Mr. Speaker, oh what an opportunity has been lost, because, as the member for Mississauga West has just said, here it is the year 2000, here we are debating a new citizenship act for the new millennium and here we are in a debate that has fallen into discord on some very fundamental issues. We have lost a golden opportunity and I really do feel sad about it.
My problem with the legislation has to do with the oath of citizenship. I would first like to comment very briefly on the issue raised by the member for Kitchener—Waterloo. After all the debate and the rhetoric are over, what we are really dealing with in this issue from the member for Kitchener—Waterloo is one set of due process for one group of Canadians and another set of due process for another group of Canadians.
I agree with the member for Kitchener—Waterloo that there is something fundamentally wrong with that, and it can be tested. As the member for Winnipeg North—St. Paul said, he justified the difference in due process to the fact that some Canadians are born here and their citizenship cannot be revoked because they have nowhere else to go to. He then made the assumption that new Canadians, who have come from other lands, can have their citizenship revoked because they can go back to their original land if it is found that they have entered Canada and sought citizenship under false pretences.
What I would point out to the member for Winnipeg North—St. Paul is that if people from India, where they cannot have dual nationality, come to Canada and take out citizenship in Canada, they lose their citizenship in India. What we are basically talking about here is that if citizenship is revoked from this category of new Canadian who is from India, then they cannot go back.
What I suggest is that Bill C-16 does not provide for that, and in fact should provide for that, but if it is going to provide for that it will have to create a new category of Canadians who will have to be treated under a different due process. That, fundamentally, is what is wrong with the legislation as it stands now with respect to setting up a different regime for revocation of citizenship, a different judicial regime than would exist for other Canadians faced with similar contraventions of the law. I think the member for Kitchener—Waterloo has a very important point.
My difficulty with the legislation though, Mr. Speaker, is different but very closely related. My problem with Bill C-16, the citizenship bill as it is presented, is that it proposes a new oath of citizenship that has never been debated in the House. It proposes a new oath of citizenship that I do not think reflects what it is to be Canadian, that does not reflect the principles of being Canadian.
It is a new oath of citizenship, Mr. Speaker, that has been created in the shadows of the government. It has been created by a bureaucrat or a bureaucracy somewhere. For that matter, Mr. Speaker, for all we know it may have been contracted out. We do not know the pedigree of the oath of citizenship that is now in Bill C-16. On something so absolutely, vitally important as the oath of citizenship, we should know and we in the House should have participated. Unfortunately we did not.
The debate on the oath of citizenship has a real history that I have actually been involved in. When I came to parliament for the first time as a new MP in 1993, the very first committee that I served on was the citizenship and immigration committee in 1993 and 1994 in which we were analyzing what needed to be done to upgrade the citizenship legislation to make it current to the new millennium. Every witness who came before the committee as a new Canadian was asked to express what it meant to be a new Canadian. Of all the committees I have served on that was the most inspiring.
We heard from people from Croatia, like my friend from Cambridge. We heard from people from southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. They all said essentially the same thing. They said that Canada was admired the world around, that it was a magnet for people all over the world because of its principles.
Canada is admired the world over because of the principles that are enshrined in the charter of rights, the rule of law, our adherence to democracy, our freedom of speech and our adherence to basic human rights. We heard this theme time and again.
When it came down to our report, the committee decided that there should be a declaration of citizenship. We thought it would be really wonderful to enshrine these principles that are basically expressed in the charter of rights in a declaration that would go in the preamble of the citizenship bill.
As far as the oath was concerned, and I should actually mention the oath, the committee unanimously agreed that the oath needed to be revisited. I want to read the oath that exists today and that will be amended in Bill C-16. The oath that was before our committee in 1993-94 simply said:
I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and I will faithfully observe the laws of Canada and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.
I think just about every new Canadian who came before the committee said that oath was inadequate. They said that when they came before their citizenship hearings they were disappointed, not just because of the reference to a foreign monarch but because they felt the oath did not captured what it was to be Canadian.
The committee came out with its report called “Belonging Together”. I stress that we heard from new Canadians and from people who were born in Canada. The recommendations of that report were, first, that a declaration of Canadian citizenship should express the vision Canadians share for their future and the importance they attach to their citizenship.
Second, that the declaration should reflect the core values of our concept of citizenship.
Third, that the government should consider calling on the writers of Canada to contribute to the drafting of this declaration. We wanted the poets. We wanted everyone in the country involved in expressing what it was to be a Canadian in terms of a few lines that could capture that spirit.
The fourth recommendation was that the declaration should be drafted in a language that is noble, uplifting and inspires pride in being Canadian.
What happened? Five years later Bill C-63, now Bill C-16, was tabled in the House of Commons. I was here at my place when it was tabled. What we got was no declaration of what it is to be a citizen. There was no change in the preamble of Bill C-16. What we got instead was a warmed over oath of citizenship that bears no relation whatsoever to what new Canadians were telling us when they came before our committee. The amazing thing is that we did not even know where it came from. It suddenly appeared in the legislation without prior debate, without debate in the second citizenship committee. I will read it. It says:
From this day forward, I pledge my loyalty and allegiance to Canada and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada. I promise to respect our country's rights and freedoms, to uphold our democratic values, to faithfully observe our laws and fulfil my duties and obligations as a Canadian citizen.
Who wrote that? Who had the temerity to write those words without consulting Canadians? Who had the temerity to write those words without actually fielding them in parliament where we could debate them. What words are they, from the very beginning? The words are “I pledge my loyalty and allegiance to Canada”. That is a redundancy. Loyalty and allegiance, in English anyway, mean the same thing. If we analyze the history of the oath we can see where that came from. It came from was the French version of the current oath which says “Je jure fidélité et sincère allégeance à Sa Majesté la reine”. It is a direct English translation of the French version of the existing oath, and it is a bad translation. Any English or French teacher would reject it at the public school level.
It goes on to say “I promise to respect our country's rights and freedoms”. We are bigger than that. It is not just our country's rights and freedoms. We as Canadians respect everybody's rights and freedoms. This is a fundamental difference and this is what makes us Canadian. This confines it selfishly to Canada alone, and that is unacceptable.
It then says “to uphold our democratic values”. Democratic values are a matter of perception in terms of the country in which we happen to be living. People from East Germany will recall that the name for East Germany was the German Democratic Republic. The full name for the Congo is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they are busily killing one another as fast as they can. Right now there is a little civil war going on in Fiji and the government is being held hostage. That is the Sovereign Democratic Republic of Fiji. And so it goes. The Democratic Republic of Korea is really North Korea.
In other words, we cannot simply pledge allegiance to the democratic values of the country to which we belong. We have to pledge allegiance to democratic values in the abstract because the danger is, as we experienced in Germany during the 1930s, which led to the second world war, that a dictatorship is very fond of perverting democratic values and becoming a dictatorship under the guise of democracy. No. If we are going to pay respect to democratic values it must be democratic values in the abstract.
The final words are “to faithfully observe our laws and fulfil my duties and obligations as a citizen”. That applies to every country in the entire world. Of course a citizen is required to obey the traffic act, the criminal code or whatever. That does not make us different as Canadians.
When that oath appeared before the House of Commons, I and several of my colleagues reacted very negatively. We tried very rapidly to capture the essence of what we heard in that committee in 1993-94. What I proposed in the House at that time—and I seem to be about the only one debating the oath of citizenship—was that the oath of citizenship should be rewritten in a way that would capture the five principles of the charter of rights, which is what makes us unique as Canadians. Those five principles are equality of opportunity, freedom of speech, democracy, basic human rights and the rule of law.
The reason the member for Kitchener—Waterloo is agonizing over in his place is that he feels that the rule of law is not being respected because we have two different sets of due processes for two different sets of Canadians. I would suggest that the member for Kitchener—Waterloo probably has it correct; we cannot have two standards for Canadians. Canadians must always be treated the same way.
I just want to make a quick comment on those five principles. I have to say that when I proposed that in the House I did have some positive response but there was no opportunity to debate it other than me standing here and speaking for the length of time that I had.
However, what I will point out is obvious: Equality of opportunity is really what being Canadian is all about. We are all different in many ways. What is essential for every one of us individually is to have the chance to compete equally for the good things in life, so it is a matter of providing those equalities of opportunity. That is why we as Liberals believe in medicare. We believe that people cannot begin to compete unless they have equality in health.
The second point is freedom of speech. Many of the new Canadians who came before us came from countries where there is no such thing as freedom of speech. The first thing that is done in a democracy that wants to be a dictatorship is to suppress the press. Even though it is sometimes very hard for us on the government side to bear the attacks that we see almost daily now in our national press, it is nevertheless part and parcel of democracy and it is absolutely vital. Freedom of speech is absolutely essential.
I have already commented on democracy.
Basic human rights are not just things we stand for as Canadians for ourselves; they are things which we stand for around the world. We are genuinely concerned about what happens in Sierra Leone. We were genuinely concerned about what happened in Bosnia and Rwanda. That is what being Canadian is all about.
Finally, there is the rule of law. It is not obeying the law that is so important; it is appreciating the law. One of the reasons we have such a strong democracy is that we have, sitting opposite of me, members of parliament who are separatists, who believe the country should be broken up. Yet I am proud of the fact that they see that outcome only by means of the rule of law. They are as good parliamentarians as I am on this side of the House. I am proud to be in the same Chamber with them, even though I reject their fundamental premise. The fact is, they believe that if it is to be achieved, it can only be achieved by due process, by the rule of law. I am proud to be in the Chamber with people who feel that way.
I proposed that oath. Not too surprisingly it was rejected by the House. One of the things that disappointed me was, when I proposed my version of the oath that contained these five principles, I asked that there be a free vote in the House, and there was not. I noticed that not just my side, but the NDP, the Conservatives and certainly the Bloc Quebecois voted as a group. There was obviously no attempt to consider the possibility of a made in Canada oath; an oath that, whatever its merits or demerits, at least expressed the principles of the charter of rights. If they did not like anything else, if they did not like the fact that it dropped the Queen, or if they did not like the reference to God, fine. But it captured what it is to be Canada in terms of the charter of rights, which is freedom of speech, democracy, rule of law, equality of opportunity and basic human rights. That is what it is to be Canadian. Any new Canadian who comes to this country knows that.
To say I am disappointed hardly captures it. I hate to use the word, but I think it was basic cowardice on the part of the government and even parliament to allow an oath of citizenship to go out that does not reflect the spirit of being Canadian, at least in terms of the House. It has not been debated in the House. We have an obligation. This House is the repository of everything that it means to be Canadian. This is the focus. We should have debated that. To not have done so is reprehensible.
Like the member for Cambridge, what am I going to do when I go to my citizenship courts, when these starry eyed new Canadians come before the citizenship court commissioner now, instead of a judge, put their hand up and quote an oath of citizenship that the government and parliament never debated or never had the courage to even consider the content of?
In my view, this is the time when we need the Senate. I believe that the House of Commons failed in its duty when it allowed an oath of citizenship to go out that has no heritage, no patrimony, no connection to what it really means to be Canadian. It is simply an oath that was created somewhere behind the curtains. We do not know where. We are expecting newcomers to Canada to use that oath, not only to understand Canada better, but as a commitment to being part of Canada. That is unacceptable.
I propose that the Senate very carefully look at this legislation. If it cannot come up with an oath that captures the principles of being Canadian, then please reject the oath that is here. It is absolutely unacceptable to have a new oath, an elaborately revised oath, go before new Canadians when we ourselves have never been a part of its creation; when we parliamentarians, when we Canadians have never participated in the creation of that oath. It is now up to the Senate.