It isn’t often I have much positive to say about Harper and his gang of thugs behaviour in Ottawa. I’ve now found a second positive thing to talk about from this government, not bad in four years. The first, for anyone who thinks I have never liked anything about them is his apparent commitment to renew and rebuild our Canadian Armed Forces. I always hated the constant cuts previous governments had engaged in.

This second item has just been released, the updated study guide for new immigrants. I’ve looked through the guide and am pleased to see it, to me, provides a broader view of Canada, its past, values, and society in general. It talks about some of the more painful aspects of our past, explains our structure of government, our attachment to the Monarchy as part of that government, the military etc.

There have been criticisms that the guide doesn’t mention the environment nor does it depict women as being a presence in the country. Both of the criticisms are legitimate, neither of them surprise me. This government would like to ignore the existence of both the environment and the need to protect it and the equality of women. Harper has shown repeatedly that if not for political pressure to have women involved, he’d like a boys club around him and for the most part there is. Read the rest of this entry »

Charles Roach’s ongoing objection to swearing an oath to the Crown aka Her Majesty to be a Canadian citizen lands in the Ontario Court of Appeal today. Roach, a lawyer, is trying to move a class action suit forward to have the swearing of the oath to the Queen declared unconstitutional.

The Trinidad born Roach has waged this battle for many years. Back in 1987 he fought against the oath when the Law Society of Upper Canada required all lawyers to be Canadian citizens and that is part of the swearing in of a new Canadian. He likens asking blacks to swear an oath to the Queen to asking Jews to swear an oath to Hitler.

You’d think that a clown who’d been in the country since 1955 would have learned by now that this country is a constitutional monarchy and the Queen is our head of state. An oath to the Crown is an oath of allegiance. In order to rule the oath unconstitutional is to throw out the constitution itself. Read the rest of this entry »