Talisman? A responsible corporation?

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, June 15, 2009 at 3:05 PM - 3 Comments

Not much was going right for Calgary oil and gas powerhouse Talisman Energy back in 2001, but an indisputable low point was when it was accused of complicity in genocide.

The charge, contained in a class action suit filed by the Presbyterian Church of Sudan, stemmed from Talisman’s decision three years earlier to acquire a stake in an oil project controlled in part by Sudan’s Khartoum-based Islamic government. The Church and others claimed that Talisman aided Khartoum in committing genocide by, among other things, allowing helicopter gunships to mount bombing raids on villages from airstrips controlled by the oil consortium.

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The latest rebuke

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 1:36 PM - 33 Comments

The federal court orders Abousfian Abdelrazik back to Canada.

“Mr. Abdelrazik’s Charter right to enter Canada has been breached by the respondents,” Federal Court Judge Russel Zinn said in a judgment released today. “ Mr. Abdelrazik is entitled to an appropriate remedy which, in the unique circumstances of his situation, requires that the Canadian government take immediate action so that Mr. Abdelrazik is returned to Canada.”

'Let the lessons to all Canadians be clear'

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 1:20 PM - 13 Comments

Irwin Cotler and David Grossman lay out remedies to the plight of Abousfian Abdelrazik.

Faced with a government that seems to derive its sense of procedural fairness from The Trial, Canadians need a transparent system that makes the government’s obligations to citizens clear for all to see. 

'Enough is enough'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 1:24 PM - 4 Comments

Irwin Cotler and David Grossman call for Abousfian Abdelrazik’s return.

The question, then, is why: Why is the Canadian government so committed to refusing passage home to its citizen — a position that appears to have no basis in law and indeed violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? Why is the government risking a third straight adverse decision in which the courts admonish it for failing to come to the protection of its citizens? Why is the government invoking dubious security considerations in its defence, ignoring the fact that its own security services — both CSIS and the RCMP — have openly stated they have no information connecting Mr. Abdelrazik to terrorism?

We have a government that is trying to use the Abdelrazik case to narrow down the constitutional right to re-enter Canada for all Canadians, and the only motivation it seems to have is trying to protect us from a threat our security agencies don’t even recognize.

The Commons: A terribly serious discussion

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 7:05 PM - 35 Comments

The Scene. In the absence of the Liberal leader, Bob Rae rose to ask the first question, receiving sincere applause from his side and a mocking ovation from the other. The Speaker called for order.

“I appreciate the expressions of support, Mr. Speaker,” Rae grinned, “as late in the day as they may be.”

Another round of applause from the government side. Then down to business. “I would like to ask the Minister of Foreign Affairs a question,” Rae began, proceeding to review the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik.

The story is roughly as follows. For the past year, Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen, has been living in the Canadian embassy in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, unable to return home. He was arrested in Sudan in 2003 and claims to have been tortured during 19 months in prison there. Accused of having connections to terrorism, he was never charged and has since been cleared by both the RCMP and CSIS. He remains, courtesy of the Bush administration apparently, on a United Nations list that seeks to ban the travel of potential threats. The Canadian government has asked that Abdelrazik be removed from said list and, for a time it seems, offered to let him come home if he could secure a plane ticket. But last month, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon denied Abdelrazik’s request for an emergency passport on the grounds of national security and the government has since said that the Canadian’s presence on the UN list bars him from returning. The whole tale is now before the Federal Court.

It was the latest news—that an official with the UN says its list in no way bars Canada from flying Abdelrazik back—that sent Rae to his feet. Continue…

Megapundit: From the depths of Barack Obama's cosmopolitan soul

By selley - Monday, July 28, 2008 at 2:03 PM - 0 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Scott Taylor on Walter Natynczyk; Dan Gardner and Rex Murphy on Barack Obama.

Same old Ottawa
Stand by for overhyped by-elections, laboured comparisons and impenetrable prose. Jeffrey Simpson’s in a good mood, at least.

Lorne Gunter, writing in the Edmonton Journal, says Stephen Harper has nothing to lose in the Sept. 8 by-elections and Stéphane Dion has everything, first and foremost his job. “Should the NDP win Westmount, as it did the previously safe Liberal seat of Outremont last fall, Dion will have trouble keeping his job,” he opines, but he goes way out on a limb and says he “suspect[s]” Westmount will stay red. He also suggests the Tories play off the “timidity” of Ontario voters in Guelph by paining the Green Shift as a “radical threat to the status quo.”

“By-elections are often overanalyzed, overblown, overrated. In the grand scheme, they shouldn’t toll heavily,” says The Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin. “But they do.” The Canadian Alliance’s “humiliation” in Perth-Middlesex in 2003 convinced Harper to pursue a merger with the Progressive Conservatives; Deb Grey’s victory in Beaver River in 1989 constituted Reform’s “breakthrough”; and last year’s NDP win in Outremont buried Stéphane Dion in an “avalanche of derision.” This is all true. But those outcomes strike us less as evidence that by-elections matter than evidence of just how overanalyzed, overblown and overrated they really are.

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