Save yourself some money, read me instead

The Globe and Mail, today:

The next time the Canadian government tells you it has secrets it needs to keep to protect national security, feel free to laugh out loud....

Mr. Arar is an Everyman who in the name of national security was made to endure some of the worst that the state can do to a human being. It was the United States that deported him. But important people in the RCMP and Canada's Foreign Affairs Department helped ensure that he stayed a good long time in his Syrian cell. Afterward, when Judge O'Connor tried to get the truth out, the Canadian government fought him in court for a year to keep the lid on 1,500 words.

We now know that the public had a right to see those words. They remind us of how fragile our civil liberties can be in a dangerous time.

Me, on an unrelated matter, January 2007:

So, very slowly children: If the government says it knows something you don't, and refuses to tell you what it is, the government is lying.

I suppose it's too much to ask that the Canadian people consider not electing either of the parties who spent the last few years lying to us about Maher Arar, right?