Lawyers for an Albertan on death row in Montana are asking the Federal Court to force the Canadian government to continue seeking clemency for him.

An application to the court says the federal government acted unconstitutionally when it reversed a long-standing tradition of lobbying foreign governments to show mercy on Canadian citizens facing death sentences.

The document refers to statements made by Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day last fall that Ottawa would no longer help Canadians sentenced to death in democratic countries.

Day was speaking specifically about the case of Ronald Allen Smith, the only Canadian on death row in the United States. He faces lethal injection for the murders in 1982 of two men who offered him a ride while he was hitchhiking.

The court application and accompanying affidavits state that for more than a decade the Canadian government pushed U.S. officials on Smith's case, citing numerous phone conversations and meetings that took place over the years.

"In fact it was the Canadian consulate that had approached us in the first place," Smith's Montana lawyer Gregory Jackson said in an affidavit.

The Canadian government's decision to reverse its policy late last October, he says, sent a "strong signal" to U.S. officials that Ottawa was indifferent to the case and even condoned the death sentence.

By "abandoning efforts" to help Smith, the government communicated "indifference to his treatment, at least tacitly signalling their approval of the death penalty and thereby placing the applicant in peril for his life and at risk of cruel and unusual punishment," the application says.

The reversal of policy, the statement says, is an "error of law" and "abuse of jurisdiction."

Also, Jackson writes in an affidavit that the government's help was a "source of great optimism" and "essentially kept him from volunteering to die."

Smith, who is imprisoned at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, said he was surprised to learn from the media of the government's decision to abandon his case.

"I literally felt as though I had been kicked to the curb by my government," Smith wrote in an affidavit.

Smith, a native of Red Deer, Alta., was sentenced to death by a Montana District Judge in 1983. He has pursued numerous appeals in state and U.S. federal courts, and his most recent appeal is now underway in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Canada abolished capital punishment from the Criminal Code in 1976, more than a decade after two inmates were hanged in Toronto, the last executions Canada carried out.