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.A clearly traumatized nine-year-old Omar sometimes slept beside his father in the hospital bed as he hadwhen his father had been injured.Elsamnah also took her children to thefront lawn of the Canadian High Commission in Islamabad where shestaged a protest and demanded that the Canadian government help oneof its citizens.The timing of their protest was perfect.A planeload of Canada s elite left Ottawa just after New Years 1996on an eleven-day, four-country trade mission led by Canadian PrimeMinister Jean Chrétien.On board were seven provincial premiers, manyof the country s mayors, a smattering of university professors and morethan 300 business professionals.There was also the requisite contingent ofCanadian journalists who would document the prime minister s every stepthrough India, Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia.These international trade missions were seen as a way to secure foreignbusiness deals and showcase what resources Canada had to offer other thanwheat and wood.Top business professionals paid their own way to travelwith the politicians, who brought publicity and clout.Chrétien called thetrips Team Canada.Chrétien s ascent through politics had been a classic Canadian rags-to-riches saga.Born January 11, 1934, in Shawinigan, Quebec, Chrétienwas the second youngest of nineteen children, only nine of whomsurvived infancy. Jean Chrétien in youth is small, skinny, deaf in one ear,deformed at the mouth, slightly dyslexic, poor of pocket and intellectuallyunadorned, Chrétien biographer Lawrence Martin wrote.Chrétien,49 GUANTANAMO S CHILDwho often called himself le petit gars de Shawinigan, the little guyfrom Shawinigan, overcame his early shortcomings to attend law schooland then talk his way into politics to become Canada s twentieth primeminister. The art of politics is learning to walk with your back to the wall,your elbows high, and a smile on your face, Chrétien wrote in his 1985memoir Straight From The Heart. It s a survival game played under theglare of lights.If you don t learn that you re quickly finished.It s damntough and you can t complain; you just have to take it and give it back.The press wants to get you.The Opposition wants to get you.Even someof the bureaucrats want to get you. Chrétien s first Team Canada trip in 1994 to China was a rousingsuccess.Government estimates put the price of business contracts signedin the billions.There was also rare collegiality among the politicians.Theycalled Chrétien Captain Canada, and at the end of the tour, Ontario sNew Democrat Premier, Bob Rae, presented Chrétien with a hockey jerseywith a C emblazoned on the front.But by 1996, Chrétien had been in power for three years and the politicalclimate had changed.His stance on human rights had come under fireafter he failed to condemn the Chinese government for arresting activistsbefore the sixth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.The detentions ofTiananmen student leader Wang Dan and Ding Zilin, the mother of oneof the students killed, particularly upset governments worldwide. What,you might ask, does the government of Canada have to say about all this? thundered an editorial in the Canadian national paper, the Globe and Mail. Has the Department of Foreign Affairs issued a statement of concern?Has our ambassador registered a private protest? Have our representativesinquired about the health of Wang Dan or the status of Ding Zilin? Theanswer is: none of the above.This is typical of Canada s stand (or lackof it) on human rights in China. Chrétien only angered his critics in trying to defend his actions. China is a huge county and Canada is a small one.Canada does not havethe power to force a change in China s human rights behavior, Chrétientold reporters.There were serious domestic problems facing Chrétien, too, sinceCanada had narrowly survived a vote that could have torn the countryapart.The October 30, 1995, referendum in the French-speaking province50 The Khadr Effectof Quebec asked voters if the province should secede from Canada.Onlyby a small margin did Quebecers vote against separating.Some criticized Chrétien for forging ahead with the Team Canadatrip barely two months after the vote.In an apparent snub, the premiersof Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan said they were opting out of thetrip.Saskatchewan s Roy Romanow and Alberta s Ralph Klein both citeddomestic commitments.One Maritime premier on the tour later said thatthe premiers are implicitly suggesting that the rest of us don t care as muchabout what happens at home. Against this negative backdrop, Chrétien s communications team wasdesperate to keep Team Canada 96 on message.They wanted to fill thepapers with photo ops of smiling politicians locked in handshakes.Littledid they know that more problems lay ahead.As Chrétien s communicationsdirector Peter Donolo later lamented, There s always a problem with thesequel. Even before Team Canada arrived at its first stop, the trip s agendachanged.The delegation was met at Toronto s Pearson InternationalAirport by a group of children with a message: Don t forget India sproblem with child labor. Today, there are millions of child laborersin South Asia, working in slave-like conditions, the children told theleaders and assembled press. These include children working as carpetweavers, in brassware factories, in stone quarries, in textiles, in glassand bangle factories, in match and firework industries, in agriculture,as domestics and as child prostitutes. The children at the airport weremembers of a group called Free the Children, which had been started byCraig Kielburger, a savvy thirteen-year-old from Thornhill.Kielburgerwas already in Asia with his parents meeting various powerful figures,including Mother Theresa, as part of his campaign.Now he was settingthe stage for Chrétien s arrival.The media loved the story.Here was an articulate kid taking on thelabor laws of India just as Canada was trying to strengthen business ties.But Chrétien did not try to sidestep the issue.Once in India, he metwith Kielburger and raised the issue of child labor during his meetingswith high-ranking officials, including one on January 11 with PrimeMinister P.V.Narasimha Rao.In a speech in New Delhi, Chrétien told51 GUANTANAMO S CHILDthe business audience, All of us must work to alleviate the poverty andunderdevelopment that is at the root of this horrible problem. The story may have diverted attention from the focus of the trip, butit had been managed well.But another story was brewing.On December30, 1995, the Toronto Star had carried a story by a freelance journalist inIslamabad on Khadr s detention and hunger strike
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