Does Canada have second class citizens?

Canada boasts of being a just society where all citizens are equal. But sometimes the behaviour of the Canadian government makes you wonder if there are different classes of citizens and whether the leadership in Ottawa have a preference for some Canadians as opposed to others.

Take the case of Omar Khadr. He's the Canadian citizen jailed in the U.S. prison in Guantanamo, Cuba awaiting trial for allegedly killing a U.S. medic in Afghanistan by lobbing a grenade at the soldier. He was a kid at the time.

Last month a Federal Court judge ordered Ottawa to ask Washington for Khadr's return.

“The ongoing refusal of Canada to request Mr. Khadr's repatriation to Canada offends a principle of fundamental justice and violates Mr. Khadr's rights,” Mr. Justice James O'Reilly of the Federal Court of Canada wrote in a 43-page decision.

The judge specifically ordered that “the respondents request that the United States return Mr. Khadr to Canada as soon as practicable.” Khadr's lawyers told the Globe and Mail getting Khadr home is "as simple as sending a letter or picking up a phone.”

Read the story: Ottawa must press to repatriate Khadr

But the response from the Canadian prime minister was as cold as it has always been. He won't do it. Stephen Harper, who has always insisted that his Conservative government won't intervene in the matter, told Parliament, "The facts in our judgment have not changed...We will be looking at the judgment very closely and obviously considering an appeal.”

The same government is behaving a like manner with another Canadian citizen - a Sudanese-Canadian man named Abousfian Abdelrazik who has committed to crime, is accused of none but still cannot get back home to Canada from Sudan, where he is stranded at the Canadian embassy in Khartoum.

Lawyers for Abdelrazik have been trying for years to get the government to allow their client to come home. Now in federal court they are arguing that Ottawa is violating Abdelrazik's constitutional rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"We find procrastination, evasiveness, obfuscation and general bad faith," his lawyer, Yavar Hameed, said in his opening remarks in court, adding that "The way to remedy that is to effect repatriation."

The government says the United Nations Security Council still lists Abdelrazik as having ties to al Qaeda he is therefore subject to a travel ban and asset freeze.

That is without merit. Authorities in Canada - CSIS and the RCMP - as well as in Sudan have investigated all allegations twice and twice cleared Abdelrazik. He is as clean as the next Canadian and should not be denied his rights.

In fact Ottawa's story in court this week is new. Previously it had agreed that Abdelrazik, who was first detained when he went to visit his mother in 2003, could come home if someone agreed to issue him a plane ticket. When an airline took up the challenge and offered a ticket, Ottawa changed its story.

The UN argument is a red herring. UN officials, according to the Canadian Press, have said the Canadian government could easily issue the travel documents since both CSIS and the RCMP have already cleared Abdelrazik of terrorist ties.

But in court Thursday Ottawa refused to issue the travel documents, still citing the UN list as the reason for holding back.

The opposition Liberals and NDP were outraged when they faced the government Thursday in Parliament.

Liberal Foreign Affairs critic Bob Rae demanded better from the government. "There are no second-class citizens in this country," he said. "He has been living inside the Canadian embassy. What kind of terrorist would we let live inside our embassy?"

The double standards for the Conservative government is also clear in the Brenda Martin case. She is a Canadian woman who was jailed in Mexico on charges of money laundering.

Canadian government minister Jason Kenney, the secretary of state for multiculturalism, went to Mexico to negotiate Martin's release and arranged for her fine to be paid from a special Foreign Affairs fund for distressed Canadians abroad. Martin will be expected to repay the government.

She was subsequently flown home on a private jet and freed within days.

In Martin's case a court had sentenced her to jail and imposed a fine. In Abdelrazik's case he is not charged with anything and the government seems to have no interest in his matter. For Martin they paid the fine and brought her home on a private jet; for Abdelrazik they were only prepared to let him come home if he paid his way - and now they have even changed their tune on that.

Abdelrazik's lawyers cited the case of David Van Vlymen as a precedent for allowing their client to return home.

A 2004 decision in Federal Court affirmed Van Vlymen's right to be repatriated to Canada. This was a person who was no boy scout. Van Vlymen had been charged with violent crimes in Ontario, went to the United States, was convicted of a bank robbery there, and was sentenced to 55 years in American prisons.

Abdelrazik's lawyers argued that if that right applied to Van Vlymen it should also apply to Abdelrazik, who has never been charged with any crime.

In a recent editorial commenting on the case, Glen Pearson the MP for London North Centre asked:

"Where is the Stephen Harper who faced down significant opposition to bring the Dalai Lama to Canada and welcome him with true Canadian generosity? The world watches and wonders what happened to that Canada - the one where both Conservative and Liberal prime ministers led us to a place of deep and international respect.

"It is time for that Stephen Harper to show up; he's shown he's capable of it. And it's time for all Canadian citizens to bring home and enfold one of their own."

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