Category: Politics

The standoff, which threatens to cost them their seats, reflects a complicated view of the country’s head of state…reports Asian Lite News

The council of a town in Canada’s Yukon territory has been locked for weeks in bureaucratic standstill after its members refused to swear a mandatory oath of allegiance to King Charles, citing the crown’s tarnished relations with Indigenous peoples in the region. 

The standoff, which threatens to cost them their seats, reflects a complicated view of the country’s head of state, who lives thousands of miles away, and increasingly serves as a reminder to a history of violence and broken promises 

In mid-October, residents of Dawson City – notorious as the birthplace of the “Sour Toe” cocktail which included a mummified human toe – voted to replace the town’s mayor and council, turning the page on an administration gripped by scandal and legal wrangling. 

But since then the council has been in procedural limbo. 

“We can’t do anything legally required of us … So we are sort of, kind of council, and I’m sort of, kind of the mayor,” the mayor-elect, Stephen Johnson, told the Canadian Press. “It’s a bit of a sticky situation.” 

Under Yukon’s Municipal Act, elected officials are required to take the oath of allegiance and an oath of office. 

But shortly before the incoming council was due to take office, councillor-elect Darwyn Lynn, a member of the Tr’ondek Hwech’in First Nation, told colleagues he wasn’t comfortable pledging allegiance to the crown due to its troubled history with Indigenous peoples. 

Councillors took the oath of office on 5 November, but have refused to swear or affirm they “will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles III” and his “heirs and successors according to law”. 

Johnson said the council decided to refuse the oath of allegiance in solidarity with Lynn, acknowledging a colonial history of displacement for the people living and using the lands for generations before the arrival settlers. 

The town of Dawson – known as the “Paris of the North” – is located on the former site of Tr’ochëk, a valuable hunting and fishing camp at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers. 

When the Klondike gold rush brought nearly 17,000 outsiders to the region at the end of the 1800s, the Tr’ondek Hwech’in, or people of the river, were displaced. Even though the gold rush soon ended, prompting an exodus from the northern community, Tr’ochëk never returned as a fishing and hunting camp. Nowadays, about 2,400 people live in Dawson City. 

“This is being done with no disrespect to His Majesty King Charles. And also we’re not doing this to go, ‘Rah, rah, look at us,’ to poke everybody across Canada, to get rid of the crown,” Johnson told the Canadian Press. “It was just something we wanted to do together to show solidarity in what we do here in this town.” 

The row over the pledge is rare, but not the first time elected officials have questioned the requirement they pledge allegiance to Canada’s head of state. 

In 2022, Quebec passed legislation ending elected officials’ required oath to King Charles. At the time, the provincial lawmaker Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois called it “a relic from the past”. 

At the same time, some Indigenous leaders point to treaties signed with the crown as solemn agreements that represent a trust both nations can live peacefully side by side. The territorial government says it is considering alternative options around the oath to ensure all council members feel included and respected within the governance structures while still complying with legislative requirements. 

But if an alternative cannot be reached by 10 December, a byelection is required and the mayor and councillors would forfeit their seats. 

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Diane Abbott and the Conservative Sir Edward Leigh, mother and father of the House, say law has been rushed…reports Asian Lite News

Britain’s longest-serving MPs, Labour’s Diane Abbott and the Conservative Sir Edward Leigh, have issued a joint call urging the Commons to reject the assisted dying bill, arguing it is being rushed through and puts vulnerable people at risk. 

Abbott and Leigh – the mother and father of the house – said there had been insufficient scrutiny of the law and urged parliament to instead focus on better health and care services. 

Four influential new Labour MPs have said they have also decided to oppose the bill amid concerns about the process and the pressure it has put on new parliamentarians. 

A landmark vote on legalising assisted dying is due to be held on Friday 29 November. It is a free vote, meaning MPs can decide whether to support or oppose it. In 2015, an assisted dying bill was rejected by 330 votes to 118, but since then a number of other countries have legalised the practice and polls show widespread public support. 

About 100 Labour MPs are still believed to be undecided. However, the bill’s backers remain confident they can be won over once they consider all the evidence. 

Keir Starmer and a majority of the cabinet are expected to support the bill, though there have been high-profile interventions opposing it, including from the health secretary, Wes Streeting. Questions have been raised about the drafting of the legislation – which is a private member’s bill from the Labour MP Kim Leadbeater rather than having been drawn up by the government – and whether it is sufficiently watertight. 

It has been learned it was drafted by Dame Elizabeth Gardiner, who retired this year after almost a decade as first parliamentary counsel, the government’s most senior and experienced legislative drafter. 

In the latest intervention, Abbott and Leigh said they were concerned that a gap of 18 days between the publication of Leadbeater’s bill and the first vote was too short, and that was exacerbated by the unusually high number of new MPs unfamiliar with Commons procedures. 

Leigh is a longtime Eurosceptic on the right of the Tory party and Abbott, a pivotal figure on Labour’s left, was the first Black woman in the Commons and served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. 

They write: “There is more than a suspicion that the pressure groups behind this proposed change have sought to take advantage of an inexperienced new parliament. Either way, the flawed process has been lamentable and wholly unacceptable for a matter of such importance.” 

The pair also voice concern that efforts to introduce the law have been highlighted by celebrities who are terminally ill and this could mask the potential inadvertent impact on less well-protected people. 

“We do not doubt their sincerity and sympathise greatly with anyone experiencing the fear and pain that can sadly accompany terminal illness. But MPs must make laws based on their effect on every member of society, not just those whose profile gives them a prominent voice,” they say. Imagine the pensioner whose children cannot afford houses of their own watching her limited savings, earmarked for those children, disappearing on social care and so feeling a ‘duty to die’.” 

The four new Labour MPs said they were convinced by Streeting’s argument that NHS care was not good enough to allow assisted dying to be legalised. 

Antonia Bance, a former senior aide at the Trades Union Congress who became an MP in July, said: “We were elected to fix the NHS – but it will take time. Yet somehow we are in a position where we may legalise assisted dying, knowing that many people may opt for it because they can’t get the care they are entitled to from our broken NHS.” 

James Frith, the Bury North MP who returned this year, said he had deep concerns about the quality of palliative care, and said that good care was “undervalued”. He said a member of his family was facing terminal cancer and the legislation did not address his concerns around coercion and doubt. 

“I think this risks feeling rushed and not the right time,” he said. “It’s also a door I don’t want opened by a new parliament learning its skill, given too little time and with much that can be added once the principal shift happens. For me, this is protecting our most vulnerable groups as well as all of us at our most vulnerable.” 

Mel Ward, the former chief executive of Medical Aid for Palestinians who is now the MP for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy, said she had spent time listening to arguments on both sides before deciding to vote against. 

“The strongest argument in favour of the bill is about personal choice and freedom, that has come across really clearly. But my concern is in seeking to do that, we are going to put at risk a much larger group of vulnerable people,” she said. 

Polly Billington, the MP for East Thanet and former special adviser to Ed Miliband, said her concerns were “the risks around internalised pressure and the problems of capacity combined with some of the considerations for our healthcare professionals and medical teams”. 

“None of that has been articulated and it needs to be,” she said. “Far too many people are saying: ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, let’s agree the principle and we can sort out the practicalities later,’ and that’s just not good enough,” she said. 

Leadbeater has said the bill has stringent safeguards, including requiring approval from two doctors and a high court judge, and lengthy prison sentences for coercion. Patients must have the mental capacity to make a choice about the end of their life and must be terminally ill and expected to die within six months. 

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