Canada Day does not happen the same way across the country. Outside Quebec, in most communities, citizenship oath ceremonies are organized as part of local celebrations planned to welcome recent immigrants into the larger Canadian family. These ceremonies, filled with emotion and patriotism, serve to remind natives of Canada how lucky they are to have been born here. Of course, delivery ceremonies also take place in Quebec. But they are rarely as publicized as in the rest of Canada, where newspapers and television newscasts talk about them extensively.
Many immigration experts consider the swearing-in ceremony to be an essential step in the formation of any good citizen and in the creation, among these newcomers, of a sense of belonging to Canada. In 2021, the oath was amended to include an obligation on the part of new citizens to recognize and respect the ancestral rights resulting from the treaties signed with the indigenous peoples, in accordance with one of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “Canada’s citizenship oath is a commitment to this country — and that includes the national reconciliation project,” said then-immigration minister Marco Mendicino.
New Canadians must also swear loyalty to King Charles III. Unlike Australia, which changed its oath of citizenship in 1994 to remove any reference to the British Crown, Canada continues to require newcomers to pledge loyalty to the tenant of Buckingham Palace. In 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear the appeal of three permanent residents who claimed that the requirement to swear the monarch violated their rights to freedom of speech and religion. They were unsuccessful in the Ontario Court of Appeal, which declared that the reference to the monarch was purely “symbolic”, referring to our “form of government and the unwritten principle of democracy” that it underlies.
Now Ottawa is preparing to allow permanent residents to take their oath of citizenship simply by clicking on a box online on the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website. No need to take the oath out loud in front of a judge. Click here, and you will become Canadian.
The proposal, which received almost no discussion in Quebec, created an uproar elsewhere in Canada. “The idea that Canada, perhaps the most successful immigration country in the world, could resort to an automated way of saying ‘you are now a citizen’ is abhorrent,” former Canadian Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who came to the country as a refugee in 1942, said earlier this year. Immigration Sergio Marchi, born in Argentina, publicly denounced Ottawa’s move.
Andrew Griffith, a former senior official at IRCC, even launched a petition — sponsored by Conservative MP Tom Kmiec, himself a Polish immigrant — calling on Justin Trudeau’s government to “renounce allowing self-administration of the citizenship oath” as well as “restore the primacy of in-person ceremonies and reduce the proportion of virtual ceremonies to 10%.” These have taken off during the pandemic. But some experts, like Mr Griffith, believe they should only replace in-person ceremonies in exceptional circumstances.
The post-pandemic continuation of virtual ceremonies as well as the proposal to allow self-administration of the oath are responses to the backlog at IRCC. The department can no longer process immigration and citizenship applications in a timely manner. Permanent residents approved to become citizens must wait approximately 19 months before being called to a citizenship ceremony.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser aims to reduce the wait by allowing the option of self-administration. But Griffith wonders if part of the problem stems from the fact that immigration thresholds are already too high for the machinery of government. More than 1.2 million new permanent residents have arrived in the past three years, as Ottawa seeks to raise the annual threshold to 500,000 or more by 2025. While most of these new permanent residents aim to become Canadian citizens, self-administration of the oath will become a must. IRCC is already struggling to keep up with demand. Imagine what the situation will be like in five years.
This is just one of the reasons why the government’s immigration policy seems out of touch with reality. In a study published this week, Desjardins economist Randall Bartlett suggests that even more immigrants will be needed to counter the effects of Canada’s aging population in the years to come. But it adds a big downside. “As population growth continues to drive up home prices and undermine near-term affordability, the federal government must take this into account in its immigration policy, particularly with respect to non-permanent residents. Its immigration policy must be accompanied by immediate actions to increase the supply of housing. However, nothing indicates that Ottawa is preparing to act in this direction.
After all, houses cannot be built with a click.
Konrad Yakabuski is a columnist at Globe and Mail.