zinn, also denounced the United Nations “no-fly list” [which has still not removed Mr.Abdelrazik from the list], as being untenable because it puts the burden of innocence on the accused, a backwards logic of conventional law:

“One cannot prove that fairies and goblins do not exist any more than Mr. Abdelrazik or any other person can prove that they are not an al-Qaida associate,” wrote Zinn.

As for our government, if they fail to return Mr.Abdelrazik by the appointed date, they are truly asking to lose the confidence of many Canadians who expect them to uphold the rule of law. Unless the Foreign Minister or the government can release information that would suggest that they know something different than our own intelligence and police networks that have already exculpated him of any associations with terrorism, the government is obliged by the constitution to repatriate a Canadian citizen trapped overseas. Any delays is surely only increasing the size of both the inevitable apology, and the obligatory out-of-court settlement.

Statistics Canada Shows Positive Indicators, But From Two Years Ago

Poverty reduction in all categories was progressively reduced under a Conservative government in 2006 and 2007, according to Stats Canada.

StatsCanada has just released the survey information for 2007 that explores labour and income dynamics in all the provinces for approximately 30,000 families. The sample examines the income of unattached individuals and families, providing analysis of any income inequality on the basis of after-tax earnings. What’s interesting about this survey is that it shows an improvement in income and wealth while under the new Conservative government.

Median after-tax income for families with two or more people rose by 3.7% in 2007, with significant growth observed in seven provinces. For unattached individuals it rose 3.9%. Average annual growth of median after-tax income for families was up by 1.8% since 2002, with unattached individuals up by 1.4%. This means that income growth in 2007 was more than double the median growth in the previous four years.

But what’s important to note about this is that market income, the sum of employment earnings, investments, and savings, was the main factor behind that increase. The crash in 2008 and 2009 will likely send these numbers diving down. Median market income rose 3% in 2007 for families, and a whopping 6.7% for unattached individuals.

The big news in the change in taxes, with average families paying 6.5% less taxes than in 2006. Unattached individuals remained at the status quo. The average Canadian paid $16.70 in taxes for every $100 of income, down from $17.10 the previous year. This show that the Conservatives did cut taxes in a meaningful way for Canadians.

Low-income Canadians were reduced by 400,000 in 2007, the lowest low-income rate since records started being kept in 1976. Children in low-income [low-income is calculated by Stats Canada by the percentage of after-tax income spent on food, shelter and clothing] families were also reduced by 100,000, dropping the child poverty rate to 9.5% in 2007, down by almost half of the peak of 18% in 1996.

As for the old “the poor get poorer, and the rich get richer” saying, that did not happen in 2007. The 20% of the richest families had, on average, 5.4 times the after-tax income of the bottom 20% of families in 2007. It was 5.6 times in 2000.

All of this shows very positive economic indicators across the board in terms of wealth accumulation, and poverty reduction. This actually looks very good for the current government, struggling with a brand new $54 billion deficit recession monkey on it’s back. Perhaps this information will be of some benefit to the Conservative Party in some way, but unfortunately the good things accomplished in the first year in government will be overshadowed by the looming tidal wave of debt. The 2008 and 2009 income survey should be very interesting to read when they come out eventually.

How Fiscally Conservative Can You Be?

There’s a very cool interactive “budget balancer” for California’s massive $24 billion debt. The only solutions are either cutting spending or increasing taxes. You get many options from each category, but as a Canadian you may find it difficult to approve cuts to education, health care, or services. My selections:

K-14 funds: Cut $5.3 billion
Welfare: Cut $1.3 billion
Illegal immigrants: Cut $180 million
Offshore drilling: Add $100 million
Eliminate State boards: Cut $50 million
Increase smoking taxes: Add $1.2 billion
5 cent increase alcohol: Add $585 million

To be honest, that’s all I really wanted to cut and I still end up $15.3 billion in the red and that’s including raising taxes. So I need to cut deeper.

Close community college system: $4.6 billion
State universities lose subsidies: $1.5 billion

That leaves me $9.2 billion in the red, with the only real options being to raise taxes somewhere else, or broaden the sales tax. You can also get nearly a billion by going after Big Oil pumping in the state.

How about you? Can you get to a balanced budget? List your results in the comments below.

Afghanistan: An Update

Soldiers of the 2 R22eR Battle Group return from a foot patrol of surrounding villages conducted to secure the area during the tear down of Strong Point Mushan. Photo credit: Master Corporal Jonathan Johansen

I had to curtail my daily reports on Afghanistan, mainly because it was very time-consuming and difficult to keep abreast of information, but also because there are so many websites that already do a much better job in getting to new information quicker than I do. There is some interesting news around the horn today, however, and I thought I’d add my thoughts.

Stockwell Day, who chairs the cabinet committee on Afghanistan, has brought forth the government’s fourth quarterly report on our involvement in the NATO mission. The quarter period covers January to March of 2009, so it’s all very recent and important information.

The bad news is that it marks the fourth quarter of increased violence in the country, with this past winter being the most violent since the Taliban fell to the Northern Alliance in 2001. Canada’s Kandahar mission is still very dangerous, with ten Canadian soldiers falling in duty.

The good news is that as Canadians train the Afghan Army, there has been an increased presence of domestic security there. We have achieved progress toward our priority objectives there, by balancing security and counter-insurgency warfare with reconstruction. Justice officials such as prosecutors, judges, lawyers, police and corrections officers also completed criminal law workshops to strengthen the rule of law there. Canadians assisted in the building of two more schools in the quarter. We also helped to vaccinate more than 350,000 children in Kandahar from polio.

In summary, there appears to be progress in Afghanistan, but it is one that is developing very slowly. The main challenge is to get the Afghan Army trained to the point where they can be responsible for their own security. The advantage for our side is that we can impart not only superior military training to the Army, but develop elite tactical forces. At Firebase Thomas in western Afghanistan, U.S. Army Special Forces [Green Berets] are training the 6th Battalion of the 207th Corps, the elite fighters of the Afghan army.

Meanwhile, far from the “sandbox” of Kandahar, another struggle is taking place at home. Two great reads, one involving the military bureaucracy “killing” Forces morale, and another of a symbolic act of returning a war medal to protest mistreatment of veterans. In either case, the real culprit appears to be governmental interference, the former being one that has attempted to make the military too “politically correct”, and the latter about the taxman “clawing back” money from disabled veterans on disability and pensions. While the current government wants to improve our standing Army to 70,000, the attrition rate has reached nearly 10%, and articles like these hint at the reasons.