The arrest of 17
young Muslim men in Toronto on charges of
conspiracy to commit terrorist acts has prompted renewed calls for the
incorporation of an oath of allegiance to “Canadian values” in Canada’s
Citizenship Act. An attempt in the mid-1990s to amend the Citizenship Act to
include such an oath was dropped in the face of broad opposition.
Apart from the
obvious racist overtones of these calls, there is an issue as to what precisely
is meant by the phrase “Canadian values”. All too often this is left extremely
vague, as if it is something so familiar to all Canadians that it does not
require defining. In those cases where some substance is added the issue is
invariably muddled, as in the case of a columnist for the Globe and Mail who recently claimed that Canada is a secular constitutional
democracy. If secular is understood in its common meaning of non-religious,
then the Canadian state cannot claim to be secular, since not only does the
Canadian constitution recognize the “supremacy of God” but it also recognizes
special status for Catholic schools. The issue of whether or not Canada is a
democracy is also debatable, since the vast majority of the people have no say
whatsoever in how the country is governed.
When these individuals
demand an oath of allegiance to “Canadian values” do they mean that immigrants
must support the colonial status of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples? Do
they mean that new immigrants must defend Canada’s
territorial integrity against Quebecsovereigntists? Do they mean that immigrants must
accept and submit to the capitalist status
quo and to the neo-liberal policies of the federal and provincial
governments? Do they mean that new immigrants must accept the slavish attitude
of successive Canadian governments to the U.S.
and the role of Canada in
the service of U.S.
imperialism? Or do they merely mean that new immigrants must accept their role
as second-class citizens and the inherent superiority of Western European
culture and religion? Depending on the commentator, it appears that they can
mean any or all of these things.
Citizenship must
be based solely on the desire of an immigrant to live in Canada and
participate in Canadian society. To demand that citizens, whether new citizens
of those born here, must swear allegiance to any set of ideas – ideological,
political, religious or secular – is a violation of the right to conscience and
cannot be tolerated in a genuinely democratic society.