Newcomers need to learn the Charter, ex-judge says
Teach Charter in schools, translate and distribute it to newcomers, he says
Former Canadian citizenship court Judge Gurcharan Bhatia says no one should become a Canadian citizen without demonstrating knowledge of our country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“Canada will be celebrating its 150th anniversary this year and now is the time to engage in developing its vision and values for the next century,” said Indian-born Bhatia, who served for six years as a citizenship court judge in Edmonton.
“Canadian citizenship is based on Canadian values and is not just a technical qualification for voting, getting a passport or qualifying for a government job. It defines the rights and responsibilities of citizens.”
During his 50 years in Canada, Bhatia has also served as a Canadian Human Rights Commission member, helped fund several multicultural human rights organizations and launched a biweekly multicultural newspaper.
Canada, said Bhatia, is a young nation, but unique with more than 36 million people belonging to 200 nationalities, dozens of religions, cultures and languages.
Every year Canada welcomes more than 250,000 new immigrants and will always remain a work in progress as common values are defined and promoted.
“The Canadian Charter should be translated into many languages and distributed to new immigrants upon arrival in Canada,” said Bhatia.
“School curricula should include education about the Charter. English as a Second Language programs should be supported to enable new immigrants to learn the national language soon after their arrival.”
He also notes Canada has experienced more violence at the hands of people born in Canada than by local or foreign Jihadists.
“The 1989 killing of 14 girls in Montreal, violence against RCMP officers in Alberta and Nova Scotia and the deaths of hundreds of native women are some examples of violence by Canadian-born people,” he says.
“Practising these values, Canada will always be a world role model for peace and freedoms,” said Bhatia.
Canadians must look inward and develop action plans in cooperation with the three levels of government and community leaders.
“The focus should be on the promotion of Canadian values in schools and also on youth, new immigrants and indigenous people,” he says.
Growing up, Bhatia, a Sikh, experienced horrors most people couldn’t imagine.
His dreams of a peaceful, prosperous life were shattered when India and Pakistan divided violently on a religious basis.
“My father — a police superintendent in Mirpur, now in Pakistan — and 67 relatives were among those murdered,” he says. “Millions became homeless. My family moved to Delhi and I became a chartered accountant.
“I worked three jobs, seven days a week and was the head of our family at 17.”
He went on to study industrial management in Glasgow, Scotland, and while on a visit to a London museum, he met a party of Canadians whose members were born throughout the world. In 1964, he decided to move to Winnipeg with his own young family.
In Manitoba, he was surprised when kids in shopping malls asked him if he was a genie.
“They thought a person wearing a turban was either a genie or an Arab,” he says.
This prompted him to visit Sunday schools and speak to children, and through them, their parents.
“We introduced festivals involving food, music and dances and set up a library of Indian books,” says Bhatia. “With a poor economy and the real estate values falling in 1980, we moved to Edmonton.”
He discovered because of such leaders as the late premier Peter Lougheed and then Edmonton mayor Laurence Decore, Alberta had embraced immigrants and enshrined values from the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“It’s so important to recognize and nurture the common values that bind,” he says.
A co-founder of Canadians for a Civil Society, he has helped develop five pillars to promote Canadian values.
They are: Respect for All; Literacy and Education; The Rule of Law; Human Rights and Responsibilities and Opportunity for All.
“Practising these values, Canada will always be a world role model for peace and freedoms,” says Bhatia.
With funds donated by thoughtful citizens, a classically designed, eye-catching poster declaring the rights of all Canadians has been extensively distributed to such people as federal government leaders, senators, all MPs, provincial premiers and school board trustees.
“We hope it will help educate some and make all Canadians proud,” said Bhatia.
The love of being a Canadian may have been best expressed by a 95-year-old woman born in China who approached Bhatia when he was a citizenship court judge and said she wanted to become a Canadian.
“I told her if she had no plans to travel, it was unlikely she’d need a passport,” he said. “That wasn’t her point. She wanted to live the rest of her life and die as a Canadian.”
KINDNESS THE WAY TO GO
A buffoonish stepfather replaced the wicked stepmother. The fairy godmother is now a wise philosopher. And matching bracelets reunite the lovers instead of glass slippers.
But did the changes in Edmonton Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella upset youngsters used to the story of a pumpkin becoming a stagecoach and mice turned into horses?
Definitely not by the cheers, whistles and shouts from 1,848 Edmonton students from 39 schools invited to the final dress rehearsal of the opera last week.
“I literally wept at their applause,” said Opera board chair Richard Cook.
“It was probably the first time many had heard voices that hadn’t been amplified.”
The opera, taken from the 17th century French writer Charles Perrault’s story, is not set centuries ago, but in the haute-couture world of the 1950s.
Jessie Sparrowe, 11, from Robert Rundle School in St. Albert, said: “You could tell it was from a different period. No one had a cellphone.”
Vida Wagenseil, 10, from the Victoria School of the Arts, said: “The singers put their hearts and souls into the opera and showed kindness is the way to go.”
Laughter as loud as ever heard at the Jubilee Auditorium came when the prince, masquerading as a chauffeur, brazenly dropped his pants and then his shorts to return to his regal attire.
Catch a performance from Tuesday, Feb. 7 to Thursday, Feb. 9 to find how this delicate scene was handled.
Practising these values, Canada will always be a world role model for peace and freedoms.