Knox — Oaths of office: words are less important than actions

Jack Knox grew up in Kamloops and writes for the Victoria Times-Colonist.

COLUMN — Personally — and I say this as a monarchist — I don’t care if Lisa Helps swears fealty to Queen Elizabeth, Mother Gaia or Princess Auto. If she can build a bridge and/or sewage system without bankrupting the taxpayer, she can pledge allegiance to Bucky the Wonder Pig if she likes.

Victoria’s new mayor and three other councillors declined to swear allegiance to the Queen when they took office on Thursday, a decision that set teacups rattling and buried the Times Colonist letters section in indignation. Maybe it’s because people are hypersensitive to signs that Helps’s new council will hijack the city and take it in some radical new direction, but some stopped just short of accusing her of wanting to rename the capital Leningrad.

Never mind that the Queen’s name doesn’t pop up at all in the oaths sworn by councillors in many other municipalities — not Saanich, not Esquimalt, not even Oak Bay. There’s no requirement for B.C.’s municipal councillors to swear allegiance to the Queen at all.

Not so federal and provincial politicians, who must do so to take their seats. The idea is that the pledge is not literally to the Queen but to the Crown as the embodiment of the people. Former Ontario premier Mike Harris once explained it like this: “The oath to the Queen is fundamental to the administration of the law in this country. It signifies that here in Canada, justice is done not in the name of the prime minister, or the mayor, or the police chief — as in totalitarian nations — but by the people, in the name of the Queen.”

That’s why members of Parliament have the option of dropping the “so help me God” part of their oath on religious grounds, but may not omit the Queen bit. When the Parti Québécois took power in 2012, the separatists removed the Canadian flag from the room when they were sworn in, but still had to promise allegiance to Her Majesty, albeit through gritted teeth.

In reality, many of us occasionally, unthinkingly go along with public affirmations of beliefs we do not necessarily hold. Christian or not, baby boomers and their predecessors grew up starting each school day with the Lord’s Prayer, though that practice faded away in the 1970s and was dumped from the School Act in 1989.

Today every civic function in Victoria begins with the earnest intonation of the progressives’ version of the Lord’s Prayer: “Before we begin I would like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional territory of the Songhees and Esquimalt first nations.” To which some in the crowd respond: “So what does that make me, a second-class squatter?” (Of course, they do so silently.)

We don’t think twice about standing for The Star-Spangled Banner when U.S.-based hockey teams play the Royals, mumbling along about being happy that “our” flag is still there, having survived the bombs bursting in air in the bench-clearing brawl known as the War of 1812. (A couple of weeks ago, the crowd at a Toronto Maple Leafs game delivered a stirring a cappella rendition after the anthem singer’s microphone crapped out halfway through the song.)

Even the lyrics of our own anthem are problematic: Last year, a group including former prime minister Kim Campbell urged changing the words from “in all thy sons command” to the gender-neutral “in all of us command.” (Though really, if you’re going to get upset about something, shouldn’t it be that in 147 years Canada has only had a female prime minister for a total of 132 days?)

Mostly we just go along with stuff whether we believe it or not. Why? Out of respect for others’ beliefs? Habit? Hypocrisy? A reluctance to rock the boat? Or, for God’s sake (and here I apologize to the atheists), a realization that it’s just words and there are real bricks-and-mortar, flesh-and-blood problems to solve. We will have plenty of chances to judge council, to decide if they are competent, if they are running city hall like an inclusive big tent or an exclusive silo.

Helps could have just mouthed an empty oath she didn’t believe in. She chose not to do so. Move on.

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