The Canadian Bar Association has never met a dictator it didn't like

I'm not surprised to read that the Canadian Bar Association has called for the government of Canada to press for the return of terrorist Omar Khadr, currently rotting in Barack Obama's Guantanamo Bay. I've written about Khadr before. In short, he was charged with killing an American, in an American war, as an anti-American terrorist. Let him stand trial in America.

I acknowledge that there is another political view. But that's the thing: it's another political view. And foreign policy, especially relations with our largest ally, is a political thing, not the proper jurisdiction for a court to issue directives about. That's the real outrage here: that an aggressive, activists pair of judges want to play foreign minister, without any of the information and briefings necessary to do the job -- or the political accountability. Nice job if you can get it.

But back to the Canadian Bar Association, the left wing of the federal Liberal Party. If you skim through their self-righteous press releases, you'll see a pattern: they overwhelmingly condemn the United States for "human rights" violations, and are notably silent about such violations from villain states like China, Iran and Russia. (I acknowledge that, since Barack Obama became president, they have denounced Guantanamo Bay with less frequency and venom than when George Bush ran that same institution. Funny how that works.)

Anyways, the CBA was meeting in Dublin, Ireland (huh?) and, true to form, their keynote speaker was Mary Robinson, the bigot who oversaw the anti-Semitic hate-fest at Durban. That fits about right with the CBA's foreign policy: praise terrorists like Khadr and denounce the Jewish state. No surprise that Jennifer Lynch, the chief commissar of the Canadian Human Rights Commission was there. I wonder if she swapped tips with Robinson on anti-Semitism -- Lynch being the proud employer of seven members of neo-Nazi groups.

I'll talk more about Lynch's laughable comments later, but for now the point is the CBA's predictable demand that the Conservative government accede to the Federal Court of Appeal's "direction" to welcome back Khadr.

I can't find it on the Canadian Lawyer website itself, but I did find on "BurmaNet" this item I wrote a couple of years back about the CBA's execrable love-trip to Myanmar, the fascist dictatorship about which the CBA's moral conscience doesn't give a damn -- other than how to get the best deals on trinkets in the bazaars.

Read my column below, and tell me if, like me, you're not much interested in foreign policy and human rights advice from the kind of people who would go on junkets to Burma, without breathing a word about democracy:

March 5, Canadian Lawyer
The Burma boondoggle and human rights - Ezra Levant

There are two ways for Canadian lawyers to visit dictatorships like China and Burma. One is to meet with local dissidents and civil rights activists and learn about their repression and bring international legal and
political pressure on the regimes. The other is the way chosen by the Canadian and Ontario Bar Associations.

In March, the OBA sent a delegation to Burma, a country that brutally represses its own citizens and where civil rights do not exist. It is a regime that murders its political dissidents — or in the case of Aung San
Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning democracy activist who is too well known to be murdered without international incident — holds them under indefinite house arrest.

Suu Kyi has asked that foreign tourists boycott Burma, so as not to lend economic or moral support to its regime. “To suggest that there’s anything new that tourists can teach the people of Burma about their own situation is not simply patronizing, it’s also racist,” she said in a 1999 interview.

Don’t tell that to the OBA. They’re sending a group of 60 Ontario lawyers and their spouses, eager to see Burma’s tourist attractions and shop in its markets. It’s a ghoulish tourism — rather like taking a
bargain-hunting trip to North Korea. To deodorize their grisly vacation, the OBA has set aside a few evenings for “legal meetings.” However, anyone other than government officials or their agents who dare to meet with
foreigners will be arrested by the Burmese government.

Don’t bother Morrisville, Ont., lawyer Doug Grenkie, the past president of
the OBA, with any of that. “There are lawyers practising there and people
who need our support,” he says. Of course, Grenkie doesn’t plan to
actually “support” anyone — he will be filing no lawsuits in Burma’s
kangaroo courts on behalf of Suu Kyi or other dissidents; he won’t be
delivering any petitions to government officials, and he won’t be taking
Burma’s plight to international human rights agencies at the United
Nations or elsewhere. No, according to the itinerary, his entourage will
buy some lovely Burmese lacquerware and rubies, and there’s even a
starlight cruise on the Ayeyarwaddy River. That’s the depth of the OBA’s
commitment to human rights: they’ll keep eating hors d’oeuvres until Suu
Kyi is free.

The OBA shouldn’t bear all the embarrassment, though their trip to Burma
is amongst the most crass. For years, the Canadian Bar Association has
engaged in farcical “exchanges” with their counterparts in China, too.
There is indeed an exchange that goes on, but it’s not Western lawyers
imparting our liberal legal traditions. In exchange for a luxurious
vacation for Canadian lawyers and their spouses, the CBA gives China moral
cover. That’s the exchange. Whenever groups like Amnesty International
highlight China’s appalling lack of human rights, Beijing can point to the
CBA’s eager apologists.

The CBA sends lawyers to “teach” Chinese lawyers, for example, about how
we run criminal defence trials in Canada. Nice, but China isn’t governed
by Canadian law; its conviction rate is over 95 per cent, appeals are
extremely rare, and the death penalty is ubiquitous. Of course, many of
these “crimes” are not what we would consider crimes — the crime of
political dissidence remains law in China, and even following illegal
faiths, from Falun Gong to non-sanctioned Christianity, is punishable by
imprisonment or death, including a forced human organ harvesting program
that would make Josef Mengele proud.

What is the point of “teaching” Chinese lawyers about constitutional
freedoms, procedural fairness and the rule of law when China’s legal
system has none of those traits and when it is just another arm of the
Communist Party? There is a word for such a sham that the Russian
Communists invented: the Potemkin Village. At least that was built by the
Communists themselves as a propaganda ploy. It’s a Chinese innovation to
get Western liberals to pay for a propaganda exercise to cover up China’s
appalling — and worsening — human rights record.

It is strange that the CBA and OBA are a party to fascist regimes like
China and Burma. In Canada, the bar associations are on the cutting edge
of human rights and civil rights, relentlessly badgering Canada’s
government on everything from gay marriage to racial quotas to outlawing
spanking. Canada may be one of the freest countries in the world, but
that’s never enough for the CBA. China — the world’s greatest executioner
— is the toast of the CBA. Perhaps all the Canadian government has to do
to defang the CBA is take some lawyers and their spouses on an exotic
shopping vacation.