Oath of Citizenship (Canada) - Proposed Changes

Proposed Changes

Since the last amendment to the vow in 1977, the idea of modifying it yet again has come up periodically. In 1987, the government proposed alterations to the Citizenship Act that included studying to what or whom allegiance should be given in the Oath of Citizenship: to the Crown, the country, or both, and in what order? No changes were made.

In 1994, the subject was addressed again when the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration examined changes to the Citizenship Act. Several witnesses presented divergent views on the oath: some argued that the present form should be retained, while others expressed a desire to see the name of the country given prominence, though not necessarily with the absence of mention of the sovereign. The committee recommended a new citizenship oath: I pledge full allegiance to Canada and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, and swear to faithfully obey the laws and fulfill my duties as a citizen. Sergio Marchi, then minister of Citizenship and Immigration, proposed a further step of creating a new "declaration" of citizenship, and commissioned ten Canadian writers to compose a pledge, with the explicit instruction to not refer to the monarch of Canada; the suggested declaration decided on was: I am a citizen of Canada, and I make this commitment: to uphold our laws and freedoms; to respect our people in their diversity; to work for our common well-being; and to safeguard and honour this ancient northern land.

By 1996, the minister of citizenship and immigration, then Lucienne Robillard, stated on the suggested alterations to the oath: "This is a difficult decision to make, because I realise that when you speak about changing the oath, people think you want to change all the monarchy system. We don't want a discussion like that in Canada right now." According to an Angus Reid Strategies survey for Citizenship and Immigration Canada, conducted in January 1996, 51% of respondents felt that a new oath of allegiance should remove any reference to the Queen, and 38% felt that allegiance should be pledged to both Canada and its sovereign. Only 5% favoured swearing allegiance only to the monarch; though, at the same time, only 5% of Canadians were aware the Queen was their head of state. Meanwhile, press reaction to the continued proposals for alternate oaths was muted. The Globe and Mail editorial of 12 December 1998 stated: "The language is being drained dry, killed by a thousand smiley-faced cuts," while the Ottawa Citizen was more critical on 11 December: "The new citizenship oath... leaves us cold... It would strengthen the political argument for abolishing the monarchy on the death of Queen Elizabeth; and it would test monarchist support by seeing how many Canadians even notice or holler. We noticed. Consider this a holler."

Bill C-63, the proposed Citizenship of Canada Act, was put before parliament in 1999; in it was a variant on the present Oath of Citizenship:

From this day forward, I pledge my loyalty and allegiance to Canada and Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada. I promise to respect our country's rights and freedoms, to defend our democratic values, to faithfully observe our laws and fulfil my duties and obligations as a Canadian citizen.

In French, this would be:

Dorénavant, je promets fidélité et allégeance au Canada et à Sa Majesté Elizabeth Deux, Reine du Canada. Je m'engage à respecter les droits et libertés de notre pays, à défendre nos valeurs démocratiques, à observer fidèlement nos lois et à remplir mes devoirs et obligations de citoyen(ne) canadien(ne).

Member of Parliament John H. Bryden put forward an amendment that would remove the sovereign from the oath altogether: In pledging allegiance to Canada, I take my place among Canadians, a people united by God whose sacred trust is to uphold these five principles: equality of opportunity, freedom of speech, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law. Bryden's proposal was defeated in a vote of 189 to 31, and Bill C-63 itself never received Royal Assent; after approval by the House of Commons and a second reading in the Senate, the bill was under consideration by the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs when a federal election was called, resulting in the bill's demise on the Order Paper. Subsequent Bills C-16 (2000) and C-18 (2002) also proposed the same changes to the Oath of Citizenship; the former also died on the Order Paper due to the prorogation of parliament, while the latter never made it past second reading in the House of Commons.

Throughout the process, the Monarchist League of Canada, while not against amendment in general, voiced its strongest opposition to the proposals to remove the sovereign. From the group there was also commentary against what they saw as being Americanized and vague terminology, as well as what could be construed as the separation of the monarch from the state (contradicting the inherent notion that the monarch personifies the state) and placed second to it. Like the Ottawa Citizen, the league also questioned the legality of the elimination of the words Her Heirs and Successors according to law—the commitment new citizens make to the succession to the Canadian Crown. Addressing this, both Bills C-16 and C-18 contained a clause stating: "It should be noted that removing the words 'Her Heirs and Successors' does not imply that pledging allegiance to the... Crown ends with the death of the current Queen. Section 35 of the Interpretation Act states that, in every enactment, the phrases 'Her Majesty', 'the Queen', 'the King', or 'the Crown' mean the Sovereign of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories, and Head of the Commonwealth. Thus, upon her death, the reference to Queen Elizabeth will automatically be read as a reference to the succeeding monarch."

In 2006, the Fraser Institute issued a report, Canada's Inadequate Response to Terrorism: The Need for Policy Reform, suggesting that the Citizenship Act be amended so that the Oath of Citizenship included a provision wherein the new citizen offered loyalty to Canadian values, with violation of this oath punishable by deportation. The intention of the report's recommendations, penned by David Collacott, was to counter the support immigrants received from official multiculturalism to place the devotions and hostilities of their homeland before their duty to Canada. A University of Toronto law professor, however, opined that the rule of law itself was Canadian value, thus rendering the report as moot.