No automatic injustice being done
Prominent U.S. businessman and author Bernard Bailey once quipped that, "When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it." Brenda Martin may be one of them.

Martin, 51, you may recall, is the Canadian currently being held in jail in Mexico, having been arrested in February 2006 and charged with money laundering and participating in a criminal conspiracy connected to an investment scam which involved her former boss, Alyn Waage.

Waage, who employed Martin as his cook for 10 months but fired her in 2001, is serving 10 years in a U.S. prison for robbing investors of almost $60 million. Martin claims she knew nothing of his illegal activities and Waage himself swore out an affidavit saying it is true; she was not part of t. But Mexican authorities, apparently, aren't convinced.

And here's where it starts to get tiresome.

For all this correspondent knows, Martin may be the reincarnation of Mother Teresa. What's more, if any one of us were languishing in a Mexican jail - or any jail for that matter - we wouldn't be happy either. But there comes a point - at least for me - where the constant carping and the serial whining about your plight changes from legitimate concerns to an annoying sense of absolute entitlement.

Let's look at the reality here. The main reason her case has dragged on for two years is because she has complicated it, turning it into a constitutional matter before the Mexican courts. That takes time there just as it would here. And while there is much screaming in Ottawa - where the Liberals, wouldn't you know, are trying to blame the Government for Martin's plight - the fact is that a two-year wait for a trial is not unusual in Canada either. Indeed, two years is considered rather swift in legal circles, particularly when it involves serious and/or complicated matters.

Yet we as Canadians, or at least many of us - along with most of the media - have recently adopted the position that if a Canadian is in jail outside the country there's automatically an injustice being done - to the Canadian. Apparently Canadians are all innocent as the driven snow and now foreign country really has a right to exercise their justice system against us. And, when they do, we tend to paint them as corrupt Third World despots.

There's something else going on her too. The partisan nature of Martin's own bleatings to the media.

When former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin dropped by to see her on a visit to Mexico, she waxed eloquently about how wonderful that was. But Martin, being out of politics, really doesn't have much power to help her case.

Yet when two Tory MPs - including a minister - visited her a while later, this after she'd been openly complaining that the Government was ignoring her plight, she dissed them, accusing them of being only interested in a "photo op." And Monday's Toronto Star had yet another tale of woe from Martin. It seems that Tory Helena Guergis, secretary of state for foreign affairs, was in Mexico on Jan. 29 and 30 and - dare we say it - didn't go to visit our unhappy prisoner. "She (Guergis) went to a cocktail party with some Canadians, sat and had horse di'oeuvres and drank Perrier water while I am in here languishing," Martin complained.

According to government officials, Guergis also raised Martin' case with Mexican authorities, a far wiser move than heading over to the prison and being accused of staging a photo op, don't you think?

Fact is, Prime Minister Stephen Harper agrees that progress in the case has been "unacceptably slow" - although, as we've said, not slow by Canadian standards - and adds that "Canadian officials at all levels - up to and including the cabinet - have intervened on this decision with their Mexican counterparts or Canadian officials have been in contact with Ms Martin."

Harper says there have been a total of more than 100 such contacts over the past two years between Canadian representatives, Ms. Martin and Mexican officials but that said, "we have to remember we are talking about another sovereign country and we are talking about a judicial process..."

Exactly. Consider what most Canadians would say if we had a Mexican national in jail charged with a serious crime and the president of Mexico demanded we release him with dispatch and without a trial.

It works both ways. And just as being Canadian doesn't automatically make somebody guilty, it doesn't make them automatically innocent either. That's why they have trials.

What a concept, eh?