I will be discussing the (Canadian) Oath of Citizenship at 12:30 on CBC Radio today (@Albertaatnoon) with Donna McElligott. The segment starts approximately 27.00 minutes into the podcast.
2014 04 14 CBCca [email protected]
The podcast on the CBC website is here.
A trio of Canadian Permanent Residents have gone to Court to challenge the requirement of an oath of allegiance to her Majesty the Queen, her heirs and successors. All three are prepared to swear an oath to "Canada" but object (on various grounds) swearing an oath to the venerable Elizabeth.
Only those seeking to become naturalized citizens are required to take the oath. Many would say that these immigrants have chosen a Commonwealth country, one with historic ties to the House of Windsor and thus cannot complain now. I don't know that this argument holds water. Immigrants have the right to challenge law that infringes their rights. They didn't sign away those rights when they landed in Canada.
I highly doubt that this government will entertain the notion of changing the oath through legislation. The British monarchy seems to have inculcated "unthinking credulity and servility" (h/t CH) from this particular Prime Minister and his Cabinet. Citizenship and Immigration Canada have their marching orders. And those orders appear to be to prefer form over substance. In one example, CIC denied a man citizenship when an officer felt that he was merely mouthing the words and not uttering them. That determination apparently was in error, and CIC is attempting to contact the man wrongly denied his citizenship.
The oath of Canadian citizenship is not a sacred cow. Former Prime Minister Chretien was poised to change the oath two decades ago. Somehow I think that Pierre E. Trudeau would not have had an issue with changing the oath either.
The government's argument in the court case is that the applicants don't understand that the oath is not to the Queen personally, but that the Queen stands for the "Rule of Law".
As Christopher Hitchens noted
"...the monarchy is praised and extolled for all the honorable and admirable aspects of the country which it symbolizes, while avoiding even a whisper of blame for anything that might have gone, or be going amiss." [The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish].
I don't know if you can cherry pick the aspects of the monarchy that are unoffensive; you have to take the good with the bad. The reality is that the monarchy stands for a lot more than just the "Rule of Law". The monarchy also stands for the wrongs done in its name. Should we ask individuals to given an oath to an institution that they might find repugnant?
To rephrase Hitchens, we don't need to abolish monarchy but we need to transcend it (something that I thought we started when we repatriated the Constitution in 1982). It's time to grow up.
"...What should now begin is the process of emancipating ourselves from the mental habits of royalism, and the many supports it provides to unthinking attitudes and dysfunctional practices." [End of the Line, Guardian, 12/06/000]
Comments