Tears of an Attorney (not a clown)

Watching the statements of Maher Arar and his lawyer today resulted in a new occurrence in my life.

Never before have I come so close to crying at the carefully considered words of an attorney. He almost broke down himself, as he told the Canadian people why his client wanted a written apology from the prime minister. He told us that Mr. Arar's wife wanted written proof, for the day her children come to her with questions about the allegations that were once leveled against their father. His words conjured in my mind the image of a child, running home from school in tears, having just been told by some ignorant and insensitive peer that his father was a terrorist.

As lawyers are so often considered nothing more then social parasites, it's important to acknowledge that some among them truly have dedicated themselves to the advancement of truth and justice. I applaud what they have done on behalf of Mr. Arar. If only all litigators had such lofty goals, the world would be a better place.

Each and every time this story is revisited, it transports me back in time to the point the story broke, and I remember how it made me feel. How embarrassed I felt, as a Canadian, that our nation and its government could have let such a monstrous perversion of justice befall one of our citizens.

The fury that I felt, mostly directed at the American authorities who dared to violate one of our fellow Canadians in such a despicable manner, is easy to recall. I imagine that many Canadians felt something similar, particularly those who may have been born under an oppressive regime. People who came to Canada looking for a place were they’d be free of persecution, and the threat of torture, must have felt it far more deeply then the rest of us.

Something I heard today however, from the chief counsel of the Arar inquiry, made an impression on me. He said that we, as a people, had failed this man, by failing to cry out, by failing to pressure our own government to free him. It’s something to think about. But will Canadians ever take to the streets over such injustice, or will we always be too slow, too complacent, and suffer the consequences of our inaction?

Musing complete.