Coren: Citizenship is Conditional

In the right-wing of Canada, it seems that citizenship in Canada is conditional - even if you were born here.

Omar Khadr is a tenuous Canadian at best, unlike most newcomers to the country who love it with pride and passion.

He's not a newcomer, Mr. Coren - Khadr was BORN in Canada. This is one of the points that the right-wingnuts in Canada keep forgetting. Omar Khadr has not renounced his Canadian citizenship to my knowledge, and he was born here - he's not a "tenuous" Canadian - he IS CANADIAN. The double standard that is at play here is revolting in the extreme. Canada's laws are clear enough on the matter.

Naturally, Mr. Coren spends most of his column convicting Omar Khadr based on his parents:

She has also, of course, loudly expressed her hatred for western culture and condemned Canada as a vile place where all children are drug addicts or homosexuals. She said she did not want such a fate for Omar or for her other son Karim, who suffered spinal damage after a firefight with the Pakistani soldiers who killed her terrorist husband.

Wait a second, Mr. Coren. What if others were to assign to your offspring the bigotry towards others you have shown? Surely you would own your own actions as distinct from those of your offspring. Let's not forget that under both American and Canadian law, Omar Khadr was not at what we call the 'Age of Majority' in 2002. Legally, that means that he is not held to the same degree of responsibility for his actions as he would were he legally an adult.

But, more importantly, we live in a country where the laws devolve rights and responsibilities to the individual. That means similarly that while we must hold the parents accountable for their actions, we cannot legitimately convict the son based upon the words and deeds of the parents.

The only valid criticism of the United States is that this young man should have faced a trial by now. If, however, he had been in prison just a few miles away from Guantanamo on Cuba he would have been beaten to death in one of Castro's death camps.

Talk about a bunch of crap. Not only are there enormous legal, moral and ethical problems with the entire construct that is embodied in Guantanamo Bay, defenders of Khadr's treatment while in custody conveniently gloss over the fact that the Americans were applying adult interrogation techniques to a sixteen year old. For all intents and purposes, he's still an adolescent in many respects. (Please note that the reasoning centers of the brain are not fully developed until sometime around the age of 20)

As for tying it to criminal justice issues in Cuba, I don't think Cuba is an active participant in Afghanistan at all, so that's a completely irrelevant red herring.

I've said this repeatedly. The issue here is not what Khadr did or did not do. The issue is the negligence of the Canadian government where Canadians held abroad are concerned. The HarperCon$ have done absolutely nothing until public pressure reaches the boiling point. Think about this. If you are detained abroad, access to consular services and intervention is considered by most to be a fundamental right. Under Harper, that has gone by the wayside - a warning to all Canadians who travel abroad.