Toronto Star
Just when can we trust U.S.?
January 25, 2007
Thomas Walkom

American Ambassador David Wilkins is right when he says that it's up to Washington – not Ottawa – to decide whether Canadian Maher Arar can enter the United States. He's right but misses the point.

The U.S. is a sovereign nation and can do whatever it wants. As Wilkins said yesterday, it is "presumptuous" for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to tell Americans whom they should let in.

If Americans want to refuse entry to Arar, a Muslim they sent to be tortured in Syria, they have that right. If they want to keep out Lutherans, or blonds, or vegetarians or simply every tenth Canadian attempting to cross the international border, they can do that, too.

Their country, their rules.

But what Wilkins and Day don't seem to understand is that the dispute over Washington's decision to treat Arar as a terror suspect is not just about this particular Canadian computer engineer. It casts into question the entire rationale for sharing intelligence information between Canada and the United States.

If Canada can't trust American judgment in this case, how can it co-operate in others? If U.S. intelligence is as unreliable as Day suggests, why is he moving ahead full-bore to further integrate Canadian and American security systems in areas such as no-fly lists?

Day says he's seen the still-classified U.S. file on Arar, but that the information in it is unconvincing – that it does not alter the Canadian government's view, based on an exhaustive public inquiry, that Arar is absolutely innocent of anything even remotely resembling terrorism.

Yet the federal government seemingly does accept as gospel U.S. intelligence in other areas.

For instance, Ottawa is trying to deport Algerian Mohamed Harkat as a security threat, in large part because of information the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency claims it received from an Al Qaeda suspect it's been interrogating in one of its secret prisons.

Even putting aside the probability that this information was obtained under duress (which, as Harkat's lawyer Paul Copeland says, does cast doubt on its reliability) what if – as in the case of Arar – it's just plain wrong-headed? Indeed, it is sobering to remember that if Arar had not been fully investigated – and vindicated – by a judicial inquiry, the Canadian government almost certainly would have accepted unquestioningly the U.S. claim that he remains a dangerous terror suspect.

That's because we've been taking our cues on these matters from the Americans.

After the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, Ottawa moved quickly to integrate its security and intelligence apparatus more closely with that of the U.S.

In practical terms, as Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry into Arar discovered, that meant funnelling more information to the Americans and allowing U.S. agents to sit in on all Canadian security meetings.

Indeed, O'Connor concluded that it was probably the RCMP's promiscuous sharing of rumour, innuendo and misinformation that persuaded the Americans to arrest Arar in 2002 in New York, and ship him to Syria for torture

Under the new regime of co-operation, Canada also allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. agencies to send more operatives into Canada.

One example came to light inadvertently last June after native protestors at Caledonia near Hamilton hijacked what they took to be a suspicious vehicle that had been cruising near their blockade. As it turned out, it was a U.S. Border Patrol car containing Canadian and American agents, including one from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

As well, Canada's soon-to-be-unveiled no-fly list is almost certainly linked to its U.S. counterpart, according to experts in the field. (Ottawa won't say one way or the other).

In short, we take our cue from the Americans when it comes to security. We assume that they know what they are talking about.

Washington's intransigence on the Arar case blasts a hole in that theory. It is making serious allegations about Arar, perhaps to derail a lawsuit he has filed against the U.S. administration, perhaps for other reasons. Canada's government has seen the American evidence and discounted it. In effect, Day and Harper are saying that America's judgment in this matter is not only unfair but also seriously flawed.

Yet if we can't trust the U.S. government to behave rationally here, how can we trust it in other matters involving national security?

As Wilkins says, we don't have the right to tell American leaders what to do in their own country. But if they are temporarily deranged, surely we are under no obligation to co-operate.