Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News Service, June 15, 2009
The Conservative government's national security agenda has been set back by a steady losing streak in the Federal Court, a trend that analysts attribute to an emboldened bench that is finding its voice and growing out of a tendency to defer to lawmakers as it did in the early years after 9/11.
In the past two months, the traditionally cautious court has issued stinging decisions ordering the government to repatriate terror suspect Omar Khadr from Guantanamo Bay and bring Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik home from Sudan.
Judges have also issued three biting critiques of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, accusing the spy agency of possibly lying to the court about its intelligence information and being complicit in torture of Canadians abroad.
"It's the end of the honeymoon period -- when national security trumped everything," said Michael Byers, a civil libertarian and a political scientist at University of British Columbia. "Judges are now fighting back." ...
For the full text, see: Courts blocking Tories
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