Turns out that even as Walt was writing yesterday's post, adding in the link to the petition against the outrageous payout to an Islamic terrorist who murdered one American and wounded another, the deal had already gone down! The payment of C$10.5 million (just over US$8 million) was made yesterday, but not announced officially until today. By now the money is doubtless offshore, where the lawyers for Sgt. Chris Speer can't get at it. [Maybe it's on its way to ISIS? Ed.]
The whole thing smells. It was a deal done in secret, for motives which the Liberal cabinet ministers are having a hard time defending. The chief reason, as the Honourable Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety, tells it was that it would have cost even more to keep fighting Mr Khadr's lawyers in the courts. Even then, neither Mr Goodale nor the Honourable Judy Wilson-Reybould (appointed because she's both a woman and an Indian... oops, First Nations Person) would confirm the amount of the hush money. "That's part of the settlement and it's confidential," said Ms Wilson-Reybould.
Mr Goodale and Ms Wilson-Reybould were shoved out from behind the curtain to face the press in the absence of the Right Honourable Justin "Junior" Trudeau, who is conveniently out of the country schmoozing with Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron at the G-20 talking shop in Hamburg, Germany. Ms Chrystia Freeland, the useless Minister of Foreign Affairs (or Global Affairs or whatever the latest PC name is), signed the official statement along with Mr Goodale, but was nowhere to be found when it came time to cast a few pearls before the Canadian taxpayers.
Also worth noting is the fact that the whole sordid story leaked out -- conveniently, again -- just after the Canuck Parliament rose for the summer recess, so MPs will have no opportunity to ask embarrassing questions (let alone hold any kind of debate) until the honourable members resume their "work" in the fall. But that didn't stop newly-minted Conservative leader Andrew Scheer from making a statement of his own. Click here to see what he had to say.
Further reading: Rex Murphy in today's National Post: "Trudeau skips the theme socks for his scheming Khadr apology". Key quote: "Three things mark the Khadr announcement. The government didn’t want to be associated with it. They wanted it done swiftly. And they didn’t want Trudeau on the same continent when the news broke."
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