Charkaoui To Be Back at the Supreme Court

In a leave application decision released this morning, the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) confirmed that Adil Charkaoui (whose recent appeal was the subject of much discussion here at The Court) will be back at the SCC for another hearing.

Mr. Charkaoui is once again raising constitutional and administrative law issues relating to his detention under anti-terrorism provisions of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, SC 2001, c 27. In 2003, Mr. Charkaoui filed a motion for a stay of the proceedings against him. This motion was denied. He complained on the basis of three problems in the trial judge’s decision:

• That his right to procedural fairness had been breached because he had belatedly received a summary of interviews conducted by CSIS with him.
• That CSIS’ failure to produce their notes or recordings of these interviews (which they said had been destroyed, pursuant to their own policies) resulted in a lack of procedural fairness.
• That the trial judge had erred by admitting new evidence that came to light after the certificate had been issued.

The Federal Court of Appeal rejected all three of Mr. Charkaoui’s arguments.

In a very brief set of concurring reasons, Justice Letourneau noted that Mr. Charkaoui “argues that he himself could introduce new exculpatory evidence while, on the other hand, the Ministers could not offer new incriminating evidence” and that “procedural fairness is not a one-way street or a street that is exclusively reserved for him.”