Most of Victoria’s newly elected council opted to skip the tradition of pledging allegiance to the Queen during a swearing-in ceremony on Thursday.
There’s no legal requirement for B.C.’s municipal councillors to pledge allegiance to the Queen, but until the past two elections, it had been common practice for Victoria’s mayor and councillors to do so.
Victoria’s ties to royal tradition — including its name, chosen in honour of Queen Victoria — have been cited for the royal content in its swearing-in ceremonies.
Only Geoff Young and Charlayne Thornton-Joe included fealty to the monarch in their oaths of office.
Young, who first took office in 1983, said he continues to affirm his allegiance to the Queen out of respect for tradition and because it’s done at the federal and provincial levels of government.
Thornton-Joe said that as the child of a family that two generations back were immigrants, she decided it was appropriate to affirm allegiance to the Queen. It remains mandatory for new Canadians swearing their oath as citizens.
“I may be born and raised in Victoria, but I recognize my grandparents came to Canada [from China] to give me and all my family a better life,” Thornton-Joe said. “The Queen represents what Canada is all about.”
After the 2014 election, Mayor Lisa Helps and three of the eight councillors — Marianne Alto, Ben Isitt and Jeremy Loveday — did not pledge allegiance to the Queen. Back then, Helps said she left out the Queen as a sign of respect for First Nations people.
This time, when asked, she said she didn’t want to answer questions about allegiance to the Queen.
She said it was more important to note the ceremony’s inclusion of First Nations, Songhees Coun. Garry Sam and the Lekwungen dancers.
Helps also noted that none of the other councils on southern Vancouver Island invoke allegiance to the Queen.
“Maybe you should go and ask every other council of every other municipality why they don’t,” she said.
It is different for federal and provincial politicians, who must make the allegiance pledge before they can take office. 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.”
Past council members who have declined the convention include Isitt in 2011, Lynn Hunter in 2008 and Denise Savoie in 2002.
In her inaugural address, Helps listed affordability as being at the top of her agenda, whether it involves housing, child care, transit or taxes.
She listed climate change and the need for cities, including Victoria, to take action and noted public transit, walking and cycling are all low-carbon-emission activities.
The Oct. 20 election included a referendum on whether funding should be set aside to study merging Victoria and Saanich. A majority of voters in both municipalities favoured conducting a study. That vote means it’s time for a citizens’ assembly to begin discussing the implications of a merger, Helps said.
Helps said she plans to initiate a four-year plan outlining what Victoria council aims to accomplish this term. It will be revisited regularly to check progress.
The final goal mentioned, which received huge applause from the audience, is a restoration of good manners to public debate. And as part of that she asked citizens to honour the council with the benefit of the doubt as well as “powerful questions.”
“We really need to restore civility and decorum to public dialogue,” Helps said.
— With a file from Richard Watts
