Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. intelligence analyst who was convicted in one the largest breaches of classified information in American history, is fighting to be allowed into Canada.
The Canadian government is seeking to ban her from entering the country, arguing that she should be denied entry because of the serious criminality of her prior convictions on espionage charges in her home country.
Manning is appearing virtually today in front of the Immigration and Refugee Board for an admissibility hearing. The administrative tribunal makes decisions about who can enter and stay in Canada.
“I really like Canada,” she told the hearing today.
“I have many friends in Canada and obviously the pandemic has gotten in the way of a lot of this, but certainly in 2018 and 2019 I wanted to visit some friends in Canada, particularly in Montreal and Vancouver.”
Her case dates back to September 2017, when border officers denied her entry at Quebec’s St-Bernard-de-Lacolle border crossing. At the time, the government, citing her espionage charge, argued that if it had been committed in Canada “this offence would equate to an indictable offence, namely, treason.”
Anthony Lashley, a lawyer for the CBSA representing the minister, said the government is asking the tribunal to issue Manning a removal order and rule that she is not permitted to enter again.
Lashley spent the morning questioning Manning on how she accessed, downloaded and shared thousands of classified documents with WikiLeaks in 2010 while serving in the U.S. military.
He also questioned her on her previous plans to share information with various news organizations.
‘Whistleblowing are acts of honesty’: lawyer
Manning’s lawyer Joshua Blum argued her American offences are not equivalent to Canadian offences, making her not inadmissible.
He pointed to a provision in the Security of Information Act, Canada’s national secrets act, which includes whistleblower protection in the “public interest.”
“We have a public interest defence for what Manning was convicted of,” he said. “The U.S. doesn’t.”
Blum also argued Manning’s actions were justified by “necessity” and that the public interest in disclosing that information outweighed the harm.
“The ongoing and unreported killings of Iraqi and Afghan civilians necessitated this act of whistleblowing,” he said.
“We further add the acts of whistleblowing are acts of honesty, not fraudulence.”
Manning found guilty on multiple charges in 2013
Manning has been both praised as a whistleblower and maligned as a traitor for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified government documents.
She said she wanted to expose what she considered to be the U.S. military’s disregard for how the Iraq War was affecting civilians, and that she did it “out of love” for her country.
In 2013, she was convicted of six counts of violating the United States’s Espionage Act — which forbids unauthorized people from sharing national defence information — and a handful of other charges, including stealing government property. She was acquitted of the most serious charge against her: aiding the enemy.
When asked by her counsel why she shared the documents, Manning said “it always feels so self evident.”
“I was just shocked at how little people knew about how bad the war in particular was,” she said.
While being questioned by the adjudicator, Manning said she didn’t share sensitive documents that would reveal sources of U.S. government intelligence.
In one of his last acts as president, Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence in 2017. She was released from military prison after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence.
Manning was granted a visa to enter Canada to speak at an event back in 2018, but it came with no formal resolution of her admissibility.
Ottawa wanted Manning to appear in person
Ahead of today’s hearing, the government objected to Manning appearing via video conference because that would prevent officials from deporting her immediately if an order came down quickly.
“The minister submits that holding an admissibility hearing without the person concerned being physically present in Canada would preclude them from enforcing a removal order which may be issued at the end of the proceedings,” says the text of an interlocutory decision that rejected the government’s request.
The content of that decision was first reported by the National Post.
Last week, lawyers acting for the minister of Public Safety asked the Immigration and Refugee Board to delay the hearing until Manning could appear in person.
The board said no.
“If she were physically in Canada when the order was made, the requirement would be that she leave Canada,” wrote adjudicator Marisa Musto.
“Given that she is already outside Canada, a fact which is not in question, it can be said that the ‘objective’ of [the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act] in regards to denying access to Canadian territory to persons who are inadmissible would, de facto, be fulfilled.”
Manning described the four-year process to land a Canadian hearing as “exhausting.”
“Plus, I also have to relive this era, going over stuff that happened a decade ago again,” she said.
CALGARY – MEG Energy says it earned $167 million in its third quarter, down from $249 million during the same quarter last year.
The company says revenues for the quarter were $1.27 billion, down from $1.44 billion during the third quarter of 2023.
Diluted earnings per share were 62 cents, down from 86 cents a year earlier.
MEG Energy says it successfully completed its debt reduction strategy, reducing its net debt to US$478 million by the end of September, down from US$634 million during the prior quarter.
President and CEO Darlene Gates said moving forward all the company’s free cash flow will be returned to shareholders through expanded share buybacks and a quarterly base dividend.
The company says its capital expenditures for the quarter increased to $141 million from $83 million a year earlier, mainly due to higher planned field development activity, as well as moderate capacity growth projects.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
Premier David Eby is proposing an all-party committee investigate mistakes made during the British Columbia election vote tally, including an uncounted ballot box and unreported votes in three-quarters of the province’s 93 ridings.
The proposal comes after B.C.’s chief electoral officer blamed extreme weather, long working hours and a new voting system for human errors behind the mistakes in last month’s count, though none were large enough to change the initial results.
Anton Boegman says the agency is already investigating the mistakes to “identify key lessons learned” to improve training, change processes or make recommendations for legislative change.
He says the uncounted ballot box containing about 861 votes in Prince George-Mackenzie was never lost, and was always securely in the custody of election officials.
Boegman says a failure in five districts to properly report a small number of out-of-district votes, meanwhile, rippled through to the counts in 69 ridings.
Eby says the NDP will propose that a committee examine the systems used and steps taken by Elections BC, then recommend improvements in future elections.
“I look forward to working with all MLAs to uphold our shared commitment to free and fair elections, the foundation of our democracy,” he said in a statement Tuesday, after a news conference by Boegman.
Boegman said if an independent review does occur, “Elections BC will, of course, fully participate in that process.”
He said the mistakes came to light when a “discrepancy” of 14 votes was noticed in the riding of Surrey-Guildford, spurring a review that increased the number of unreported votes there to 28.
Surrey-Guildford was the closest race in the election and the NDP victory there gave Eby a one-seat majority. The discovery reduced the NDP’s victory margin from 27 to 21, pending the outcome of a judicial review that was previously triggered because the race was so close.
The mistakes in Surrey-Guildford resulted in a provincewide audit that found the other errors, Boegman said.
“These mistakes were a result of human error. Our elections rely on the work of over 17,000 election officials from communities across the province,” he said.
“Election officials were working 14 hours or more on voting days and on final voting day in particular faced extremely challenging weather conditions in many parts of the province.
“These conditions likely contributed to these mistakes,” he said.
B.C.’s “vote anywhere” model also played a role in the errors, said Boegman, who said he had issued an order to correct the results in the affected ridings.
Boegman said the uncounted Prince George-Mackenzie ballot box was used on the first day of advance voting. Election officials later discovered a vote hadn’t been tabulated, so they retabulated the ballots but mistakenly omitted the box of first-day votes, only including ballots from the second day.
Boegman said the issues discovered in the provincewide audit will be “fully documented” in his report to the legislature on the provincial election, the first held using electronic tabulators.
He said he was confident election officials found all “anomalies.”
B.C. Conservative Party Leader John Rustad had said on Monday that the errors were “an unprecedented failure by the very institution responsible for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of our elections.”
Rustad said he was not disputing the outcomes as judicial recounts continue, but said “it’s clear that mistakes like these severely undermine public trust in our electoral process.”
Rustad called for an “independent review” to make sure the errors never happen again.
Boegman, who said the election required fewer than half the number of workers under the old paper-based system, said results for the election would be returned in 90 of the province’s 93 ridings on Tuesday.
Full judicial recounts will be held in Surrey-Guildford and Kelowna-Centre, while a partial recount of the uncounted box will take place in Prince George-Mackenzie.
Boegman said out-of-district voting had been a part of B.C.’s elections for many decades, and explained how thousands of voters utilized the province’s vote-by-phone system, calling it a “very secure model” for people with disabilities.
“I think this is a unique and very important part of our elections, providing accessibility to British Columbians,” he said. “They have unparalleled access to the ballot box that is not found in other jurisdictions in Canada.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
WINNIPEG – A public memorial honouring former judge, senator and chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into residential schools, Murray Sinclair, is set to take place in Winnipeg on Sunday.
The event, which is being organized by the federal and Manitoba governments, will be at Canada Life Centre, home of the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.
Sinclair died Monday in a Winnipeg hospital at the age of 73.
A teepee and a sacred fire were set up outside the Manitoba legislature for people to pay their respects hours after news of his death became public. The province has said it will remain open to the public until Sinclair’s funeral.
Sinclair’s family continues to invite people to visit the sacred fire and offer tobacco.
The family thanked the public for sharing words of love and support as tributes poured in this week.
“The significance of Mazina Giizhik’s (the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky) impact and reach cannot be overstated,” the family said in a statement on Tuesday, noting Sinclair’s traditional Anishinaabe name.
“He touched many lives and impacted thousands of people.”
They encourage the public to celebrate his life and journey home.
A visitation for extended family, friends and community is also scheduled to take place Wednesday morning.
Leaders from across Canada shared their memories of Sinclair.
Premier Wab Kinew called Sinclair one of the key architects of the era of reconciliation.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Sinclair was a teacher, a guide and a friend who helped the country navigate tough realities.
Sinclair was the first Indigenous judge in Manitoba — the second in Canada.
He served as co-chair of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba to examine whether the justice system was failing Indigenous people after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne and the police shooting death of First Nations leader J.J. Harper.
In leading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he participated in hundreds of hearings across Canada and heard testimony from thousands of residential school survivors.
The commissioners released their widely influential final report in 2015, which described what took place at the institutions as cultural genocide and included 94 calls to action.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
