Honour our traditions

Kudos to columnist Joseph Quesnel who, in his May 12 column in the Winnipeg Sun, castigated Charles Roach, a lawyer from Toronto now attempting a class action lawsuit against the government for requiring newcomers to recite an oath of allegiance to the monarch.

The oath, he said, "violates" his Charter .

Roach was born a British subject in Trinidad and Tobago and is now a permanent resident. He would recite the oath when he became a lawyer, but he was denied citizenship when he applied for it back when he needed it for admission to the bar. He asked the judge to change it, which he refused.

It is right to protest oppressive practices wherever they occur, but this is not one of them. Roach was asked to affirm the government of the country he immigrated to.

If he refuses, I hope he never gets citizenship. If Roach wants discussions on the monarchy, he can become a citizen first and enter the debate. Until then, he is a guest who should play by the rules.

It is disrespectful when some newcomers demand that Canada alter its history and tradition to suit them, rather than the other way around. Roach would probably not appreciate it if I went to his birth country and demanded the same.

If he can't handle our monarchy, he should have thought about that first.

Our system is monarchical. Our head of state is the Queen. Our founding document is the British North America Act, which states our Constitution is similar to that of Great Britain.

It is insulting that Justice Edward Belobaba, the presiding judge, referred to Queen Elizabeth as an "offshore queen." Reviewing our history, the Queen is as Canadian as the maple leaf or the beaver.

We made deliberate choices to downplay this. Roach's attitudes stem from government choices, one of which is decades of accommodating Quebec and separatism and the other is misguided multiculturalism.

We were taught Canada must be all things to all people and in the process we forgot our own past and traditions.

We consciously changed the Red Ensign in response to Quebec separatism. I love our flag, but we didn't need to change it to be independent. Australia and New Zealand retained the Union Jack and no one argues those countries don't have their own identity.

We avoided God Save the Queen, which is our royal anthem, as a way to hide our British roots.

We almost lost our country in the recent Quebec referendum and these changes did nothing.

Roach said he opposes the monarchy because, "Blacks were colonized as a people by the British throne, and were enslaved as a people by the British throne."

Perhaps he missed British abolitionism or the British tradition which includes values of limited government, freedom of speech and association, stretching to Magna Carta.

As a French-Canadian, it was the Quebec Act of 1774, passed by Britain, which guaranteed my ancestors the right to speak their language and practice their faith and legal tradition.

This is what the oath is really about.