Mr. Speaker, I think the member has made the case as to why there should be a debate in this place on the relevance and importance of the monarchy and of God or other deities in this place.
The oath of allegiance provides a practical context to carrying out one's duties. It reminds the office holder that the authority of his or her office derives from the Queen. The oath of office covers how the incumbent should carry out his or her duties. It makes no claim on their commitment to a social order of which they are about to become a governing part. The oath of allegiance is therefore intended to remind us of how the Crown is the linchpin in holding us together in its public manifestations.
The member is saying to me that if we do not have 100% consensus in the country, we must eliminate the value that we have. We have in our national anthem “God keep our land, glorious and free”. Let us take “God” out of the national anthem. Why not? That is what the member is arguing.
Policy by its very nature is discriminatory, but not in a negative context. We can discriminate affirmatively to show what we value. What is this country about? That is the issue and that is why we should have this debate. Sixty-three per cent of Canadians said that they wanted to retain the monarchy. We cannot ignore that. I do not believe we should eliminate everything in which there is not 100% consensus. If we do that, if we go down that treacherous road, we will have to get down to the lowest common denominator between all Canadians, and the best I can determine, that lowest common denominator is a single human cell.