Right but I would qualify further. A resident in Canada who still qualified as a resident would owe allegiance to Canada but a resident who had later lost that condition would not.
I suppose that a Canadian national who had renounced their citizenship would also not owe allegiance to Canada.
I wouldn’t think so. General principle of the criminal law is that ambiguity goes in favour of the accused. Since Parliament has specifically stated “Her Majesty”, without referring to either the GovGen or the LtGov, then I would think the section would be construed only as applying to Her Majesty. That’s especially the case since the predecessor legislation, the Statute of Treason, protected a much broader range of members of the King’s family. Parliament pared it down to just Her Majesty, which indicates that Parliament decided that it was only necessary to protect Her Majesty.
I prefer the next section:
So, if you’re ever in the Queen’s presence in Canada, make sure you start all your sentences with “I don’t mean to alarm you, but…”, just to be safe.
Her Majesty is not easily alarmed or amused.
That offence dates back to the reign of King George III, when there was riot when he and the Queen arrived to open Parliament, with the mob rocking his carriage. It wasn’t clear if there was an assassination planned, and the offence of assault seemed too minor, so the British Parliament enacted the new offence of alarming the King. Canada inherited that offence and carried it forward in the Criminal Code.
I think that would come down to the specific circumstances. Once an allegiance has been established, from the state’s viewpoint can it be unilaterally terminated by the individual without consent of the state? For example, with Canada, a person can be granted a renunciation of citizneship by the state, but without such a grant, the person would still remain a citizen. Different countries handle this differently.
Quite:
True, but there were also two people convicted of the lesser but related offence of treason-felony: Poundmaker and Big Bear, as summarized by Parks Canada:
\Muffin and Northern Piper have gone into the details better than I could, but two additional points:
The logical extention of a plain text reading of the Criminal Code in this section would mean Canadian authorities could, legally, and routinely, violate the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war, a treaty to which Canada is a signatory. Soldiers legally engaged in warfare cannot be tried and punished for acts within the normal duties of executing warfare, even if you capture them on your turf. So it’s in conflict with that right off the top, and in fact the law would serve no purpose at all if it was Canada’s plan to respect its international obligations (since soldiers who commit war crimes can be tried in any case,) and
Not to point out the stupid, but that just isn’t what “Treason” is. It would be like having a section called “Murder” that dealt with theft.
Okay, that’s what I figured (which is why I said, “I imagine that that portion of the law would be superseded by any international treaties regarding the legal status of enemy combatants to which Canada is a party.”)
I suppose it’s written that way so that foreigners in Canada could be convicted of the parts of the statute that refer to things other than levying war, and/or that it could be used against foreign invaders in ways permitted by the relevant treaties.