RCMP Watch

Jennifer Ditchburn - Canadian Press

A new passport requirement for travel to the United States is currently the only serious irritant between the two countries, U.S. ambassador David Wilkins said Monday, failing to mention the Maher Arar affair during a prepared speech.

Wilkins, Washington’s top diplomat in Canada, was finally asked by an audience member at a Rotary Club luncheon to explain why Arar’s name remains on an American watch list as a potential threat to the country.
The ambassador would only point to a headline-grabbing statement he made last week in which he said Arar’s deportation from the United States and his continuing negative status was based on information gleaned from various sources.

He twice said that people who want to be removed from a watch list are welcome to apply to have their status reconsidered.

“While I appreciate your question, I issued a statement Friday about that, I stand behind it and that’s all I’m going to say on it,” Wilkins said.

“There is a process about a watch list, people can apply to be removed, there is a procedure in place.”

Being on a watch list prevents one from travelling in the United States or even flying over U.S. airspace.

Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested by U.S. officials while he was transiting through a New York airport in 2002. Canadian police had provided faulty information to them suggesting Arar had ties to Al Qaeda. He was eventually deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.

But Arar’s name was cleared in the fall by a public inquiry led by Justice Dennis O’Connor, who said it was unlikely the U.S. relied on any other information but that provided by Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has asked the U.S. government to apologize to Arar, but settled on a promise they would collaborate more fully on any future deportation cases.

A counsel for O’Connor said Friday he suspected that Washington had a vested interested in not clearing Arar’s name.

That assessment was just about the only thing Wilkins would react to when pressed repeatedly by reporters to speak about Arar.

“I certainly would think it would be a mistake for you to read that into the position that’s been taken by the United States,” Wilkins said.

He said that he would not comment further because there is still litigation pending in the United States on Arar’s case. Arar filed a challenge last Tuesday in a U.S. Appeals court after a lower court threw out the case in February, arguing that there was a greater need to protect secrecy and diplomacy.

On the passport issue, Wilkins reiterated the line U.S. President George Bush has taken that the new identification requirement is a legislative reality that Canadians must come to grips with.

Citizens of any country, including Canada, will have to produce a passport when entering the U.S. at an airport by Jan. 231, and at land and sea crossings by June 2009.

“I hope that citizens on either side of our border don’t get lulled in to a false sense of security or false sense that there may never be a need to have a passport to cross the border,” he said. “I would urge you, as I do everywhere I go in Canada, urge your friends and neighbours and family members to get a passport. It’s that simple.”