In an unrelated story, it was disclosed that the government had already spent $5 million fighting this case and the Supreme Court had already ruled that Khadr had been mistreated by the Canadian government. 

And the writer of the story, even though extremely unsympathetic to Khadr, admits the government lawyers probably felt they had little likelihood of winning at this point. So continuing on probably was pretty much a waste of money. 

Also, Khadr and his lawyers were actually after $20 million. So the government probably still had a bit of leverage at this point to bring the settlement down to $10 million, which would be less likely if they prolonged the case to the final judgement. 

Of course keeping the legal case going would have allowed the government to put off this payment for some time, perhaps even to after the next election. 

But I guess we should still be condemning Trudeau for doing this, right? (LOL)