Abstract
The Supreme Court of Canada judgment in Khadr rules that the Charter applies to the actions of Canadian officials who interrogated Omar Khadr in Guantánamo Bay. It rules that their conduct violated section 7 of the Charter. Although the Court acknowledges that a request for repatriation would be an effective remedy, it declines to order the government to take any specific action to remedy the violation, and simply declares that Khadr’s rights were and are being violated. This comment develops two points: The timidity of the remedial aspect of the judgment is presaged and enabled by a narrow and convoluted characterization of how the government violated Khadr’s section 7 right to life, liberty and security of the person. Second, the significance of the Court’s remedial ruling in terms of its institutional responsibility to protect human rights must be read against a political context in which the government had repeatedly and unequivocally asserted that it would not seek Khadr’s repatriation of its own accord.
Citation Information
Macklin, Audrey.
"Comment on Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr (2010)."
The Supreme Court Law Review: Osgoode’s Annual Constitutional Cases Conference
51.
(2010).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.60082/2563-8505.1197
https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/sclr/vol51/iss1/12
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.