Civil society team heading to Syria, but Ottawa won’t support repatriation efforts

2023/06/24 Leave a comment

Bit naive to assert that “if any of the Canadians being held in Syria pose a security concern, those issues can be dealt with through the justice system” given the difficulty in obtaining evidence and the like.

And of course hard to find any sympathy for these men or “to see what human rights concerns they may be facing” after they were part of a group that violated all or virtually all human rights:

The federal government has rebuffed an offer from a civil society delegation to travel to northeastern Syria on Ottawa’s behalf to repatriate detained Canadians.

Instead, a scaled-down group, including Sen. Kim Pate, intends to head to the region in late August to gather information about Canadians held in squalid camps and prisons.

The delegation is also to include Alex Neve, former secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, and Scott Heatherington, a former Canadian diplomat.

Participants plan to discuss details of the initiative at a news conference in Ottawa this morning.

Late last month, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned a judge’s declaration that four Canadian men being held in Syrian camps are entitled to Ottawa’s help to return home.

The May ruling set aside a January decision by Federal Court Justice Henry Brown, who directed Ottawa to request repatriation of the men as soon as reasonably possible and provide them with passports or emergency travel documents.

The Canadians are among the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps and jails run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the strife-torn region from the extremist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

On April 19, Sally Lane — mother of Jack Letts, one of the four Canadian men — wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly requesting that she promptly authorize a seven-member delegation to Syria in late May.

“I am convinced that in the current circumstances, authorizing this delegation is essential to saving Jack’s life and protecting the rights of all Canadian detainees,” Lane wrote. “As such, I will be a member of this delegation.”

In an interview, Lane said the government declined to provide support to the delegation. “They didn’t actually give a reason. All they said was that repatriation will be done by government members only.”

Given that the revamped mission set for August will be more of a fact-finding trip, Lane does not plan to go.

“It’s not actually going to be a repatriation trip,” she said. “I mean, it’s going to be preparatory to repatriation, but there won’t actually be any people coming back. And I just thought, I can’t face the idea of seeing Jack and leaving him there. I just think it would kind of break me, and I believe it would break him. So I’m not going on this trip.”

Asked why the government would not support the proposed delegation, Global Affairs Canada spokesman Jean-Pierre Godbout said Ottawa advises against all travel to Syria.

“Due to privacy and operational security considerations, we cannot comment on specific cases or potential future actions,” he added.

The identities and circumstances of the other three Canadian men are not publicly known.

Amid the court proceedings, lawyer Lawrence Greenspon reached an agreement with the federal government earlier this year to bring home six Canadian women and 13 children from Syria who had initially been part of the legal action.

Neve said in an interview that the government’s “seemingly implacable refusal” to assist the return of the men to Canada “is in our view, frankly, disgraceful.”

The three-member delegation plans to fly to Mosul, in northern Iraq, then travel overland to northeastern Syria.

The members hope to speak with as many of the Canadians — men, women and children — in the camps and detention centres as possible, said Neve, a senior fellow with the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa.

“We want to see about their welfare, we want to see what human rights concerns they may be facing,” he said. “So from that side of things, it’s a welfare and humanitarian mission, really.”

But the delegation also wants to meet with local officials to see if steps can be taken to help facilitate release of Canadians, Neve added.

Canadian government officials should be playing that role, as they have with some of the women and children brought home from Syria, he said.

“Many other countries have much more actively been involved in facilitating and carrying out the repatriation of their nationals, so Canada continues to very notably be a laggard in the international community,” Neve said.

“And I think that’s disappointing, especially for a country like Canada that that proudly asserts that we believe in human rights.”

Neve said if any of the Canadians being held in Syria pose a security concern, those issues can be dealt with through the justice system. But leaving citizens to languish overseas for years on end “is simply not acceptable.”

Source: Civil society team heading to Syria, but Ottawa won’t support repatriation efforts

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Opposition leaders want juror demographic data to help fight systemic biases

2021/05/21 Leave a comment

Needed:

A lack of information on the race, gender and age of jurors hinders the fight to address systemic racism and other inequities in the criminal justice system, federal opposition leaders and others say.

While studies in the United States show juror race and age have a marked effect on trial verdicts, Canada collects no data allowing similar research here, The Canadian Press reported recently.

New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh, who practised law in Ontario, expressed surprise at the data gap. Having evidence of jury makeup would help lawmakers make more informed decisions about improving the selection process, he said.

Singh said he would like to see laws and practices put in place to ensure juries represent the community, adding he would work with provinces and territories to see demographic information collected.

“The goal should be first identify: Are our juries reflecting the population, and if not what we can do to improve the demographics,” Singh said in an interview. “Better juries, better laws that all have the goal of justice and fairness in mind.”

Similarly, Green party Leader Annamie Paul said a clear picture without jury data on race, gender and occupation among other things is impossible.

“Lack of collecting this data is going to be one of the key barriers to truly dismantling systemic racism within our criminal justice system,” Paul said. “You can’t create legislation, really effective legislation, without this information.”

Sen. Kim Pate, a longtime advocate for justice reform, said collecting disaggregated data — information that does not identify individual jurors — would help understand jury selection and its impact.

“Concerns regarding the lack of this type of data are a recurring theme with nearly every criminal law bill considered by the Senate,” Pate said.

Conservative and Bloc Quebecois leaders Erin O’Toole and Yves-Francois Blanchet did not respond to requests for interviews.

The Prime Minister’s Office referred questions to Minister of Justice David Lametti, who said via a spokesman the government was on board with collecting information that would help address the overrepresentation of Indigenous people and racialized people who end up behind bars, which could include scrutinizing jury makeup.

As one example, David Taylor pointed to the federal-provincial-territorial National Justice Statistics Initiative, which sets goals and objectives related to justice data. Relevant deputy ministers have endorsed the collection and analysis of Indigenous and race-based data as a priority for the initiative, he said.

In addition, the recent budget earmarked $6.7 million over five years for Justice Canada to improve the collection and use of demographic data, while Statistics Canada would receive $172 million over five years for its “disaggregated data action plan.”

“Effective policy requires good data,” Taylor said. “This investment will support the use of advanced analytics so that we can better tailor interventions and improve social outcomes for different groups of people.”

Canada’s chief statistician, Anil Arora, said Canadians have long been reluctant to collect demographic information but people have come to understand the impact it can have in crafting solutions.

The government now wants to collect demographic information in a systematic way, including addressing gaps related to the justice system, Arora said. Statistics Canada can access data through the justice initiative, he said.

“What we need to do now is to align the disaggregated data at the source of collection, or at least be able to link it to other data sources, to get at what is the profile, whether it’s somebody serving on the jury (or) part of the judicial system itself,” Arora said.

“The country needs this type of information, so that it can see what’s going on sooner and it can react sooner, and it can take decisions.”

Source: Opposition leaders want juror demographic data to help fight systemic biases

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