Dick Cheney Should Be Barred From Canada, Says Parliament Member

In September 2009, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was scheduled to land his private jet in Newfoundland, Canada, for a stopover on his way back home. Gaddafi ultimately canceled those plans after being informed that Canadian law prevents known war criminals from entering the country.

Canadian Parliament member Don Davies says that the same logic should apply to Dick Cheney.

Cheney spoke about his revisionist new book In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir at a $500-a-ticket dinner at the Bon Mot Book Club in Vancouver last night.

But before Cheney's visit, Davies wrote a letter to Canada's Immigration Minister Jason Kenney demanding that the former vice president be denied entry to the country based on the law that says anyone who has committed war crimes cannot enter Canada.

Davies spoke with Seattle Weekly about what he sees as "matter of consistency."

Don Davies

"Mr. Cheney has admitted on numerous occasions and in the memoirs he plans to speak about, that he endorsed, authorized, and failed to prevent a program of waterboarding and sleep deprivation," Davies tells us. "Waterboarding is simulated drowning. I think in the minds of right-thinking people, that is torture. Under Canadian law, if a person is convicted of (or admits to) a serious crime, or a war crime, or a crime against humanity, it would render him inadmissible."

Davies never heard back from Minister Kenney after he sent his letter. A spokesman for the country's Immigration Ministry was not immediately available for comment.

Yet Mr. Kenney has some experience in denying entry to certain people for political reasons. In 2009, Kenney denied former British Parliament Member and journalist George Galloway entry into the country on the basis that he had provided medical aid to people in Gaza and thus supposedly aided the group Hamas.

Davies says if a peaceful activist can been banned from the country, then an admitted supporter of state-sponsored torture should too.

"This really has nothing to do with Mr. Cheney's politics," Davies contends. "Mr. Cheney has every right to believe what he wants and to say what he wants to say. This is about being consistent."

Next month, Cheney's former boss (or was it the other way around?), George W. Bush, will visit Surrey, British Columbia.

Davies told us that he will decide soon whether to oppose Bush's visit as well.

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