Inside Politics

UPDATED WITH COMMENTARY: Who wants to be a Canadian citizen?

by Kady O'Malley Posted: November 12, 2009 11:49 AM Last Updated: November 12, 2009 3:20 PM
canadaimmigrationmap584.jpg

Presenting the much anticipated new Canadian citizenship study guide: Discover Canada: The Rights and Responsibilities of Citizenship -- coming soon to a government book depository near you! 

I haven't actually gotten the chance to read it yet -- just too darned eager to get this link up, you know --- but feel free to start an ad hoc book club in the comments. 

UPDATE: Okay, so I managed to skim through most of the guidebook while keeping one ear tuned into the news conference. A few observations: 

  • As I mused to the twitterverse after reading the Oath of Citizenship: Being Canadian means spelling "fulfil" with one final "L", not two? I'm a much worse citizen than I thought.

  • The section on "citizenship responsibilities" seems to run the risk of inadvertently confusing legal obligations -- such as, for example, obeying the law, and serving on a jury i -- with "voting in elections" and "helping others in the community" -- two actions that, while definitely to be encouraged, alike are not actually  required to obtain or maintain citizenship.  

  • Look, a shoutout to the burgeoning atheist population! Agnostics, alas, are once again ignored. 

  • Okay, remember back when I wrote that I'd made it through most of the guidebook? What I really meant was "pretty much the whole thing except for that really, really, really long section on Canadian history." I'm sure that the various historians involved in the expert advisory panel -- yes, I'm looking at you, Jack Granatstein, Andrew Cohen and the rest of you historians  -- were adamant that every one of the several thousand words in that section was absolutely essential, but they're writers, for heaven's sakes. That's what we do. We always claim that deleting a single word would destroy the integrity of the entire piece. That's why we need editors. 

  • On that note, I found the section on "Justice" to be a little bit short -- particularly compared to the exhaustive history of Canada up until World War II. The Supreme Court merits just one sentence -- which  does nothing more than define the phrase "supreme court", and while the Charter of Rights does make a brief appearance, it seems somewhat overshadowed by the Magna Carta. 

  • Look, a shoutout to the BlackBerry empire! Congrats, RIM co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. Now, you belong to the ages. 
 Okay, your turn. What jumps out at you -- either with its presence, or its absence -- in the new citizenship guide?

HEY, WHERE'D THAT SOUTHERN NEIGHBOUR OF OURS GO UPDATE: 

Check the top of this post for a somewhat unsettling example of alternate universe cartography -- North America: Now With 100% Fewer United States, as spotted by portalmaster Andrew Davidson. 

Tags: blackberry jungle, hey isn't that awfully close to the ontario motto?, jason kenney, true north strong and free