Mr. Speaker, it was interesting that the official opposition was concerned about the numbers of government members in the House for this debate. I was wondering about the arithmetic but I stand corrected, I thought there was no opposition member where in fact there is one.
It gives me great pleasure to enter this debate on Bill C-63, an act to amend our Citizenship Act. I understand that the Citizenship Act has not been amended since 1947.
It is an interesting day to have this debate because yesterday was flag day to honour the 34th birthday of our great flag. It was my privilege to be part of a number of celebrations that occurred in my riding yesterday. It is something I have been promoting. When this first came about, only one school in my riding celebrated it and now about 10 schools are celebrating flag day. Hopefully some day it will be a national holiday and a national event for Canadians to celebrate another part of their heritage.
Canada is a young country in the family of nations. At the same time we are continuing to evolve and build our traditions. A number of issues come out when I look at one aspect of the bill, clause 34 which deals with the oath of citizenship.
When I was first elected I went to a lot of citizenship ceremonies. Sadly there are not as many in my riding now because the judge system has changed. It was a tremendous event. Young and old people came to this country not because they were forced to but through selection. They wanted to come here for a very important reason. They wanted to leave possibly a poorer lifestyle to come and share in our lifestyle, our culture and our traditions. They wanted very much to be part of this country.
Those were great celebrations. There were people from all over the world who had spent five years in this country and had taken the time to study our history, our traditions and our culture. It was such an important day in their lives to swear allegiance to this country and to take their position along with the rest of us, having no less rights and freedoms than anyone else in this country. For anyone who has attended those ceremonies, it cannot help but be an uplifting experience to see what a great country this is. I sometimes think one of the problems is that not enough Canadians go overseas to really appreciate what a great country Canada is.
When I look at the oath of citizenship I see three themes. Strangely enough, I have studied the oaths in other countries and the themes are somewhat similar.
The first deals with respect for our democratic traditions. Canadians have developed their own unique traditions. We have certainly borrowed from other countries in the past. Notably the British common law system and also the French civil law system are a part of our culture. We have developed on that footing to evolve our own democratic traditions and ideals which has taken us over 100 years to do. What is important is that we have done that within Canada, Canadians dealing with each other, making comprises with each other and trying to understand each other and evolving their political traditions.
Another theme seems to be rights and freedoms. Those same people I talked about who came to this country very much understand what it is like to have rights and freedoms. They may possibly have come from countries that did not have those rights and freedoms. Canadians developed their own charter of rights and freedoms. In this place and in other legislatures in this country we have developed a whole body of rights and freedoms which we commonly respect.
The other theme seems essentially to be a respect for our laws. In other words we swear an oath saying we believe that even if the laws of the country are not just, we agree to abide by them and try to work within the political system to change them. However, at first blush we accept the laws of our country and we will respect them.
I have studied this issue of oath because it interested me. In Carswell's Canadian Law Dictionary the definition is the basic purpose of an oath is to bind the consciousness of the witness. In other words, the conscience of the person who is taking this oath tells him that he must respect the rights and freedoms of these people. Canadians respect their laws and respect their democratic values. This is a very powerful statement of people.
What I am alluding to is that section 34 does not quite address what I think is an important aspect. That is Canadians have developed all the functions of a legal framework. There have been Canadians who have taken some of those traditions, evolved them and made them into something unique.
As we face the next millennium which is months away it seems appropriate that Canadians stand up and make their statement that their oath of allegiance is to Canada. It partially says that but it goes a little further. My colleague who just spoke specifically mentioned the oath.
After the last election I made a certain point to go beyond the so-called oath of the House of Commons. It is important because it is more significant than the traditional oath. I said that I do solemnly affirm my true allegiance to Canada in conformity with the Constitution of Canada. Something to this effect is a more appropriate oath for Canadians.
Some people will mention the monarchy. I am not opposed. I am not an anti-monarchist. I am pro-Canadian. It is time for Canadians to stand up and have an allegiance to their country which does not involve the head of state of another country, that of Great Britain.
What I suggest to the government is that we propose some sort of amendment to this legislation that will recognize that the oath of citizenship is to Canada only and to no other country. It has always seemed absurd to me when I listen to some of these people taking this oath of citizenship. Some of them did come from the United Kingdom. I know what was going through their minds. What they often asked me was what had they done. They thought they were coming to a new country. They wanted to share in our culture and traditions but they had to swear their allegiance to the monarch they left. They did not understand what we were doing as a country. I had to agree with them.
This is not anti-anything. A lot of people get involved in the emotions of all this. Nobody can steal our tradition as a people. We have had a linkage of history with the British commonwealth as we have with France. I am not talking about doing away with it. Canada can continue to be part of the British commonwealth. But as a small token of the realization that we are going into the 21st century we should as a minimum change this oath so it clearly swears allegiance solely to Canada, Canada's democratic traditions that Canadians have developed of themselves, Canada's rights and freedoms that we have developed by ourselves and those traditions that talk about our loyalty to our laws and upholding the laws of Canada that we evolved and developed.