Canada, as many Canadians are quick to point out to our foreign friends, is a great country to live in. The pride people take in their country was on full display last week during the Canada Day 150 celebrations.
We are afforded rights that many people around the world envy us for. People fight and die every day just to have the right to vote – something that more than 30 per cent of us Canadians couldn’t even bother to do in our last election.
And so, in light of the recent settlement in the Omar Khadr case, Canadians have been split on whether they agree with the judgement or not.

Let’s leave aside the money for a second and try and evaluate it on principle: does the Canadian government owe anything to Omar Khadr?
Many people have said, both online and in line at the grocery store, that Khadr should have been left in Afghanistan or shot by coalition troops. Some have said the government should have let him rot in Guantanamo Bay. Others, while they have an uneasy feeling about paying Khadr $10.5 million, understand the reasons behind the payout.
Khadr’s father took the family from Canada to Taliban-controlled territory in Afghanistan in 1996. Khadr was 11 years old. Within the year, Khadr’s father had enrolled both he and his brother in weapons training with the Taliban.
What were you doing at 11 years old?
I was still playing with my Batman action figures, I wanted to be Wayne Gretzky, I regularly begged my parents to take me to McDonald’s for a happy meal and I was playing a healthy amount of road hockey – always keeping a careful eye out for cars.
I most definitely was not shooting an AK-47 in the desert or crawling under barbed wire while terrorists shoot live rounds just a few feet over my head.
Imagine the mental damage that kind of lifestyle would have on an 11-year-old.
But many people aren’t thinking about that. They think of Khadr as a terrorist, plain and simple.
But the world doesn’t exist in black and white. There are dirty grey areas that are full of nuance where careful consideration is key.
Khadr was involved in a firefight in July of 2002 at the age of 15.
What were you doing at 15?
I was working a dishwashing job, doing poorly in grade ten and was taking driver’s education to get my driver’s license.
After the firefight, Khadr was arrested by the U.S. military and whisked away to Guantanamo Bay where he faced waterboarding and sleep deprivation, which are both forms of torture listed under the Geneva Convention. At 15 years old.
“But he made a choice,” many people argue. But did he really?
If your parents told you that the family was moving at the age of 11, what are you going to say? Nothing. You’re moving and that’s the end of the story.
Many people also point to the fact that Khadr “confessed” to the crime. The fact that his testimony, which was extracted by torturing a teenager, was admissible in a kangaroo military court almost brings the U.S. down to the level of those it professes to oppose.
Western governments throw around the term “barbaric” whenever there is a terrorist attack, and rightly so. Many of these terrorist organizations engage in barbaric practices.
This is what sets us as a country apart from them.
Canada is better than that. It’s why we don’t torture people; it’s why we don’t allow child soldiers in our military; it’s why our soldiers follow rules of engagement; it’s why we don’t (intentionally) target civilians.
We do this so that when we take the moral high ground, we actually have a leg to stand on. We can think of ourselves as superior to the likes of ISIS and the Taliban, because we are.
If we start bringing ourselves down to the level of the terrorists by suggesting Khadr should have been executed or he made a “choice” by moving to Afghanistan when he was 11, we lose the moral high ground.
The Canadian government has agreed to uphold the rights of all Canadians – even those who were whisked away at a young age by a deranged parent to fight in a war as a child soldier.
So the Canadian government owed Omar Khadr more than the lip service paid by three different governments. Both the Liberals and Conservatives bear responsibility for this.
Even though both Liberal and Conservative governments knew about Khadr’s treatment, they stood idly by as a vulnerable teenager was subjected to torture.
If the Canadian government did the same thing to your 15-year-old, you’d have every right to be outraged.
But because Khadr now has to bear the sins of his family, many people think that compensating him for an experience that would scar many of us is unjust.
This is where nuance and empathy become very important.
Put yourself in the shoes of a terrified 11-year-old at a terrorist training camp and imagine the fear he must have experienced.
Then put yourself in the shoes of a 15-year-old boy being tortured by the government of a country that claims to be a “shining city on a hill” for the rest of the world.
If you think 15 is old enough for someone to form geopolitical allegiances and willingly run off to a warzone to kill people, then let me ask you: would you allow your child to fight in a war at age 15?
If your 15-year-old is too young to go to war, then why not Khadr?

Chris Lowrey