Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the bill. I must say that of all the private members' legislations to come before the House under the new rules, this strikes me as being one of the two or three that is the most likely to make it through the process and find its way toward becoming the law of the land. Therefore I take the bill very seriously.
The title of the bill is “an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (oath or solemn affirmation)”. The essence of the bill is summed up in clause 3, which states that no person may sit in the House unless he or she has sworn an oath or solemn affirmation in addition to the one which we now swear.
All members, including myself, swear the following oath, which is stipulated in section 128 of the Constitution Act, 1867 and is laid out in schedule 5 of that act:
I, .... do swear, That I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
The proposed new law would not remove that oath but would add the following:
I, ..., do swear (or solemnly affirm) that I will be loyal to Canada and that I will perform the duties of a member of the House of Commons honestly and justly.
I think it is pretty hard to object in principle to this. Certainly nobody, including members of the Bloc Quebecois, could object to the second part of that statement, “I will perform the duties of a member of the House of Commons honestly and justly”.
Therefore the question then becomes one of the first part of the statement, “I will be loyal to Canada”. This is the reason that earlier I asked the hon. member the question whether a person who is a separatist, who would like to see his or her province removed from Canada, could in good conscience swear this oath.
My inclination is to think that there should not be a problem, that being loyal to Canada means, in part, as the hon. member said in his comments, being loyal to the community, to the spirit of the community.
As well, there is a question of being loyal to the Constitution. While I do not support in any way, at any point in Canada's future, one province leaving the country, there is a constitutional mechanism by which this could occur. One could be loyal to the Constitution and work toward the sovereignty of one province. That was laid out in a Supreme Court reference decision two years ago. I do not think there is a logical reason, even if one were not loyal to the idea of Canada remaining a united country permanently, that one would not swear an oath to this effect.
Being loyal to Canada in the sense that the hon. member, the proposer of this bill, described in his initial remarks, is just another way of saying what is in the second part of the act, “I will perform the duties of a member of the House of Commons honestly and justly”.
The obligation on us to follow our oath, because these oaths are very general, is, in a sense, a moral obligation rather than a legal obligation. I think it would be very difficult to prosecute anybody sitting in the House, or anybody who has sat in the House in recent decades, for failing to fulfil the oath that currently exists, and it would probably be very difficult to prosecute anybody or to deprive them of their seat in the House based upon a failure to perform the proposed oath. Therefore the statement that is being made here is a moral statement.
I thought it was interesting that the hon. member for Ottawa—Orléans referred to the oath that he voluntarily took, in addition to his oath to the Queen, when he was sworn in. It is a version of an oath that a number of us took, myself included, when we were sworn in. We understood when we took the oath that we could not be bound to that oath. It was something that we took on voluntarily because we thought it was a way of showing our commitment to the community, of which we are part, our own constituents and to the country as a whole.
It seems to me that this kind of oath is a reaffirmation of the general reason for which we were sent here. Now there is a specific reason why each of us were sent here. I was sent here because a larger number of people in my riding voted for me than voted for any other candidate. We all have a similar tale to tell. However when we get here it is our obligation to represent, not just the people who voted for us-and many people who come to this place have been voted for by less than half of the potential votes in their constituency--but to represent all of them.
It seems to me that the expression of community and of community interest as stated in the proposed oath reflects that sense of community as a whole. For that reason, I would be supportive of this oath and of including it in the oath that we swear. This would be a real step forward for us. All members could swear in good conscience. Those who feel the necessity to express their reservations could do so separately from the oath itself.
In 1976 when the first Parti Québécois government was sworn in, a number of the members of the party said that they had sworn the oath with their fingers crossed behind their backs. I guess they felt it was important to express a certain sentiment but nonetheless they swore the oath. Bloc Québécois members who sit in the House have sworn an oath to the Queen despite the fact that I suspect very few of them are actually monarchists. It is possible to do that sort of thing without suffering a great crisis of conscience.
I think all Canadians recognize the value of Canada as a whole, as a concept, as an idea, and not merely as a constitutional status quo. That is what the bill proposes to recognize. For that reason, I encourage all members of the House of Commons to vote for it.