“The House of Commons starts its proceedings with a prayer. The chaplain looks at the assembled members with their varied intelligence and then prays for the country.”

Alfred Denning, 1989

The Reasonable Doubt column is still writing about Ugo. His story is a tragedy that should become a public scandal, warranting an inquiry into how we can let something like this happen.

Unfortunately, public attention has been recently diverted toward Amanda Bynes and watching stock cars turn left. Many of those whose attention is diverted, sadly, run for public office. Some might even make it into cabinet.

Ugo lied. The lie he told was a criminal offence. The lie he told meant that he would get deported from Canada and his refugee claim could not be decided on its merits.

Before I step onto my high horse, I’ll say this: lying is never morally right, but the sanction should be proportionate to the context and consequence of the lie.

I lied at lunch today. I told the server everything was fine. It was not. My coffee was lukewarm when I like it hot.

Big deal, right? I hope so. I lied about something benign because consequence would be that someone hustling through a busy lunch shift would have to do something twice to appease a trivial shortcoming.

Hopefully, we can agree that we are all dishonest to a certain extent, so let’s think about why Ugo lied.

Ugo lied because he was unaware that he had certain legal rights in Canada. He lied because the alternative was, in all likelihood, being beaten, savagely tortured, and/or to languish in a squalor that would make even the worst slums in Canada look superfluous.

He lied because someone else had misled him to believe it was the right thing to do in a place he had never been to, a place where the toilet water is probably cleaner than his tap water at home (if he had running water).

He lied because he did not know that public officials could be trusted in Canada.

On certain levels, the lies Ugo told are not even that different from the heroic ones told by the real people underlying this year’s Argo.

Because of this lie and the conviction for doing so, Ugo was ineligible to claim refugee status. He will go back to a place where he will likely endure unimaginable atrocities.

Now, let’s back up to the place where our laws are made. Elected officials like to persuade voters they are doing something to improve Canada. They work extremely hard, but the optics are ultimately what matter most to re-election.

In the past seven years, elected officials have stood on soapboxes, perhaps more than ever before, to proclaim that they are taking concrete measures to protect Canadians.

This has often taken the form of painting all those accused of a crime with the same brush, ignoring the individual and factual circumstances in which the offence took place. Some examples include:

1. The use of mandatory minimum prison sentences;
2. Removing house arrest for certain crimes altogether;
3. Restricting the rights of accused persons to raise challenges to evidence on the basis of Charter violations;
4. Removing the rights of people sentenced to more than 6 months to appeal a removal order; and
5. Prohibiting persons convicted of entering the country with a false passport from claiming refugee status even where refugee status is warranted.

When an MP stands up in the House of Commons and proclaims “We are not going to let liars and cheats through our borders” that sounds like a good idea, as a general rule. Honest, caring people (who, for the most part, care about people like Ugo and would empathize with his conduct) vote for the MP promising to advance justice in this way, without understanding the consequences.

The problem is that there are exceptions to every rule. We live in a society that mandates the individual is not going to be unnecessarily punished to satisfy the will of the majority.

We also live in a society where the punishment must fit the crime. Should Ugo be punished? Yes. Should that punishment be what he got in his unique circumstances? I personally don’t think so. If he was a Canadian citizen who did what he did, all that probably would have happened was his right to apply for a passport would be suspended.

Passing a law with absolute inflexibility to address a perceived or real evil is short-sighted. I will not say that gun crime is right or that people should be allowed to enter Canada on the basis of lies unscathed. They are not.

That said, the unfortunate reality is that there will be instances when even serious crimes have an explanation—times where the punishment must be carefully crafted to address the crime because of the specific circumstances of the offender and the offence. Laws which require specific punishments (e.g. mandatory minimums) prevent judges from considering unique circumstances.

I will leave aside for another day the matter of whether our streets are safe or whether our immigration system is broken. It just is not as simple as whether you’re with Vic Toews or the child pornographers (interestingly, given the ultimatum, the public seems to have chosen the child pornographers).

In Ugo’s case, the effective punishment is a sentence that is wholly inhumane. Captain the Dog faced less and the public outcry was unbelievable. It is a punishment that sounds fine when looking at it from 35,000 feet up, but when we look at the particular circumstances, it is disproportionate to what we intended to achieve in the first place. Surely, there must be a less draconian punishment for Ugo. However, our elected officials, in all their wisdom, decided to pass laws against that idea. Judges, who are uniquely placed to examine the specific circumstances of the offender and the offence, are bound by those laws to disregard the circumstances.

As Canadians, many of us wonder what defines us. The first thing many say is that we are not American—obviously a laudable notion for any hockey loving, beer swilling, beaver pelt wearing, red-blooded Canadian (and one that flows more from a proud fear of being confused for an American than from any disdain for our greatest partner).

Beyond that, I suggest that what defines Canada is compassion, a willingness to compromise for the right reasons, and an ability to be firm, but polite and rational, when it is not time to compromise.

Ugo came to Canada hoping for all that. Because of laws premised on misled notions of justice that sound appealing to an electorate, we failed him. We also continue to fail our own citizens.