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Ottawa settles with Arar for $10 million
January 25, 2007 - 9:57pm
I think that's a bit excessive, and yet, not enough.
1. Why should Arar get $10 million of taxpayers' money? What would any normal person do with all that cash?
2. Why has no one been punished for putting Arar in this situation - or have I missed some other announcement?
3. Was punishment of the guilty parties part of the settlement discussions - if not, why not?
That's a fairly expensive coverup, IMHO.
4. Was a "best effort to get Arar off the U.S. watch list" part of the settlement? Or is this just good cheap electioneering by Harper to show his patriotic credentials?
There is an aroma wafting around all this.
I'll be curious to see what happens.
Even if it is a straight pay-out, I wouldn't begrudge it to him, after the horrors he was subjected to because of the actions of the Governments of Canada, the US and Syria.
As for Harper, this is brilliant politics. He gets to:
-look patriotic (as mentioned above)
-look principled, fair-minded and "good", because he is siding with the victim
-look like he is not racist/anti-Muslim/anti-Arab, because he is siding with a Muslim Arab Canadian.
-look like a moderate to the broad centrist Canadian voting public; even though some of his base will be appalled at handing millions of taxpayer dollars to some damned Arab -- and yet, this part of his base will likely still stick with him, because... where else would they go?
-distance himself from his big bad American cousins. Even though he actually is a Junior Northern Republican, this disagreement is very useful, much better for distancing himself from the toxic Bush administration than was his stupid "Arctic Sovereignty" stance during his first week or 2 in power.
-make the Liberals look bad, because all of this happened under them
-put Stephane Dion in a tough spot, having to choose among (1) supporting the settlment, and implicitly acknowledging that the government he was a part of was complicit in torture; (2) opposing the settlement and looking like a heartless bastard on the wrong side; or (3) dodging, weaving, fence-sitting, evading and looking like, well, a Liberal.
I don't believe for a minute that Harper is any better than the Liberals; if he had been in power during the few years after 2001-09-11, I'll bet that Arar and many others would have been handed over to the torturers, that we would have had our own "Homeland Security Act" much worse the Liberals' version, and that Canadian soldiers would have been (and would still be) dying and killing in Iraq.
Now, suppose that a Liberal government had reached a $10-million settlement under these kinds of circumstances, and suppose that Stephen Harper were heading up some extremist right-wing anti-government group like, say, the National Citizens Coalition (which he did for 4 years)... I wonder what the O-so-princibled principled Harper would have said about such a settlement?
[ 25 January 2007: Message edited by: Albireo ]
CBC:
CFRA/CTV
[ 25 January 2007: Message edited by: Paul Gross ]
I realize that sophisticates large and small, left and right, have been indoctrinated to the effect that in politics today it's all appearances all the time. Still, I wonder if in a matter of this degree of gravity it's really necessary to focus entirely on what stuff looks like, or whose spin and counter spin are going to dedazzle the most voters.
Personally, I could care less if it's a Grit or Tory administration that settles with Arar, becuase I am too busy feeling relieved for him and his family. Because of the continuing publicity and the continuing American travel ban, he is effectively prevented from earning a living. So he needs a major cash settlement.
I've yet to see Harper's temper, especially when it comes to standing up to the Bush administration. What I have seen is the ability of the Conservatives to realize the low bar set by the Liberals in merely acting like they care about Canada's interests while selling us out. The Cons realized this before they were elected with the 'stand up for Canada' campaign they ran and Wilkins pitched them a softball with arctic sovereignty as soon as they came to power. Its sad that people buy into this but since no one is making an issue of our fading sovereignty, the Conservatives are free to redefine the term.
Assuming that's correct, do you know roughly how much of an annual income $10M generates?
David Milgaard won $10M after spending 28 years under a wrongful murder conviction, 23 of them behind bars. That settlement I understand. Not this one.
I agree of course - the only thing I honestly don't understand is the amount.
Why $10 million? Why not $37 million like he claimed? The $10 million, being a damage settlement, will of course be tax-free. I have no savings or investments of my own (other than my company pension plan), so don't jump all over me if I'm ignorant. But I figure if he invests it at the cheapest possible rate (4%? 5%?), it can't really produce less than about $1/2 million per year forever.
And the legal bills, estimated at $2 million (there's another strange one - what have his lawyers done other than negotiate this deal!??), are over and above.
I hate to say it, but part of that is my tax contributions. I repeat the question: Why?
If you were offered the choice of living through Milgaard's 23 years or Arar's one, which would you choose? I would probably choose the former, although I'd never play down Milgaard's terrible experience or deny him compensation for it.
You can't put a price tag on anything as awful as what those two people have lived through. But length of time is only one factor; there are many other ways in which Arar's experience was immeasurably worse. I'm shocked that you'd think that he is less deserving of compensation than Milgaard was.
[ 26 January 2007: Message edited by: Albireo ]
Sorry, that doesn't wash with me. Damage settlements are compensation for suffering, loss of earnings and potential earnings, quantifiable remedies. They have nothing to do with "which is worse, being tortured for a year or locked up for half a lifetime". That's just emotion talking, not logic. And it's certainly not how our justice system assesses civil claims.
If Arar had been permanently disabled from working as a result of his experience, the settlement might make some sense. He obviously was not. I'm still waiting for a sober explanation of this settlement.
Pain and suffering? Punitive damages? At 10 mill, I figure we got off easy.
Concerned that you have to help pay for this? We own this. The people who allowed this to happen worked for us. All those clowns who got up in front of that inquiry and testified that they couldn't possibly imagine that Syria might actually, you know, mistreat someone? Our employees. The state is us.
How about if he's unable to get employment because of the stigma that's now attached to him? What if he is disabled, but in ways that aren't obvious?
The $10mm should be followed up with the gov't prosecuting those involved in sending him there.
Even IF he was an al-queda fighter, this is not what civilized people do.
You were the one who brought up Milgaard, and implied that Arar was somehow less deserving of compensation. You yourself invited the comparison. I was answering your point with a hypothetical question that directly makes that comparison.I'm not building a legal case here; I'm participating in a discussion on an Internet message board. I'm not required to be 100% logic and 0% emotion. I'm not a lawyer, and can't speak to what the legal basis for the settlement is, or how much he would have gotten if it had been pursued through the courts.
That is not obvious at all. Just because he has no permanent physical disability, doesn't mean that he does not have psychological damage that will last a lifetime.The people who allowed this to happen should be severely punished. That is a separate issue, and one which has not yet been addressed.
Would you like to give $10 million to each family whose member is killed or maimed in Afghanistan - I'm talking about both Canadian and Afghan families? Or do "the people who allowed this to happen" not "work for us"? Or do we blame the victims for their own predicament?
How about $10 million to each person who was given the gift of fatal disease because of government negligence on blood transfusions? Or rules surrounding sanitary conditions in hospitals (C. difficile, etc.)?
Or workers killed or maimed on the job because of inadequate safety legislation and/or inspection?
I disapprove of decisions and moral standards which are based on headlines rather than principles. And I am absolutely convinced that this is intended, by the paymasters, as the end of the Arar story, rather than the beginning. Meanwhile, Canada's complicity with U.S. aggression and war crimes goes on daily unabated, unpunished, and un-remedied.
My sentiments, exactly. I'm surprised the Arar legal team didn't stick with the original amount, and settle, say, for $50 million.
If that can be proven (and it has to be proven), and it affects his earning power, he must be made whole for that. My understanding is that he has been actively seeking employment, and moved to Kamloops to make it easier to find.
In my world, horrible things are done to workers - they are disciplined or maimed or fired or harassed or humiliated - but the only remedy they can get is (if they win their point 100%) their job back, compensation for income lost, and compensation for any expenses or damages provably incurred - and the onus is on them to prove it. In incredibly rare cases, where an egregious human rights or harassment type violation can be shown, there may be an additional award of punitive damages beyond mere compensation - the highest I've seen is $20,000.
My worry is not that Maher Arar and his family will get too much for the unimaginable suffering he underwent. It is that this is hush money to make the big issue go away.
That's what I said. If it is proven that he can't get employment because of what happened, he must be compensated, for the rest of his life, for his lost earnings. But I have heard no suggestion to that effect. Anyway, the man has significant qualifications - why wouldn't the government offer him a public service job if he can't get one elsewhere?
You think this government (or the previous one) would stop cooperating with the U.S. war on terror if it cost too much?
Do you think Chrйtien or Martin or Harper would pull out of Afghanistan if our invasion ran into the billions of dollars?
People never really truly recover from such things.
[ 26 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]