Toronto — A small Canadian town’s five recently elected councilors refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Britain’s King Charles III during their investiture ceremony on Tuesday, despite it being a legal requirement in the northwestern Yukon territory where Dawson City is located.
Under a regulation in the Yukon’s Municipal Act, elected councilors are required to swear an oath of allegiance to the British monarch, who remains the official head of state of Canada despite the colonial-era link no longer giving the king any real power in the country.
The oath of allegiance to the monarch is typically taken by Yukon councilors when they’re sworn into office, right after they give the separate oath of office, within 40 days of their election.
If the politicians fail to do so, their election can be declared null and void, resulting in the office being left vacant and potentially leading to a special election, known as a by-election.
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Dawson City Mayor Stephen Johnson told CBS News partner network CBC News the decision was made collectively by all the newly elected councilors before the swearing-in ceremony on Tuesday, in support of one new councilor who broached the idea.
“Early in the morning we all got an email and it was from Darwyn,” Johnson told CBC News, referring to council member Darwyn Lynn. “And he said I’m hesitant to sign on to this basically because of background history with [the] Crown and First Nations in Canada.”
Four of the new councilors present at the meeting on Tuesday did take their oaths of office, with the fifth new member expected to do so after returning from vacation, according to the regional Yukon News outlet. But all five agreed not to take the other oath, pledging allegiance to the British crown.
Yukon Director of Community Affairs Samantha Crosby told the CBC that it’s uncommon for a whole group of new councilors to refuse to take the oath of allegiance collectively. She said she’d been in touch with the councilors to find a solution to avoid having to call a by-election for Dawson City that would result in the councilors and the mayor losing their seats.
“The requirement to swear or affirm the oaths is in the [municipal] act itself, but the prescribed forms are under a regulation within the municipal act,” Crosby told CBC News. “So the language that is within the forms is a regulation and not within the actual legislation. To make changes to legislation is a very long process, but to make changes to a regulation is something that can be done in a much quicker fashion.”
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King Charles is the official head of state for a number of former British colonies, including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Jamaica and many other so-called Commonwealth nations. He and his family have faced mounting criticism from Indigenous communities across the globe, however, highlighting the complex relationship between the former colonial power and communities that were exploited and marginalized to build the British empire of the 19th century.
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In October, King Charles was heckled by an Australian lawmaker during a visit to the country and accused of complicity in a genocide of the nation’s Indigenous people.
Sen. Lidia Thorpe, a vocal advocate for Indigenous rights who had railed against the British royal family previously, approached the king in Australia’s Parliament House after he delivered a speech and shouted at him: “This is not your country!”
“You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back. Give us what you stole from us — our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people,” Thorpe yelled at Charles and Queen Camilla as they sat on a stage next to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
A source close to the king and queen told CBS News after the incident that while Charles “understands there is always a debate to be had around the role of the monarch, he firmly believes it is a matter for the Australian people to decide.”
Following the September 2022 death of Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, a poll conducted by the Angus Reid Institute suggested that a majority of people in Canada (52%) opposed recognizing Charles as the country’s head of state and favored cutting Canada’s formal ties with the monarchy.
Earlier this year, a member of Canada’s national Parliament from New Brunswick introduced a bill to change the country’s constitution to make the oath of allegiance to the monarch optional. The bill was defeated by a vote of 197-113.
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