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 Editorials | Opinions | May 2008 
Patience for Martin's Antics Wearing Thin
 Don Martin - National Post
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| | Brenda Martin at her final court hearing in Guadalajara, Mexico April 14, 2008. Martin has been imprisoned for more than two years, charged with knowingly accepting illicit funds. (Angela Birkenbach/Edmonton Journal) | | |
A Brenda Martin backlash may be building in the court of public opinion and inside government.
All the sobbing, fuming and complaining were understandable reactions by a traumatized Canadian after spending two years in a Mexican prison waiting for trial on charges of pocketing illicit funds from an Internet pyramid scheme.
But the Ontario cook with a justifiable grudge at being ignored six months ago has become the top prisoner priority in Foreign Affairs, which has a caseload of about 1,000 Canadians imprisoned abroad.
So, enough already.
Ms. Martin went to trial this month, no doubt after diplomatic arm-twisting from Canada. But even they couldn't deliver the innocent verdict she sought. Guilty, declared a Mexican judge. Cue tears and more bitter fury at footdragging Canadian authorities, even while they cut a cheque to cover her $3,500 court fine.
Last week, the Harper government dispatched no-nonsense MP Jason Kenney to expedite her transfer back to Canada.
It's a process than can take nine months if both sides agree, yet Ms. Martin could set a record for speedy departures if she's released this week. Not good enough, fumed Ms. Martin after a meeting with two MPs, the Canadian ambassador and a few embassy officials. She wants a flight home now, wants to be spared the standard handcuffing while in transit and wants parole upon landing.
There's no doubt Ms. Martin's complaints and increasingly erratic behaviour have tarnished the sympathetic image of a mistreated cook locked up on a flimsy pretext and left to rot by her cold-shouldered homeland.
For example, she recently complained about the seizure of her leg-shaving razor, arguably a reasonable removal from a suicidal inmate. Heck, the RCMP took away non-suicidal Karlheinz Schreiber's belt during a police transfer and he didn't complain, even when his pants fell down on national television.
The optics of her plight are difficult to mesh at times. The vividly described horror of a cell filled with a dozen menacing convicts clashes with the photo of a smiling Brenda Martin preparing to hand over her beauty pageant crown as the prison's Senior Queen 2007.
The poor quality of health care seems inconsistent with her claim to have acquired an addiction to anti-depressants, prescribed to treat her suicidal tendencies.
And while the leak of her consular visit record from Foreign Affairs was an egregious violation of personal privacy, it does paint Ms. Martin as an impossible-to-please prisoner given plenty of diplomatic attention throughout her incarceration while taking advantage of her celebrity status to get picky about everything, including priority food selections.
This is why Brenda-bashing has gone epidemic on blogs, commentaries and Web sites and could explain why a Parliament Hill rally to support her cause a few weeks ago attracted fewer than 50 supporters.
Canadians increasingly find it tiresome to hear griping from someone who has received more media and government attention than all other foreign-held Canadians combined, most of them proclaiming their innocence with the same gusto Ms. Martin has shown.
The only apparent difference seems to be Ms. Martin's regular access to phones, so media can hear the tearful details of her latest grievance. Try telephoning a Canadian held in any Middle East prison. Prepare to wait years for a callback.
No matter which view you hold - Ms. Martin as innocent victim or media manipulator - this much is clear: She's no Maher Arar, the Canadian who delivered poignant stories of torture in a Syrian jail linked to Canadian culpability for his 10-month imprisonment. She is, at best, just another Canadian caught up in the random swirl of guilty-until-proven-innocent international justice or, at worst, a bit player in her former employer's Internet scheme that bilked global investors out of $60-million.
So let's get Ms. Martin on a plane, remove the handcuffs and parole her as quickly as possible. She has indeed suffered enough, even if she's guilty of accepting illicit funds.
But then, hopefully, Ms. Martin will appreciate and acknowledge that her Canadian rescue from mistreatment in Mexico was the result of an intense diplomatic effort, not an entitlement of citizenship.
dmartin(at)nationalpost.com |
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