Oath of Citizenship (Canada) - Public Action

Public Action

Lawyer Charles Roach, a permanent resident of Canada and executive board member of Citizens for a Canadian Republic (CCR) who refused to swear the Oath of Citizenship, attempted through the courts to strike down the requirement to pledge allegiance to the monarch to obtain citizenship. With the support of his own law firm and CCR, Roach launched a number of suits against the Crown, beginning in 1994, when he argued to the federal court that being forced to take the oath was a violation of clauses 2(b), 2(d), and 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This attempt was unsuccessful, with the majority of the court ruling that "he fact that the oath 'personalizes' one particular constitutional provision has no constitutional relevance, since that personalization is derived from the Constitution itself... Even thus personalized, that part of the Constitution relating to the Queen is amendable, and so its amendment may be freely advocated, consistently with the oath of allegiance, either by expression, by peaceful assembly or by association." Further appeal of this decision to the Supreme Court was denied.

In 2007, Roach, along with three others, filed a class action lawsuit in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, claiming that the requirement to take the Oath of Citizenship not only violated the aforementioned sections of the charter, but also clause 2(a), that relating to freedom of conscience. He stated in the media that requiring black people to swear allegiance to the Canadian sovereign to receive citizenship was akin to forcing Jews to swear an oath to a descendant of Adolf Hitler, and said in a letter to his fellow litigants: "If we win this class action, a centuries-old tradition would begin to unravel." Though the federal Crown made two attempts to have the case dismissed as frivolous and vexatious, on 20 February 2008, the Ontario Court of Appeal approved the proceeding of the case to the Ontario Superior Court. During the proceedings, the Monarchist League of Canada publicly supported the present oath and opposed Roach's actions, and media reaction was also negative, with a number of op-ed pieces denouncing Roach's challenges. Roach's case was dismissed by the Ontario Superior Court in January 2009. Roach relaunched the case in 2012 and, on 18 June, the Ontario Superior Court permitted the case's continuance, though Roach died on 2 October of that year.

At CCR protest rallies at Ontario's Queen's Park, on Victoria Day of 2004 and 2005, CCR executive board member Ashok Charles, who had taken the Oath of Citizenship in 1977, publicly recanted the portion of the oath that makes reference to the monarch and her heirs and successors. He also submitted the recantation in a notarized document to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, which acknowledged receipt. In a letter published in the National Post, Charles claimed that Citizenship and Immigration had informed him in writing that his citizenship had not been affected.