- Dec 5, 2010
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Get ready for a Canada that's more active on the world stage.
"Our party's great purpose is nothing less than to prepare our nation to shoulder a bigger load in a world that will require it of us," said Prime
Minister Stephen Harper in his keynote speech at the Conservative Party's policy conference Friday night.
His speech capped a long day of policy work by party delegates.
Huddled behind closed doors, they whittled about 80 policy resolutions down to just 10 to be voted on by all delegates on Saturday.
Former minister Stockwell Day admitted he was keen about the proposal to take away the citizenship of any Canadian convicted of high treason for fighting Canadian or allied forces abroad.
"I think it sends a very good message that people who are citizens of Canada should be supporting Canada and not going off and fighting for groups, organizations, and countries that are against the very things we believe in," he said.
Too bloody right. Khadr and his family should have been thrust back as soon as we saw what they were doing.
[The Khadrs:] Canada's First Family of Terrorism
"We are an Al Qaeda family." So spoke one of the Khadrs, a Muslim Canadian household whose near single-minded devotion to Osama bin Laden contains important lessons for the West.
Their saga began in 1975, when Ahmad Said al-Khadr left his native Egypt for Canada and soon after married a local Palestinian woman. He studied computer engineering at the University of Ottawa and engaged in research for a major telecommunications firm. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Khadr went to work for Human Concern International, an Ottawa-based charity founded in 1980 with the purported aim to "alleviate human suffering," but with a record of promoting militant Islam.
In 1985, in the course of working in Afghanistan, Khadr met bin Laden and became his close associate. Sometimes Khadr was described as the highest ranking of Al Qaeda's 75 Canadian operatives.
The terrorism-related activities of other Khadr family members — wife, one of two daughters, three of four sons — complement their patriarch's record.
* Wife Maha Elsamnah took her then 14-year-old son Omar from Canada to Pakistan in 2001 and enrolled him for Al Qaeda training.
* Daughter Zaynab, 23, was engaged to one terrorist and married, with Osama bin Laden himself present at the nuptials, a Qaeda member in 1999. Zaynab endorses the 9/11 atrocities and hopes her infant daughter will die fighting Americans.
* Son Abdullah, 22, is a Qaeda fugitive constantly on the move to elude capture. Canadian intelligence states he ran a Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan during the Taliban period, something Abdullah denies.
* Son Omar, 17, stands accused of hurling a grenade in July 2002, killing an American medic in Afghanistan. Omar lost sight in one eye in the fighting and is now a U.S. detainee in Guantánamo.
* Son Abdul Karim, 14, half-paralyzed by wounds sustained in the October 2003 shoot-out that left his father dead, is presently prisoner in a Pakistani hospital.
[The Khadrs:] Canada's First Family of Terrorism :: Daniel Pipes
Enough of this sick emigration.
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