As you folks know, Senator Pat Leahy grilled US Atty-General Alberto Gonzales over the Maher Ahar affair - the Syrian-Canadian engineer who was renditioned to Syria and tortured and kept over there for a year on mistaken information Canadian security agents gave to the US, before it was determined that he was not an Al Queada agent and released. A Canadian hearing ruled Ahar was innocent of those charges.
Gonzales claimed to Leahy and to Public Security Minister Stockwell Day that independent information the US has still justified keeping Ahar on the US no-fly list. Day publicly disputed that, saying the info we've seen doesn't justify it. So, I guess Bush decided to order his attack dog up here, Ambassador David Wilkins to publicly tell Day to stop being so uppity about this.
Understand this: It would take a lot for me to defend someone like Minister Day, who I don’t even think should be in Cabinet, but David Wilkins, the Ambassador to Canada for the US, has managed to get me to do so. Even though the Conservative government is about as close to the George Bush Administration on most positions foreign-policy wise and on ideology as is possible, even that doesn’t prevent the US from telling Day to stop being uppity and to shut up over Maher Arar:
U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins on Wednesday criticized Ottawa’s efforts to have Maher Arar removed from a United States security watch list, saying the U.S. alone will decide who to let into the country...Wilkins warned Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to back off, because a U.S. review determined Arar should remain on the watch list. Wilkins called it "a little presumptuous" for Day to comment on "who the United States can and cannot allow into" the country.
So far however, Day to his credit has not backed down:
The ambassador reiterated that the U.S. found its own reasons to keep Arar on the watch list. Day said in a visit last week to Washington that he has seen the information and found nothing new to suggest Arar is a safety risk...Day said Tuesday in Halifax that Canada will continue to let its position be known.
I guess the White House must not have appreciated Senator Leahy’s grilling of Alberto Gonzales over the affair and his references to Canada being rightly upset over it, so they had their attack poodle up here to try and intimidate Day and the Conservative government into going mute on this issue.
Aside from the fact I find it totally inappropriate for a US Ambassador to be telling us what to do (Paul Celluci had that problem as well), its a bit presumptuous of him to be suggesting to us its not our problem. Of course it’s our problem - an innocent Canadian citizen was sent off by rendition to a country where he was tortured based on charges that were false. It’s very much our business to be continuing to raise this issue, even though its unlikely the US will ever admit to making a mistake (at least, until the next President is elected, and probably only if its a Democratic one).
So, Mr. Day, I say for once, you’re doing and saying the right things, and I hope you and Harper will not buckle under to this pressure from the US and its meddling ambassador to shut up. (I don’t get what he thinks he gains by airing his complaints public in the press either - does he really think a majority of the Canadian public would be in support of his position?)
UPDATE - 6:43pm: Commenter Frankfrink makes an excellent point that needs to be repeated here:
..it's not at all about 'telling the USA who they can or can't allow into their country'. It's about whether or not he is on a no-fly list. And that's important because the USA no-fly list applies to any flight that crosses into US airspace.
That could quite plausibly be a domestic Canadian flight which, for example, could originate in Vancouver and end in Montreal or Toronto or Ottawa but does encroach into US airspace for part of the flight although never touching down on US soil. I've taken many such flights.
It would also cover a flight, for example again, originating in Vancouver and ending in Mexico or the Caribbean never touching down on US soil.
This idea or belief that we (Canada) are 'telling the USA who they can or can't allow into their country' meme is a flat-out falsehood.