Oath of Allegiance (Canada) - Opposition and Augmentation

Opposition and Augmentation

See also: Oath of Allegiance (New Zealand) > Alteration and augmentation of oaths

Early opposition to the Oath of Allegiance was expressed by the inhabitants of Quebec shortly following the transfer of that territory from King Louis XV to King George III via the 1763 Treaty of Paris. The Quebec Act, issued in 1774, subsequently established a special Oath of Allegiance for the Roman Catholics of Quebec that, unlike the one sworn by others, which had remained the same since the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, bore no references to the Protestant faith. It read:

I do sincerely promise and swear, That I will be faithful, and bear true Allegiance to his Majesty King George, and him will defend to the utmost of my Power, against all traitorous Conspiracies, and Attempts whatsoever, which shall be made against his Person. Crown. and Dignity; and I will do my utmost Endeavor to disclose and make known to his Majesty, his Heirs and Successors, all Treasons, and traitorous Conspiracies, and Attempts, which I shall know to be against him, or any of them; and all this I do swear without any Equivocation, mental Evasion, or secret Reservation, and renouncing all Pardons and Dispensations from any Power or Person whomsoever to the contrary. So help me God.

In 1970, the recently elected members of the sovereigntist Parti Québécois refused to recite the Oath of Allegiance before taking their seats in the National Assembly of Quebec. At the time, all the other parties in the assembly agreed that the oath was outdated and needed to be amended. The Act Respecting the National Assembly of Quebec was granted Royal Assent in 1982, in which a supplementary oath pledging loyalty to the people of Quebec was included. The Members' Manual of the National Assembly outlines that this additional oath is to the people and constitution of Quebec, distinct from the Oath of Allegiance, which is an oath to the country via the Queen, though some saw the monarch, in that context, as representative of the Quebec State and not of Canada, taking into account Canada's "divisible" Crown. Also, Ontario Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) Dominic Agostino proposed in 1996 that the Legislative Assembly of Ontario follow that of Quebec and add another requisite oath of allegiance to Canada, to be taken by MPPs following the oath to the sovereign. However, the Standing Committee on the Legislative Assembly found that the monarch referred to in the Oath of Allegiance was already the personification of the Canadian state, and thus it was redundant to offer allegiance to both the Queen and to Canada.

Amendments have also been proposed in the federal scope, though the same difficulty in altering the constitution thwarted any changes, leading members of parliament (MPs) in Ottawa to table various bills that sought to alter the Parliament of Canada Act instead. While none were ever successful, certain MPs have recited further pledges in the presence of their constituents or added their own pledge after reciting the Oath of Allegiance. In 2005, Senator Raymond Lavigne uttered the words "and to my country, Canada," at the end of the Oath of Allegiance, which raised questions from other senators and Lavigne was instructed to take the oath again, without the amendment. Following this, the Senator proposed that the Senate rules be changed to add an oath to Canada after the oath to the sovereign, in the form of: "I, do swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Canada." The motion never passed.

All members of the federal Civil Service were previously required to take the Oath of Allegiance before being officially hired, a stipulation that led Pierre Vincent, a civil servant of Acadian descent who refused to swear the oath, to undertake a three year legal challenge against the Public Service Commission. The latter found that Vincent could keep his job with the Civil Service and, though the Supreme Court ruled that civil servants continued to be employees of the monarch, Royal Assent was granted to the Public Service Modernization Act in 2003, which removed the necessity of the bureaucratic civil servants to take the oath to their employer.

The inclusion of the Oath of Allegiance in the Oath of Citizenship has also met with opposition, though this was never a constitutional matter, instead falling within the scope of the Citizenship Act.