By Thomas Walkom

Gradually, tentatively, the country is groping its way back to sanity. Yesterday in Toronto, a judge ruled it didn’t make any sense to keep a sick, 46-year-old man who has not been charged with any crime locked up for almost seven years. Meanwhile, in Ottawa, the opposition majority is set to let two of the most odious provisions of Canada’s illiberal anti-terror laws – enacted in panic following 9/11 – die a richly deserved death.

We haven’t gained our equilibrium yet. Egyptian refugee claimant Mohamed Mahjoub may be able to rejoice now that Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley has allowed him to be detained under house arrest rather than in a special jail built just outside of Kingston. But there are still two other immigrants there who have been imprisoned for years without charge.

And while many Canadians have belatedly discovered the importance of civil liberties when it comes to these so-called security certificate cases, few are championing 20-year-old Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen currently held against all the norms of international law in George Bush’s Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Which is to say that we have a way to go.

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