Canada should not turn its back on U.S. deserters

Re: 'Let them stay', Truro Daily News, Jan. 23
The piece on Dick Cotterill, my brother, truly serves the greater good.
It lays out the issues squarely and gives Canadian citizens the opportunity to develop an opinion.
What Dick has done in Canada - his fine family, his business sucesses and his leadership in the community - most certainly documents that Canada should continue to be a second venue for those south of the border.
The Canadian refuge policy also has a salutary effect on civic discourse in the United States as well. Many thoughtful Americans have often over the past eight years threatened in frustration to move to Canada over the Bush war policies. Canada's refuge policy contributes to free speech and the development of the Obama wave in this country. Obama's end to the detainment and torture of war prisoners at Guantanamo, much like President Carter's amnesty for U.S. Vietnam deserters after election in 1976, lances a deep and festering moral blemish on American history.
Guantanamo - and the Abu Gherab prison torture event - is not unrelated to the Canadian refuge policy. It gives a "fair restart after a very tough out" for the U.S. citizen who learns too late that they are a cog in a grinding war machine gone amok.
Ron Cotterill
Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT