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September 20, 2006
Not sorry
Susan Riley ends a fine column (subscribers only) about the RCMP's disgraceful handling of the Maher Arar affair with this maddening cliché:
…we have responsibility as journalists not to trade in whispers, and as citizens not to believe everything we are told. And… to let Arar know how sorry we are.
The idea that citizens should apologize or take responsibility for the incompetence of their governments is bad enough, especially considering the pains governments have taken to alienate themselves from their constituents. Now that John Q. Canadian risks prosecution by smoking in a private club or buckling his kids up without booster seats, he is less likely than ever to picture himself in the same Venn diagram as his governments. I wonder how many people in line at the Passport Office or at their local Ministry of Transportation would apologize for what the RCMP did.
But worse, there's something very patronizing about the idea of seeing Arar on the street and apologizing to him: "Sorry about what Canada did to you, old boy. Chin up!" He's Canadian. In failing Maher Arar the Canadian government and the RCMP failed us all, and that's a far greater sort of kinship than could be conveyed with an insincere apology.
(Cross-posted to the Shotgun.)
Posted by Chris Selley at September 20, 2006 10:58 PM
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Comments
Hey Chris, from one nitpicky spelling geek to another (I hope you're another!), you need to capitalize the 'v' and tack another 'n' on 'ven' if you're talking about what I think you're talking about.
Posted by: Damian at September 21, 2006 09:49 AM
Is anyone else having a hoot reading the cross-post comment thread, where the 'Gunners are implying Arar deserved to be tortured in a Syrian prison?
Liz J really steps things up by wrapping ordeal in sarcastic quotation marks.
Posted by: Jay Jardine at September 21, 2006 01:10 PM
So that's why I couldn't find it in the dictionary.
Posted by: Chris Selley at September 21, 2006 11:46 PM