Canadians held in Syria: No authorized obligation to provide them back, law firm suggests

OTTAWA –

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The Constitution of Legal rights and Freedoms does not obligate Ottawa to repatriate Canadians held in Syrian camps, a governing administration lawyer informed a Federal Court docket hearing Tuesday.

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Spouse and children associates of 23 detained Canadians — 6 women, 4 guys and 13 children — are asking the court docket to order the federal government to prepare for their return, expressing that refusing to do so violates the Constitution.

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The Canadian citizens are amid the many foreign nationals in Syrian camps run by Kurdish forces that reclaimed the war-torn region from the extremist Islamic Point out of Iraq and the Levant.

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Federal attorney Anne Turley instructed the court docket there is no lawful obligation to aid their repatriation beneath the Constitution, or in any statute or intercontinental regulation.

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“In arguing that the failure to repatriate violates Constitution legal rights, the applicants are creating novel arguments. To day the courts have taken a measured and careful approach to the extraterritorial application of the Charter,” Turley stated.

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“It made it obvious that in get for the Charter to apply overseas, there will have to be evidence of Canadian officers taking part in routines of the overseas point out that are contrary to Canada’s international obligations or fundamental human legal rights norms. There is no this kind of evidence in this article or allegations of that character.”

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The people today concerned in the court docket scenario are detained abroad by international entities that are working independently of Canada’s jurisdiction or control, Turley additional.

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Demanding the govt to take motion would have to have the court to wade into matters of Crown regulate over intercontinental relations and overseas affairs, she stated.

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A handful of women and youngsters have returned from the area in recent several years, but Canada has, for the most aspect, not adopted the path of other nations that have correctly repatriated citizens.

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Even so, World Affairs Canada a short while ago established that the 6 ladies and 13 little ones provided in the court docket circumstance have satisfied a threshold beneath its January 2021 coverage framework for providing amazing aid.

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As a result, Worldwide Affairs has begun assessments below the guiding principles of the framework to determine no matter if to give that aid.

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The names of the women of all ages and little ones have not been disclosed.

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The Canadian adult males include Jack Letts, whose moms and dads have publicly pushed the govt to help their son. They maintain there is no evidence he turned a terrorist fighter abroad.

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In a filing with the courtroom, the family members of the detained Canadians argue the procedure by which the government has established no matter whether to repatriate its citizens “constitutes a breach of procedural fairness.”

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They say no applicant was informed of the federal plan framework set in position to identify whether or not to increase guidance until November 2021, some 10 months just after it was applied, and about two months following the court application started.

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The loved ones associates want a declaration that the government’s lack of motion was unreasonable, a formal ask for for repatriation of the family users, issuance of unexpected emergency vacation documents and authorization of a agent to facilitate their return.

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Turley argued that the course of action is a lot more elaborate than it may well seem.

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“It’s not, as the candidates would have you see it, a basic, easy exercising,” she mentioned. “This is not a just one-dimensions-fits-all solution.”

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The government’s plan framework is intended to guideline conclusion-producing about possible remarkable guidance “on an personal basis,” Turley said.

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Officers must take into consideration the safety and security of Canadian governing administration officers included in repatriation efforts as perfectly as that of the personal detainees, she explained.

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In addition, the government ought to weigh “the danger to general public protection and countrywide safety, the safety of the Canadian public,” Turley included.

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“The federal government has to evaluate these variables, and they are fluid. It is a stage-in-time choice.”

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This report by The Canadian Press was 1st printed Dec. 6, 2022.