New Canadian renounces oath to the Queen, pledges ‘true’ loyalty only to Canada – Toronto – CBC News

2015/12/02 Leave a comment

Further to my earlier post (Man set to recant oath to the Queen right after #citizenship ceremony). He did make his allegiance to Canada clear, limiting the issue to the Monarchy.

Highly unlikely that changing the oath will be a priority for the government given so much else on their agenda, including changes to the Citizenship Act:

At a citizenship ceremony in east Toronto, Bar-Natan first swore the oath along with some 80 others and then, while being handed his citizenship certificate, informed the citizenship judge of his intent to disavow the portion of the oath pledging allegiance to the Queen.

He formally recanted that part of the oath following the ceremony and handed the judge a letter explaining his decision.

“I wish to affirm my allegiance, my true allegiance to Canada and the people of Canada, but also to disavow the royalty part and only the royalty part of the citizenship oath,” Bar-Natan told the judge as others looked on.

“I hear you sir. And I thank you for your honesty,” said citizenship judge Albert Wong, who shook Bar-Natan’s hand. “I welcome you to Canada and I look forward to the contributions you will make.”

Bar-Natan later said he had felt “somewhat humiliated” at having to say the oath at all, despite being able to disavow the part of it he disagreed with later.

“I do feel that it is comparable to hazing, the fact that you are required to stand up and express views that are opposite to yours,” he said. “I don’t think it is a part of Canada to impose political speech on others. To impose opinions on others.”

Bar-Natan added that a website he has set up — disavowal.ca — will allow other Canadians to publicly disavow their pledge to the Queen, regardless of when they took their oath.

Bar-Natan’s controversial decision sparked some strong reactions on social media.

“Strip him of citizenship the moment he disavows the oath. If he doesn’t want to keep the oath, he shouldn’t be made a Canadian,” tweeted one person.

“Why do people come here if they have no intention of following the basic requirements,” said another.

Bar-Natan’s lawyer said he hoped his client’s actions would draw the new Liberal government’s attention to re-evaluating the wording of the citizenship oath that deals with the monarchy.

“He underlined how silly it is to require somebody to say it,” said Peter Rosenthal. “I hope that will contribute to the public debate about this and the present Liberal government will do what the Chretien government almost did in 1994.”

In the 1990s, former Liberal prime minister Jean Chretien was set to scrap the oath to the Queen but got cold feet at the last minute, then-citizenship minister Sergio Marchi has told The Canadian Press.

Source: New Canadian renounces oath to the Queen, pledges ‘true’ loyalty only to Canada – Toronto – CBC News

Filed under C-24, Citizenship Tagged with ,

Aha! Now I Get How Everybody Lives | Anna Rosling-Ronnlund | TEDxRiga

2015/12/02 Leave a comment

An interesting approach to indicators: comparing household objects by country and income level. More similarity than one would expect (14 minutes):

Filed under Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Liberals say overhaul of patronage appointments to include gender-parity goal

2015/12/01 Leave a comment

No surprise – was clearly implied in the common language in the mandate letters.

The first test, of course, will be the appointment this week (I expect) of parliamentary secretaries:

The federal Liberals say they plan to extend a promise of gender parity in cabinet to ensure the same outcome in the hundreds of appointments the government makes to boards, agencies and Crown corporations.

Just how the process will work is unclear: The Liberals vowed in the election to overhaul an appointment process that now is conducted behind closed doors and was sometimes mired in accusations of political patronage for government donors or failed candidates.

The party has vowed to create an outside body to recommend new senators, a model similar to one used in Britain for government-wide appointments to boards and agencies made by cabinet and ministers.

The Liberals didn’t provide details of how the appointments process, which they now oversee, will work.

“Appointments will be open, transparent and merit-based and we will ensure gender parity and that more indigenous peoples and minority groups are reflected in positions of leadership,” said Olivier Duchesneau, deputy director of communications to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“This will apply government-wide to everything from the cabinet to the Supreme Court to boards of Crown corporations.”

Duchesneau said the opaque nature of the appointment process has fuelled cynicism about backroom politics.

Source: Liberals say overhaul of patronage appointments to include gender-parity goal | CTV News

Filed under Government, Multiculturalism Tagged with , ,

Liberal transparency reforms subject to ‘review’ next year

2015/12/01 Leave a comment

Not surprising, these kinds of changes take time to develop and require considerable consultation and preparation.

In the meantime, however, it would be nice if public servants could take a cue from the government’s signal change and implement a less restrictive redaction policy (it was funny for me to have my ATIP requests on documents that I had worked on overly redacted):

Delivery of a key Liberal promise on transparency is likely months away, as an election commitment to reform the Access to Information Act has morphed into a “review” of the legislation starting next year.

During the election campaign, Leader Justin Trudeau said a Liberal government would end fees for processing information requests; give the information commissioner the power to order release of documents; and make ministers’ offices subject to the act, among other changes.

But Trudeau’s mandate letter to the minister responsible for shepherding the reform, Treasury Board President Scott Brison, backs off from those categorical commitments, most of which the Liberals have been touting since at least June 2014.

Firearms RCMP

The office of Suzanne Legault, information commissioner of Canada, says it is not aware of any immediate changes to the access-to-information system since the Liberals came to power. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

The promise to cut fees disappears altogether from the mandate letter. It says other promises are to be part of a “review” that will include input from Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault and other stakeholders.

And the platform commitment to ensure the act “applies” to ministers’ offices, including the Prime Minister’s Office, has changed in the mandate letter to “appropriately applies.”

A spokesperson for Brison’s office says details of the “review” will be announced in the new year, and will include an examination of fees.

“Given the importance of these changes and their complexity, further consideration is required,” said Lisa Murphy. “The government will take the time necessary to fully examine all the options.”

Source: Liberal transparency reforms subject to ‘review’ next year – Politics – CBC News

Filed under Government Tagged with

Man set to recant oath to the Queen right after #citizenship ceremony

2015/12/01 1 Comment

While I am no fan of the current citizenship oath and its reference to the Queen (even if the reference refers more to the institution of the Crown, rather than the Queen personally), I find these kinds of cases silly.

The proper way to change the oath is not through the courts but rather through Parliament.

And it does beg the question, whether recanting should be viewed as renouncing citizenship?

A soon-to-be Canadian has served notice that he plans to recant the mandatory Oath of Allegiance to the Queen immediately after he becomes a citizen.

In a letter sent to the citizenship court judge earlier this month, Dror Bar-Natan states his opposition to the oath, which he calls “repulsive,” and his plan to renege on the pledge following his citizenship ceremony on Monday.

The Queen is a symbol of entrenched and outdated privilege and the pledge is tantamount to a “hazing” ritual, Bar-Natan said in an interview.

“To become a Canadian citizen, I am made to utter phrases which are silly and ridiculous and offensive,” he said. “I don’t want to be there.”

Bar-Natan, 49, a math professor from Israel who has been in Canada for 13 years, was one of three longtime permanent residents who challenged the constitutionality of making citizenship conditional on promising to be “faithful and bear true allegiance to Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, her heirs and successors.”

In upholding the requirement, Ontario’s top court said the Queen remains Canada’s head of state and the oath was a “symbolic commitment to be governed as a democratic constitutional monarchy unless and until democratically changed.”

The court also found that all citizens have the right to espouse anti-monarchist views and new Canadians could “publicly disavow what they consider to be the message conveyed by the oath.”

Source: Man set to recant oath to the Queen right after citizenship ceremony – Macleans.ca

Filed under Citizenship Tagged with ,

What ISIS songs reveal about the group’s evolution

2015/12/01 Leave a comment

Another side of Daesh/ISIS’ propaganda and recruitment strategy:

After this month’s attacks in Paris, ISIS released an audio recording celebrating the attacks and taking responsibility for them. The RCMP is still investigating the recording to determine whether the voice on the recording belongs to a Canadian. Some linguists are convinced it does, and that the speech patterns suggest he is from Ontario. But it’s still not clear whose voice is on that recording.

What we do know is that the audio statement begins with an acapella song that’s as hooky as any pop song, and it plays throughout the five and a half minute recording.

The song takes the form of a traditional Islamic holy chant, called a “nasheed”. These songs have become key to the ISIS propaganda machine. They’re the soundtrack to the shocking execution videos, they’re blasted from cellphones on the battlefield and now, they’re showing up more and more in English.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi,fellow at the Middle Eastern Forum, says the Islamic State is one of the leading producers – if not the­ leading producer – of jihadi nasheeds today.

Day 6 asked him to  listen to the music in ISIS’ latest audio recording following the Paris attacks, and to compare it to other jihadi songs that ISIS has produced.

“My immediate thoughts on that nasheed is the language used: English,” says Al-Tamimi. He says the Islamic State has recently branched out into producing nasheeds in other languages, including English, French, German and even Hindi and Uyghur to reach  out to non-Arabic foreigners to join the Islamic State.

“This one  is what you could call one of the more generic nasheeds in terms of content, referring to conceptions of martyrdom and virgins of paradise promised for those who die in the cause of jihad,” says Al-Tamimi.

And he says the catchiness of the songs serves a strategic purpose. “In regards to the melodies of nasheeds being catchy, it can help subconsciously imbibe the nasheed into your mind. The catchiness of the nasheed will help reinforce the messaging and indoctrination,” says Al-Tamimi.

Source: What ISIS songs reveal about the group’s evolution – Home | Day 6 | CBC Radio

Filed under Radicalization Tagged with , ,

Islamophobia is leading the West to a very dark place: Jebara

2015/12/01 1 Comment

Good piece by Mohamad Jebara is Chief Imam and resident scholar at the Cordova Spiritual Education Center in Ottawa:

The demonization of peoples and religions is an insidious process that infects entire cultures. Shakespeare vilified European Jews when he wrote The Merchant of Venice, as Charles Dickens did when he made his child-slaver Fagin a Jew in Oliver Twist. For centuries, Jews were portrayed in Western media as sly, deceitful, evil and merciless — a portrayal that allowed the ‘civilized’ world to stand by in silence — and in some cases even rejoice — as the Nazis worked to annihilate European Jewry.

Muslim people, like people everywhere, are quite diverse. Some are saintly, a few demonic, but most lie somewhere in between — just ordinary people who want to live in peace with their families.

Since the formation of the so-called Islamic State, much of the non-Muslim world has continued to misdirect its rage and resentment against its victims. ISIS has killed over 100,000 Muslims, massacred top-ranking Islamic clerics and destroyed hundreds of mosques, seminaries and Islamic heritage sites. It is the Muslim world that continues to suffer most at the hands of these extremists, who try to disguise their depravity with the language of religion.

Centuries of demonization and scapegoating led directly to the death camps of the Second World War. Then, as now, we said, ‘Never again’ — never again would we allow indoctrination and mob mentality to take human civilization to the gates of hell.

Powerful words. Are we still ready to live by them?

Ottawa-based imam Mohamad Jebara wonders whether the racist panic-mongering

Filed under Multiculturalism, Religion Tagged with , ,

Newer posts →