Self Administered Oaths!
- Thread starter onakeme
- Start date
Personally, I hope not. I first swore an oath to Her Majesty Elizabeth II and her heirs and successors when I joined the British army. I will once again swear my allegiance to King Charles III & Canada in a couple of weeks to become a citizen. The occasions will have been, and will be, an immense source of pride and are fitting for an official ceremony. In my opinion, an oath is not something to be taken lightly.
There was a huge blowback after it was announced, both from Conservative politicians and pundits.
There's a possibility Liberals, who are already quite low in the polls, quietly shelved this to avoid further scandal. And if Poilievre becomes our next PM, we can simply forget about it.
So yeah, I may be wrong, but don't hold your breath on this.
There's a possibility Liberals, who are already quite low in the polls, quietly shelved this to avoid further scandal. And if Poilievre becomes our next PM, we can simply forget about it.
So yeah, I may be wrong, but don't hold your breath on this.
The Oath of Citizenship is a mere formality, nothing of substance.
Police officers can now lay informations (charges) in writing by making an electronic statement that is deemed to be an oath. A lot of the time, lawyers submit agreed statements of fact in court without calling the actual witness. I don't see why citizenship applicants shouldn't be allowed to do the same. Unlike the oath taken by an informant laying criminal charges (which can have devastating consequences to an individual if it is false), the oath of citizenship is just a form of forced speech and not a real oath. If you say, "scr*w the King" momentarily after the oath of citizenship, absolutely nothing happens and you are still a Canadian citizen. Aside from politics and trying to make a big show out of nothing, there is no real reason why a citizenship applicant shouldn't be allowed to just tick a box that says "yes, I'll be loyal and obey the law". A few year ago there was a court challenge against the oath and the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that the oath isn't an oath to the momarch personally but is an oath to obey Canada's laws but in a lot more words. The court further said that the applicant can hand a letter to the citizenship judge to explain that they didn't mean to pledge allegiance to the monarch and will be working to abolish the monarchy and that's totally OK. Furthermore, everyone on this forum applying for citizenship, from the moment they arrived in Canada for the first time, owed loyalty to Canada for the time that they remained on Canadian soil. If you break the law whether you are visitor or PR, you get charged and prosecuted, the same as a citizen. There have even been foreign nationals who were never in Canada and were charged with criminal offences here because they acted in concert with people in Canada (a so-called "conspiracy"). On the hand, absent an element of a crime being committed in Canada, Canadian citizens aren't even charged in Canada for crimes committed abroad. In conclusion this whole ceremony is much ado about nothing.
Video oath ceremonies have hugely helped IRCC deal with the backlog by allowing applicants to connect with a ceremony anywhere in Canada, creating effiencies for IRCC and cutting down on travel time and expenses for applicants. Self-administered oaths available on demand would have an even bigger impact, reducing processing times by nearly 3 months and allowing applicants to take the oath whenever they are ready, avoiding the need to reschedule. It would also be beneficial for people who live in remote areas with very slow Internet connections (not allowing for video conferences) and would experience disproportionate expenses to travel to an IRCC office.
If politicians were rational people, this would have been implemented a long time ago because it is a genius idea.
Last edited:
Then those who don't share my assumption could always request an oath in person. They made clear that they would always offer both the ceremony and the self-administered oath if this was going to be implemented.
Just for all those hard core fans of the monarchy. Something far simpler would also be to give candidates the oath form to take to a notary or commissioner of their choice. They can then do whatever fancy ceremony there they wish, following which they or the person administering the oath will return the signed oath form back to IRCC.They should create a AI-bot of Charles and the PM and they can virtually administer the oath on demand anytime once the documentation is completed.
For everybody else, a box confirming they have taken the oath should also be available.
And it failed for all of the reasons you can't seem to grasp.
Officially it didn'f fail. However, there are always people who scream louder and want to impose what they prefer on everybody else.
Last edited:
That's just disingenuous. The proposal was never about imposing self-administered oaths on everybody. It was about giving people options. Under this proposal, each applicant could choose for themselves what they want to do, whether they want in person, by video or self-administered.Like yourself
If you really think this oath is a big deal, I am afraid you probably don't understand what it's about. For the record, it's not about pledging allegiance to a monarch as an individual. The "King Charles III King of Canada" that's referred to in there is not the individual Charles Windsor who happens to occupy the throne but a juridicial person created by the Constitution Act, 1867. This juridicial person and the oath itself stand for a very simple idea - the rule of law. Essentially all you are confirming by taking the oath is that even if you don't like a law, you are not going to start a revolution like the US did, but instead go to vote or petition the courts or perhaps even use civil disobedience - but never, ever resort to violence to threaten the system of which you become a part as a Canadian citizen. For most applicants, there is nothing special about this, it's a very basic, natural thing that, if even they weren't born in a democracy, should be reflective of their daily lives for at least the past three years they spent in Canada. I realize that for a few people either democracy and the rule of law are radically new concepts or it's seen as an opportunity to showcase their undying love for an old man as hard core fans of the monarchy. A pompous ceremony may be entirely appropriate for the latter and I support that option still being available.l along with self-administered oaths.
To be clear, despite many (including some major media outlets) describing proposed regulatory changes as implementing a self-administered oath,
the February 2023 proposed changes to the Citizenship regulations governing the administration of the oath required to become a Canadian citizen did not provide for what many would consider self-administration, but rather would empower the Minister to implement means for the administration of the oath outside the presence of specific authorized individuals (usually a Citizenship Judge).
The manner of taking the oath that was contemplated, as described in the formal IRCC regulatory plans and in the Gazette, was a procedure pursuant to which new citizens "would be able to take the Oath via a secure online solution without the presence of an authorized person." The actual manner in which this would be done would still be up to the Minister to determine.
If those changes had actually been adopted (they have not), AND the if Minister followed through with implementing those changes, from the perspective of those taking the oath it is not likely that would have affected the manner of taking the oath online ("virtually") that has been used for the last couple years.
With one possible big exception: the Minister could authorize a procedure that would routinely allow taking the oath outside Canada. ***
At the time the regulatory revisions were proposed, it was expected they would take effect in June 2023. At this juncture it is apparent that the proposed changes are a NO-GO, not just delayed but, it appears anyway, no longer on the table.
Some resource links:
current regulations governing the oath (current to April 1, 2024): https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-93-246/page-2.html#h-952206
The formal Gazette notice of proposed change with regulatory impact statement: https://canadagazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2023/2023-02-25/html/reg1-eng.html
related Regulatory Plan for 2023-2025 in regards to amending oath regulations: https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/corporate/mandate/acts-regulations/forward-regulatory-plan/list/amendments-citizenship-regulations-flexibility-oath.html
Re Claims that the Oath of Citizenship is "much ado about nothing:"
. . . and other nonsense like the "Oath of Citizenship is a mere formality, nothing of substance."
Make no mistake, for Section 5(1) grants of citizenship to adults who are not excepted from the REQUIREMENT to take the oath, there is NO conferring of citizenship UNLESS and UNTIL the oath of citizenship has been taken as prescribed. While the online oath procedure has changed things in various ways, prior to Covid there were monitors attendant the oath ceremony who were watching and listening to make sure those getting citizenship were actually stating the oath. And yes, there were instances in which people were not actually granted their citizenship (initially) because they failed to explicitly state the oath, and this was upheld by the courts (more so when there was a Conservative government).
I am not acquainted with the actual procedure involved when someone takes the oath online, but it is my impression that there are mechanisms in place to verify the person takes the oath before they actually become a citizen.
That there are those who are willing to falsely swear allegiance is no surprise. Honesty is hardly universal.
Meanwhile, even if the proposed changes had been adopted, the grant of citizenship would still require actually taking the oath of citizenship. As the background information for the proposed revisions stated:
Swearing an oath to respect the laws of a country or swearing an oath of allegiance to a country, whether online or in-person, is intended to be a meaningful step towards belonging, community, and an attachment to a country.
It is those who characterize this as being about "an opportunity to showcase their undying love for an old man as hard core fans of the monarchy" who are the disingenuous. To be clear, by the way, Canada is NOT a monarchy.
EDIT -- To clarify, to make that last sentence a more complete statement: "To be clear, by the way, Canada is NOT governed by a monarchy."
*** Re Oath Outside Canada: the proposed revised regulations governing the oath would have allowed the Minister to implement means for taking the oath of citizenship "whether in our outside of Canada." This has been something more important to many applicants than whether the online oath is administered by a citizenship judge or not. Current regulations do not allow for the oath to be taken outside Canada for Section 5(1) grants of citizenship, with some exceptions requiring authorization by the Minister in specific cases (so far it appears that this is rarely allowed). For some other types of citizenship grants, the oath can be taken outside Canada (this has caused some confusion since some people seem to have difficulty recognizing that some people being able to take the oath outside Canada does not mean it is allowed generally). It should be noted that just because the revised regulations would have allowed the Minister to implement a process that would allow taking the oath while outside Canada, that does not mean the Minister would have necessarily extended this to adults obtaining a Section 5(1) grant of citizenship.
Last edited:
> It is those who characterize this as being about "an opportunity to showcase their undying love for an old man as hard core fans of the monarchy" who are the disingenuous.
Well said.
(I think) Sometimes people take "isn't the oath ceremony a formality" as granted only because it's indeed Canadian citizenship that allows such freedom...
Well said.
(I think) Sometimes people take "isn't the oath ceremony a formality" as granted only because it's indeed Canadian citizenship that allows such freedom...