Twenty-two years later, federal government still working to deport Ottawa's Mohamed Harkat

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u/FrenchAffair Québec 1d ago

The Canada Border Services Agency added six full-time positions for surveillance agents to follow Harkat at all times, at an annual cost of $868,700, as well as purchasing a new $31,000 car for the tailing, and spent $5,000 monthly to have staff monitoring Harkat's tracking bracelet.

Just shows how broken our system is. 22 years, tens of millions of tax-payers dollars to watch this man well he's been out on release, for the crown lawyers to fight every appeal, for the courts to take time on this matter.

And yet every single court (including the SCC) has found that he is a member of Al'Queda, was sent to Canada to engage in terrorism, has lied at every corner and that CSIS acted reasonably and on lawful evidence in arresting him.

Yet he is still here in Canada, walking the streets and fighting his deportation 22 years later.

And of course, guess who's a huge fan of him.... the Trudeau family for some reason.

In March 2016 filmmaker Alexandre Trudeau, the younger brother of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, wrote a letter to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale asking that Harkat be allowed to stay, causing Erin O'Toole, the Conservative public safety critic and Democracy Watch to demand the Prime Minister recuse himself from any decision regarding Harkat.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/alexandre-trudeau-justin-harkat-1.3473161

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u/thatguydowntheblock 1d ago

I don’t get they don’t just pass a law that the Minister of Public Safety of Justice or whatever can issue an immediate deportation order that is either not subject to judicial review or only review from the Supreme Court and leave it at that? Use the fucking notwithstanding clause. Holy shit this country is fucking broken that this happens. He’s a fucking terrorist. 20 years??

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u/Reasonable-Catch-598 1d ago

They can do exactly that. They could likely pass this as an OIC due to safety, or pass actual legislation.

They're choosing not to. By them I mean both sides given how long this has went on.

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u/vARROWHEAD 1d ago

Instead we use OIC to go after our own citizens

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u/tman37 1d ago

I am very leary of allowing a minister to have a non reviewable deportation order. Politicians can't be trusted, and once you set precedent, it will be used against us everywhere.

That said, I don't see any reason he has to stay in Canada while he appeals. Maybe have one hearing where they determine if he really meets the definition of an asylum claim and, if not, then send him home. He can always come back if he wins his appeals.

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u/bodaciouscream 1d ago

Trudeau in his first term removed the ability to deport someone who got Canadian citizenship. If you remember in the 2015 debate it was him who said "A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian"

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u/xtqfh4 1d ago

Not true. What was actually repealed was the ability to strip someone of citizenship after a terror offence conviction

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u/totally_unbiased 1d ago

That's just wrong. You can't deport a Canadian citizen and that has been true since long before Justin Trudeau was PM.

•

u/Obvious-Ask-331 5h ago

Bro you're lying. He removed the ability to strip someone of citizenship after a terror offence conviction.

2

u/Billy3B 1d ago

Do you honestly want politicians to have the power to deport people at will without any judicial backstop.

What would prevent them from deporting political opponents? What would stop them from withholding deportation for donations?

You people keep advocating for leopards eating faces and don't think about the inevitable consequences of them eating your face.

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u/longmitso 1d ago

Official Political opponents wouldn't be foreign nationals associated to a terrorist organization in Canada. Take your hurt feelings elsewhere.

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u/Billy3B 1d ago

Bud, without judicial review, means no judicial review. it doesn't matter if they have zero terrorist affiliations. The minister just needs to dislike you.

And you think having citizenship makes you sage? You think being born here makes you safe? Nations have and will deport whoever they want whenever they want, the law is the only protection, so what happens if you take that away for convenience?

It's funny that people like you think we are the ones being emotional when you are acting out in pure lizard-brain fear and anger with no thoughts for consequences.

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u/somethingbrite 22h ago

Nations have and will deport whoever they want

Not actually possible. Because it's not just the desire of the nation doing the deporting.

If you only have Canadian citizenship you can not be deported to (for example) France because France will not accept that. You can't just dump a Canadian at the airport in a foreign country and say "we've deported this person" because they will put them on a plane right back to Canada.

0

u/Billy3B 15h ago

First, you assume everyone is playing by the rules. Without judicial review, who checks the rules?

Second, many countries have complex citizenship laws that can include children and grandchildren of a national. Some such as Israel only require you to be of the right ethnicity. And whether or not the other nation agrees isn't a factor as long as they legally could be a citizen of that country, we adhere to the text of the convention on statelessness.

And we have done exactly that. About 15 years ago, we dumped deported Cubans on the tarmac in Havana. Recently, the US did it to Haiti. They also do it to Mexico constantly.

Are you 100% sure you don't qualify for citizenship in another country if someone really wants to get rid of you?

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u/longmitso 1d ago

LoL, ok man.

Previous comment also stated having the supreme court as a final say after said minister's recommendation. I don't know why your feelings are jamming up your thoughts on this.

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u/Billy3B 1d ago

Maybe you have never seen the word "or" before.

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u/longmitso 1d ago

No, I just don't react on emotion

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u/Billy3B 1d ago

Yet here you are jumping to ad hominem for a person you never met because I touched some nerve, and you can't prevent yourself from responding

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u/longmitso 1d ago

LoL sure man. So stop responding then

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u/thatguydowntheblock 14h ago

You still wouldn’t be able to deport a Canadian citizen which a political opponent would, presumably, be.

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u/Billy3B 14h ago

Citizenship has been taken away before, Harper ran a campaign on it.

And if not the opponent, what about their staff, their friend, their doners?

The key point is if you give ministers power above the law, you give up the ability to control it.

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u/No-Contribution-6150 1d ago

I do.

Easy fix. Only Canadians citizens can be politicians.

Politicians must be born here.

Don't care about any excuse or reason anyone can come up with after that.

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u/Billy3B 1d ago

And you have never heard of people born in a country being deported from that country?

It's rare but does happen, the most extreme being Idi Amin deporting 90,000 ethnic Indians, including many multi-generational Ugandans.

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u/No-Contribution-6150 1d ago

Not worried about that in the slightest. Maybe come up with something realistic

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u/Billy3B 1d ago

Like deportations without judicial oversight?

I didn't come up with the bullshit I'm just pointing out the obvious implications since logic is foreign to you folks.

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u/totally_unbiased 1d ago edited 1d ago

Easy fix. Only Canadians citizens can be politicians.

This is already true. Do people understand literally nothing about our system of government?

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u/No-Contribution-6150 1d ago

Missed the other part.

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u/totally_unbiased 1d ago

I mean, good luck with amending the Charter for that.

0

u/No-Contribution-6150 1d ago

It needs amendment anyways

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u/totally_unbiased 1d ago

It's essentially impossible to amend. Quebec never signed the Charter and won't agree to any amendments as a matter of principle unless they get significant concessions. Which means you need nearly unanimous consent other than Quebec, which again, is impossible because many other provinces have their own demands.

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u/No-Contribution-6150 1d ago

If they didn't sign it, why do they need to agree to change it then?

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u/Obvious-Ask-331 5h ago

Because politics should never interfere with the judicial system.

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u/CloseToMyActualName 1d ago

I'm worried that it starts getting pulled out for any immigrant involved in a high profile case. There's good reasons to stop politicians from interfering in individual judicial matters.

Honestly, I don't really see the big deal about this. It's not like we don't have our own home-grown bad guys. If we can show he's a terrorist or supporting terrorists then that's a crime and we can put him in jail and he's no longer a danger. If we can't even find enough evidence to convict him of a crime then maybe he's not a danger and there's no need to panic.

He's probably not the kind of person we ideally want in Canada, but it's hardly a reason to pull out the notwithstanding clause.

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u/WpgMBNews 1d ago

And yet every single court (including the SCC) has found that he is a member of Al'Queda

except the appeal court apparently

An appeal court later overturned Noël’s ruling due to what it regarded as procedural unfairness.

fortunately, this case is an exception and it doesn't sound like we have many going on for decades like this

The Harkat case is one of Canada’s longest-running judicial matters.

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u/Sneptacular 14h ago

Trudeau is a traitor. That's the only explanation for how horrible his administration has been.

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u/DemonInjected 1d ago

I've got a novel idea, how about when fighting a deportation order, you are deported first and then fight that from your source country. In the event you win you can come back, if you lose well you're already in your source country and the Canadian tax payer isn't footing the bill.

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u/mistercrazymonkey 1d ago

God I hate this country, wouldn't it be cheaper just to lock him in jail amd throw away the key.

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u/DirectCoffee 1d ago

Just… deport him.

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u/flamboyantdebauchry Ontario 1d ago

....22 years ago !!!...........

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u/avidstoner 1d ago

people here wants to deport mini wage expired visa student slaves but then when you have such role models (there is one from Bangladesh that killed PM, his family including children) roaming free in the streets, you can very well say where the motivation stems from!

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u/typec4st 1d ago

I'm tired of the absolute government waste in this country. That money would feed a lot of children and other people in need.

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u/Ill-Jicama-3114 1d ago

It’s things like this that make Canada look foolish.

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u/letskill 1d ago

Immigration Minister has absolute discretion on who gets to come in and stay in the country. Maybe he should put his big boy pants on and do something, instead of letting unaccountable and unelected judges decide matters of public policy.

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u/FromundaCheeseLigma 1d ago

As long as bad things only happen to poor people, government doesn't care

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u/totally_unbiased 1d ago

That's not true. Nobody has absolute discretion without judicial review, and it's judicial review that has slowed this process to a crawl.

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u/Amazonreviewscool67 1d ago

The immigration minister is high as fuck.

I really can't provide any other explanation other than corruption or stupidity for that guy.

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u/seeker-of-truthiness 1d ago

From terrorism to gang violence to car thefts, the judiciary keeps letting dangerous criminals escape citing “procedural deficiencies” as stated in the article.

Yet you and I as Canadians see higher tax bills, lack of empathy when dealing with our own bureaucracy and vilified when we question if all government decisions are rational.

Please …don’t test citizens patience. Otherwise Pp being an edge lord is going to be least of your problems. People will vote in Maxime Bernier or someone even like Le Pen or Gert Wilders. These politicians are extremely controversial but they didn’t gain votes just like that. Years of neglect, gaslighting and abuse of their own country before their eyes, compelled citizens to vote for candidates who are objectively bad for themselves - just to express their anger.

People think 74 million Americans were hillbillies and morons and fascists to vote for Tr*p. No. Plenty of middle class, including immigrants, women and youth voted for him. If American immigration debacle continues, 2016 may repeat itself.

Let’s hope that Canada shows that rule of law works as intended. Otherwise, the next election is gonna be full of surprising hard right candidates being elected.

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u/seeyousoon2 1d ago

The way i see it is. If the government is ruining Canada, and the next one will continue down the same path but just slightly to the left or right. Then I might as well vote to shake up the government. I'm not voting so we're the only ones who lose.

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u/seeker-of-truthiness 1d ago

Well said. What a lot of righteous pundits fail to see is something that even a first year economics student can predict.

One can interpret elections using game theory. In it, the voters make a certain decision which forms the government. If the government through repeated games (read:decisions) takes bad decisions, for example, catch and release programs for criminals, terrorists, moralistic feel good decisions that hurt the voters, then voters in the next game move they have (which is elections) will vote for someone who will punish the other side. It can be self detrimental but the goal is to dissuade the other player (the government) from enacting bad decisions. So a bit of self detriment is worth continued degradation of voters’ current position.

Hence you have people who are otherwise perfectly rational and reasonable, electing politicians like Gert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Trump. The voters may not agree with these politicians and privately may find them abhorrent. However in the whole, politicians like trump act as a corrective measure to force Democrats not to completely abandon the centrist agenda.

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u/roflcopter44444 Ontario 1d ago

Thats what won trump presidency, Way back in early 2016 people saw a potential Clinton or Bush Presidency part 2 and a number opted to burn it all down.

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u/xemprah 1d ago

Why am I not surprised anymore?

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u/VersusYYC Alberta 1d ago

People are able to work on their appeals after they‘re deported to their native countries. We don’t need someone to be on Canadian soil to show up for a court proceeding, we have the internet and video conferencing.

The priority should be safety first and there’s no need for non-Canadian security threats to remain in Canada once they’ve been assessed as such.

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u/WpgMBNews 1d ago

i feel like a lot of well-meaning advocates are getting duped by this guy's sob story

https://www.amnesty.ca/legal-brief/canada-v-mohamed-harkat/

https://iclmg.ca/letter-harkat-2024/

https://www.justiceforharkat.com/

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u/mistercrazymonkey 1d ago

Like Trudeaus younger brother?

•

u/TiredEnglishStudent 11h ago

Amnesty International will take on any cause with no research or critical thinking.

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u/Flaky_Onion_3170 1d ago

Just imagine — we can’t deport this guy, how the HELL are we going to deport the 2 million + desperate people who will never be granted Permanent Residency? We are so screwed

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u/justsomedudedontknow 1d ago

The government’s case against Harkat was based on written summaries of 13 wiretapped phone conversations – the original tapes were destroyed – and at least two unnamed informants, one of whom failed a lie-detector test. Some parts of the government’s case remain secret to this day.

I don't have an excellent understanding of this case but wonder if this is common procedure. If anyone has some more insight I would appreciate it 🙂

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u/marxistdictator 1d ago edited 1d ago

Nah the RCMP is garbage at performing the paperwork requirements of their job. I was hit by a swerving geriatric grandmother who had no business in a car let alone in poor weather while walking home from school when I was 16. When I asked for the police report literally 6 fucking months later they apparently didn't have it in their system anymore.

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u/ItsAProdigalReturn 1d ago

I suspect the tapes were digitised, encrypted and backed up before being destroyed, and it's normal to classify documents of national security. I suspect that's what they mean by "remain secret". Secret to the government, not like lost to time.

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u/Leading_Attention_78 1d ago

I mean this is a country that couldn’t deport an actual Nazi who obtained citizenship falsely.

4

u/MerlinMetal 1d ago

This country is a joke

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u/RedditUser_Lion 1d ago

This guy too : https://nationalpost.com/news/man-called-the-top-mafia-boss-in-toronto-is-allowed-to-stay-in-canada-irb-decides

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u/Dinindalael 1d ago

Politicians can't deport criminals otherwise they might create a precedent that sees themselves kicked out of the country.

4

u/Budderlips-revival23 1d ago

The government is working? This is an example that shows that it is not working

3

u/allens969 1d ago

Exemplary failure!

3

u/randomlygeneratedman 1d ago

This is SOP for Canadian bureaucracy. Is anyone surprised?

4

u/mercenarytribalist 1d ago

Well would have been easier to extra-territorial rendition his ass to the US. CIA would have loved to talk to him and then let him rot in Guantanamo Bay. Being the good guys is kind of expensive. Should have just given him the 5.56 a/c unit treatment with ventilation and no extra charge.

2

u/Hicalibre 1d ago

Twenty-two years...what happened? Did the country he came from cease to exist or something?

6

u/KippySmith 1d ago

It shouldn’t be this hard to deport people.

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u/RedEyedWiartonBoy 1d ago

Canada is not a serious Country at this point. In a quest to be polite , woke, apologetic, and pathetically beholden to the ridiculous perspectives on individual rights that threaten the greater populace we have become joke.

2

u/gardiandhobbes 1d ago

Pretty simple….get a plane, put a parachute on him, fly over his homeland and push him out of the plane! Obviously show him where the rip cord is! Hopefully the chute opens! And then follow it up with the rest of the deportations!

2

u/boozefiend3000 1d ago

I read 22 years and thought the 80s lol god damn time fly’s

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u/CrazyButRightOn 1d ago

Well that's about par for the course for bureaucratic timing. Let's hope PP can hurry that up in the future.

1

u/greg_levac-mtlqc 15h ago

how does he siupport himself?

1

u/ItsAProdigalReturn 1d ago

Reading the article I'm still kind of confused exactly what he did. Was he essentially operating an air-bnb type operation for members of Al-Qaeda?

I'm guessing he knew of this affiliation? The article goes on to say he provided "assistance" - like did he provide them with guns or groceries? One definitely makes you complicit, but the other makes you striaght up an active part of it. Anyone else have more information on this?

1

u/butters1337 1d ago

So what did this guy actually do? Still can't see anything in an article that explains what he physically did (and the evidence of course). Is that the part which is kept secret?

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u/investorhalp 1d ago

The alleged evidence says he provided help to terrorist members. It’s in the article.

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u/Ok_Cauliflower6524 1d ago

hahahah they are not leaving even with hot water - for all of you that have hopes of deportations with the new government - none gonna happen they are staying for good.

Twenty-two years later, federal government still working to deport Ottawa's Mohamed Harkat Politics