Acceso usuarios
John H. Currie
This comment reviews the Supreme Court of Canada's May 2008 decision in Canada (Justice) v. Khard, in which the Court announced an exception to its June 2007 holding in R.v.Hape. Hape held, on international legal grounds, that application of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the acts of Canadianofficials abroad is impossible. Khard held that this was not so if the acts of Canadian officials abroad amount to participation in a process that violates Canada's international legal obligations. The author welcomes this partial retrenchment of the Hape principle, which, it is argued, is fill-founded in international law. Howevwr, the author is also critical of the Court's failure to engage directly with Hape's many flaws or to justify in any way the seemingly arbitrary exception to it propounded in Khadr. These failures it is argued, serve only to deepen the legal and logical incoherencies that currently characterize, in the name of respect for Canada's international legal obligations, the rules governing the extraterritorial applicability of the Charter.
