Solicitor General Wayne Easter admitted for the first time Wednesday that Canada was among a number of countries that handed the United States information about Maher Arar.

"Our discussions indicate that this information didn't come from Canada alone," Wayne Easter said following a meeting in Washington with U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft.

Arar -- suspected by Canadian and U.S. official of having terrorist connections -- was stopped on a routine flight stopover in New York City and deported by the Americans to Syria. He spent nearly a year in jail there and claims to have been tortured by the Syrians.

During an interview on CTV's Canada AM on Thursday, Easter did not comment directly on the Arar case. However, he said intelligence is shared.

"We do exchange information both from a national security point of view and a criminal and intelligence point of view."

Canada's role in Arar's detainment has been debated since he returned home to Ottawa just over a month ago. Some have said Arar's situation was made worse by Canadian authorities giving information about him to the U.S.

Easter said Ashcroft told him the U.S. was "operating under their mandate, in the interest of their laws, their national security policy" when they deported Arar, a Canadian citizen.

He said the RCMP had no role in the decision made by the U.S.

Arar was arrested on Sept. 26, 2002 at New York's Kennedy airport while transferring planes on a return trip from Tunisia. After being arrested as an al Qaeda suspect, American authorities detained Arar for close to two weeks.

He was then deported to his country of birth, Syria.

Arar has consistently denied links to terrorist groups. He wants acknowledgment that U.S. officials violated international law by sending him to a country that practices torture.

He has retained a Canadian lawyer and is also represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has written a letter to Ashcroft and Easter, asking why Arar wasn't permitted to contact his consulate for more than seven days after he was detained, why he didn't have a lawyer present, and why there was no formal deportation hearing.

Easter tried to frame the issue in terms of the importance of security and of sharing information with Canada's large and powerful neighbor.

"The world has changed substantially since Sept. 11. We're not immune from terrorism in Canada," he said.

"We need to look forward. We need to maintain our focus on national security and at the same time we need to be able to balance that against protecting the individual rights and the civil liberties of Canadian citizens."

National security is fundamental to a working economy, he said, and information exchange is critical to that.

"Part of the reason for the discussion is to try to negate the fact that these kinds of incidents can happen and affect Canadian citizens," said Easter.