Will Martin's Release Finally End the Media Circus?

Or will the government's efforts be rebuked again?

If recent history has taught us anything, it's that Canadians in legal trouble can bail themselves out by attracting a large enough media circus.

Recent history has also shown us that they need not always be honest about their situation, either. Brenda Martin and her supporters politicized her predicament by claiming the government had "abandoned" her and not done enough to help her -- claims that were proven to be false.

Now, the Brenda Martin case has come to a sad conclusion a Mexican court has found her guilty of knowingly accepting fraudulently-obtained funds, despite an alleged lack of evidence (her lawyer, Guillermo Cruz, says as much).

Regardless of whether or not Martin is guilty of her alleged crime -- and given the equally-sad state of Mexican "justice", there's an excellent chance she is innocent, and merely being hung out to dry so the system can save face -- there is little question that she and the terminally dishonest Liberal party hacks who have been milking her story for all the political gain they can manage are guilty of concocting a media circus around false pretenses.

Now Secretary of State for Multiculturalism Jason Kenney is riding off to Mexico to prod the release of Martin into the custody of the Canadian justice system along, and now another Canadian family has decided to try their luck at the media circus game, too.

This particular case swirls around Jimmy Chen Jian Yuan, who is currently imprisoned in China while being tried on a four-year-old $2 million fraud case.

Predictably, Chen's family is insisting that the government hasn't done enough to help him, despite the fact that, unlike Martin, he has been formally charged in China, has been tried, and is now awaiting a verdict.

Given the way in which details trickled out of the Martin case painfully slowly (and all too often were simply disregarded once it became apparent they didn't fit the standard politicized narrative), judgment will be reserved on the Chen case here.

Chen may be as innocent as his family insists, and as abandoned by the Canadian government. Or, as with Brenda Martin, there may be more to the story. Only time will reveal the details of this particular case.

However, one has yet to see if Brenda Martin's return to Canada -- and inevitably almost immediate release from Canadian custody -- will put an end to the partisan media circus that has surrounded the entire sorry affair.

One thing remains certain: only the in hands of a pack of unrepentantly dishonest Liberal spin doctors could the Conservative government -- which had done almost everything possible to ensure Martin's fair treatment -- be cast as the villain in this case over the irredeemably corrupt Mexican justice system.

Will Martin's return to Canada end the media circus? Only time will tell. But with the real masterminds of the media circus apparent -- Liberal MP Dan McTeague and former Prime Minister Paul Martin -- one has to suspect that will be rather unlikely.

What Brenda Martin Didn't Want Canadians To Know

Martin not as abandoned as she would like Canadians to believe

Sometimes, being injudiciously detained in a foreign prison means you never have to admit you were wrong.

This would seem to be the case for Brenda Martin, who, it was recently revealed, recieved regular visits and calls from Canadian officials ever since the beginning of her injudicious detainment. On some occasions, she was called multiple times a day.

Martin, who claimed the Canadian government wasn't doing enough to help her, and dismissed the most recent attempts to help as "a dog and pony show", has come up with a rather novel defence.

"I find it horrendous that my privacy would be breached in an attempt to smear my name," Martin insists.

She blames the leak on Conservative MP Helena Guergis, who, it was recently revealed didn't visit Martin during a recent visit to Mexico.

Naturally, Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who, along with various internet douchebags has been at the forefront of milking this particular story for partisan gain, agrees.

"There has been a serious breach in the privacy act," McTeague announced. "This is not only a smokescreen, it's... breaking the law."

What McTeague and Martin are overlooking, however, is that Martin's case is -- and has been -- the subject of foreign relations between the government of Canada and the government of Mexico. The document released -- "leaked" as Martin insists -- is actually a summary of the activities of Canadian diplomats on the Brenda Martin file.

It is not subject to privacy law.

Given that this document is not subject to privacy law, one has to wonder where the smokescreen is really being used: by Canadian consular officials defending their reputation by revealing how much work they've done? Or by Brenda Martin, who wanted to conceal that? The answer is obvious.

Keep in mind that this doesn't change the fact that there simply hasn't been enough work put in on this file by Canada's elected officials -- although our public servants in Mexico have been doing their job admirably.

And the real important question regarding this most recent revelation regarding the Martin affair is: what does this change?

Actually, absolutely nothing. The Canadian government still needs to do more to help Brenda Martin -- Foreign Affairs minister Maxime Bernier, in particular, needs to do much, much more.

But Brenda Martin herself needs to be honest as well. Blaming Canadian officials for revealing information she didn't want revealed is little more than a classic bully's defence: it's not her fault for being deceptive, it's the Canadian government's fault for revealing her deception.

If we don't accept that from five-year-olds, we absolutely should not accept it from grown adults.

This Is Not Conservatism

Like it or not, federal inaction on Brenda Martin is inexcusable

The case of Brenda Martin -- the 51-year-old Canadian woman currently being held in Mexico without charge or trial -- has raised a significant question of how Canada addresses situations in which its citizens are held in foreign countries.

Some argue that Canadians who travel or live abroad must agree to live under the legal systems of those countries, regardless of how corrupt they are. Others argue that Martin must be brought home now, that Canadians must not be subjected to the corrupt standard of justice that is passed off as such in countries like Mexico.

Of course, various internet douchebags have done everything they can to politicize the situation -- transforming Martin into a point of contention between Canada and Mexico into the political pawn she's so worried about becoming.

Unfortuantely all too many douchebags from the other side are much too eager to join them.

The arguments seem to come down to two equally contemptible extremes: from the left-wing blogosphere, that the government has been sitting on its hands and doing nothing despite the fact that there have been approximately 100 visits between Martin and the Canadian Consulate in Mexico city; from the right-wing blogosphere, Martin never should have gone to live in Mexico in the first place.

The left-wing's politicization of the Martin affair is purely contemptible.

But the right-wing's assertion that Canadians who go abroad can essentially go fuck themselves if they ever run into any kind of trouble is equally contemptible.

Even more alarming is the fact that these people claim to be conservatives. But there's nothing conservative in the argument that we should abandon our citizens to the tender mercies of an authoritarian state in their time of need.

Conservatives everywhere should be the first to demand that we maintain the sanctity of Canadian citizenship by standing up for our citizens when they're locked away in some foreign gulag -- particularly one with the track record of Mexico.

Apparently, the vision for the future shared by many Canada's right-wing bloggers (alleged conservatives) is a world in which Canadians cannot safely travel abroad for fear of being thrown in a foreign prison indefinitely without charge or trial. (Frankly, one hopes they aren't planning any Mexican or Brazilian vacations in their near future.)

And when they suggest that Martin should be allowed to rot in Mexican prison, they are indisputably wrong.

Frankly, Stephen Harper and the Canadian government need to perform a gut-check on this issue, and bring Brenda Martin home. They should consider any means to do this, up to and including recalling Canada's ambassador to Mexico and expelling their Mexican counterpart from Ottawa -- or even use of covert ops to bring Martin home by force if necessary.

(And if Mexico doesn't like it, they can remember this: we have better guns than they do, and they don't want to be paid that particular visit.)

The Canadian government simply cannot be in the business of abandoning Canadians to the "justice" systems of countries like Mexico -- corrupt to the rotten core -- where justice takes on a perverse meaning that defies the definition of the word.

True Conservatives recognize that. Unfortunately, all too many bloggers who consider themselves conservative -- much like many bloggers who consider themselves liberal -- simply cannot pass that particular test.

They can feel free to check their phony political stripes at the door -- regardless of what they claim, they aren't conservatives.