Suzanne Carrière: If We Can All Be Friends, We Can All Move Forward

Stuart Murray  0:00  
This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji Cree, Dakota and the Dene peoples and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover)  0:19  
This is humans on rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray.

Stuart Murray  0:31  
July 1 2024, Canada will celebrate its 150/7 anniversary of being a place called Canada. So what makes you a Canadian? If you were born in this country, presumably that would make you a Canadian. But what if you were born in another country outside of Canada, and wanted to make Canada your new home? Well, we're going to find out what that is like and go through that process. Because I am joined today on this humans on right podcast with Canada's first Matey citizenship judge, Suzanne Carrière, and Suzanne has provided over 1950 citizenship ceremonies, personally welcome over 145,000 newcomers into the Canadian family. I'm going to repeat that that's a big number. She's welcomed over 145,000 newcomers into the Canadian family. Now, Suzanne uses her platform unfailingly to speak about reconciliation being a shared responsibility of all Canadians, whether indigenous or non Indigenous, whether born here or elsewhere. And in June of 2021, she was honored to preside the very first citizenship ceremony in Canadian history using a revised Oath of Citizenship recognition, the right of indigenous peoples in response to the TRC, the Truth and Reconciliation, call to action number 94. So with all of that laid out, I want to say welcome Suzanne carrier to humans own rights.

Suzanne Carriere  2:25  
Thank you so much for having me. I'm super happy to be here. Okay,

Stuart Murray  2:28  
so Suzanne, let's just kind of if we can get some administrative things out of the way, because, you know, just a lot of people might know, not know, for example, like, what is the role of a citizenship court judge?

Suzanne Carriere  2:40  
One, I'll say what we're not, we're not courtroom judges. And in fact, we don't really use that terminology of citizenship court anymore. What we do is very different people hear the word judge, and they assume that we're courtroom judges, we don't sit in Provincial Court, we don't sit in superior court. So first of all, that's what we're not, we have three main tasks. One is decision making. We are decision makers. So that's where the word judge comes in. We do review some applications for citizenship and we make decisions about whether or not whether there'll be approved or refused. So the second aspect is promotional. So we do go out into the community, in schools and newcomer groups and talk about what it means to be a Canadian citizen, what the rights and responsibilities attached to that are. And the third part of our role is ceremonial. That's the one that most people are familiar with. We preside citizenship ceremonies. And that's the moment where people become Canadian citizens. And that's what you've alluded to. I've presided a nearly 2000 ceremonies at this point where I've welcomed over 145,000 new Canadians, there, we're very niche group. That's why most people haven't heard of us. There's only nine of us across Canada, and the only citizenship judge in the prairies, though it's kind of the cover those three provinces, mainly, and it's the best job in the world. That's the best way I can describe it.

Stuart Murray  3:58  
Yeah, well, I can tell by your enthusiasm, and we've chatted a little bit offline. And I think you know, what a great choice you are. So let me just ask that then. Suzanne. So how do you become a citizenship judge? I

Suzanne Carriere  4:11  
was just a posting online. It's a governor and council appointment. Somebody saw the posting online for it it to me, I had no idea whether or not I was qualified or not. But I was interested enough to throw my resume, throw my hat in the ring, so to speak, and see what came of it. My only experience up to that point had been I accidentally stumbled onto a citizenship ceremony. About a year maybe before I applied to become a citizenship judge. It related to what we're talking about today. It was Canada Day. My family and I we have a cabin up in Clear Lake and Riding Mountain National Park. And my kids were young and we were heading to the beach area to check out I think Al Simmons was performing in love on it to go so we went early with blankets to you know, grab a piece of a lawn there and settle in. And there was already Programming happening before Al Simmons was set to start. And we weren't quite sure what it was. But as we started listening to what was happening on the stage, it was a citizenship ceremony. And as I heard, you know, the presiding official talk about what this day meant, and I could see all these new Canadians that were so dressed up and so excited. I got really, really emotional. And I mean, we really just walked in it halfway through. And I was just so moved by what I was seeing. And it never ever could have known that, you know, a year or two later, I'd actually be in a role and doing the same thing myself and welcoming new Canadians myself.

Stuart Murray  5:39  
Yeah, it's fantastic. And I'm glad you brought up the fact again, and there are nine citizenship judges across the country. And you if somebody said, if you had like to report to a department, a minister or whoever, as you say, it's an ordering counselor Governing Council appointment. Suzanne, who would that be? So

Suzanne Carriere  5:59  
yeah, so the art department is then the Department of Immigration refugee citizenship Canada, the minister these days, Mark Miller. And but yeah, were appointed by the Governor General on the advice of Cabinet and the Minister of IRCC.

Stuart Murray  6:15  
Yeah, fantastic. Again, you know, one of the things I learned which surprised me was that there's only nine for the whole country.

Suzanne Carriere  6:21  
We're only appointed for three year terms as well. So I was first appointed in June of 2018. Did those three years in June of 2021, I was reappointed for another three years, and then just last week or two weeks ago, had now been reappointed for a third term of three years. Fantastic.

Stuart Murray  6:38  
Congratulations. That's a that's a great honor. And we're going to talk a lot about that. But let me just sort of go back to your life journey. How did you find your way? I know you studied law. I didn't get that into the, into your introduction, but I know you study law. But talk a little bit about your personal journey, Suzanne, that you have found yourself. Sitting now in front of people, then you're welcoming. And as you say, to the Canadian family, talk a little bit about how you found yourself into finding that journey and getting so passionate about it.

Suzanne Carriere  7:11  
Sure. So I'm a small town Manitoba. girl grew up just in Otterburn, a small town, but 45 minutes south of Winnipeg, with my with my parents, so both sides of my family were Red River matey. So I've always kind of been interested in indigenous culture, indigenous issues, I ended up going to law school after after I graduated from high school, and worked for a while I was in Calgary at the time, I did my law degree in Calgary, you know, worked for a big downtown law firm, and then went to work in house as legal counsel for a big company while WestJet airlines and then eventually my husband and I wanted to when we started our family, we decided that we wanted to move back to Manitoba. And when I came back here, that meant having to find another job. And I was looking to get into things that I felt more passionate about, I was hoping to do work with indigenous peoples. And so I ended up working at the Department of Justice in their Aboriginal Law Section, and did that for many years. Some of the work I did there was with the independent assessment process, which was a dispute resolution mechanism that was created. It was part of the Indian residential school settlement agreement, there were several components to that agreement. One was the creation of the TRC. I think we all know about that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Another component of it was this independent assessment process where residential school survivors could make claims for compensation for the abuse that they suffered at the schools, whether it be physical, sexual, or emotional. So I did do that work for several years, which was the most meaningful work. Just absolutely life changing for me, I did that for a while until that work wrapped up, then I was still a lawyer with the Department of Justice. But all of a sudden, the things I was working on, were not quite as meaningful to me the work that I was doing after the residential schoolwork felt more like I always describe it as I felt like a cog in the Indian Act wheel, and it was not a good fit. So that's kind of when I started thinking about other work. That's when I saw the posting for a citizenship judge. And I have to say that, you know, I applied not really knowing if anything would come of it. When it became clear to me that they were interested in appointing me. All of a sudden, I had a moment of do I actually really want to do this. I was always interested in and felt passionate about indigenous issues. But to be quite honest, I'd never really thought about immigration and refugees like that wasn't really on my radar. So I was worried about even though I wasn't happy with the work I was doing at the time, I was a little bit worried about leaving the indigenous world if you will, the indigenous legal world, but I'm so Happy and I talk about this all the time, I'm so happy that I took the leap and came over to be a citizenship judge because I have a little bit of a platform now, maybe not the biggest platform in the world. But I have a platform now I get to preside these ceremonies, I get to do work in the community. And I can talk about, I talk about reconciliation more now. And I meet a lot of amazing indigenous peoples who are part of our ceremonies, more now than I did sitting in my office when I worked at Department of Justice. So it was absolutely the right choice for me. And I absolutely love it. And that's kind of a, in a nutshell, how I ended up where I am today.

Stuart Murray  10:40  
One question just to go back. And then let's talk about today and moving forward. But you were you're obviously passionate about indigenous issues growing up, I mean, you your Red River, matey parents, what sort of kind of made you decide, you know, what I'm going to, I'm going to get a law degree, I want to search out law, was there a part of law that you were looking at? or was there some area that drew you towards to becoming a lawyer? That was a

Suzanne Carriere  11:02  
bit of a an interesting journey in and of itself law wasn't on my radar? As the short answer. I was pursuing more like criminology and psychology initially, and did a field study course. And I wanted to look at some alternative to court that were happening in some First Nations in Manitoba, and ended up doing a project about a, an initiative at hollow water first nations. And the, the person that I was working with, or I was, I had a mentor, I suppose a man who was working at Manitoba justice at the time. And he asked me whether I'd consider going into law and I thought, No, I don't want to be a lawyer, like I really had no idea what law meant. And I just, I had this very narrow idea of what a lawyer was based on, you know, what I saw on TV, I'm sure. And I had a great conversation with him where he kind of said, you know, you're you're mi T, you're a woman, you're bilingual, like with a law degree, there's really nothing you can't do. Whereas what I was pursuing at the time would have been my employment options, let's say might have been a little bit more narrow. And what he said, really made a lot of sense to me. And so I wish I ever could have met this man against I could tell him that he actually changed the course of my career, just through that conversation. But I did, I was so stuck on I don't really want to be a lawyer. But the reality and what I know now it's 2020, some years after obtaining my law degree is that there's so many options available with a law degree. And there's such a breadth of what you can do with a law degree, like I haven't really had a traditional legal career, but I've had an easy way to go through. So amazing.

Stuart Murray  12:44  
And you know, it's really kind of interesting, you can kind of connect the dots in a way now, when you see where you are, even though as you're going at the time might not make sense, but it kind of beautifully flows to the fact that here, you are now, citizenship judge. And so let's talk a little bit about that you applied for it, they approached you, it must mean something a pretty impressive to find out that that again, there's only nine citizenship judges in Canada, and that you are the first Matey citizenship judge. That's gonna mean a tremendous amount to you. I mean, when you sort of really sort of think about that, like, what impact does that have on you, and you kind of think about your background, and the fact again, that you're now welcoming these new Canadians, and that you were and are the first Metis citizenship judge.

Suzanne Carriere  13:34  
First of all, when I applied, I obviously had no idea that they had not had any Matey or any indigenous citizenship judges before. I also had no appreciation of how, how nice the position was, and how few there were across the country. Shortly after I was appointed, then it became known to me that I was the first Matey citizenship judge, the first indigenous citizenship judge, that government of Canada and the IRCC departments kind of, we have profiles online. And that was what they wanted to include on my profile. And I remember thinking at first, like, do we really want to include that? Isn't it a little embarrassing that it's 2018 and this and I, and I'm the first one, but then I thought, no, you know what you want to run with it. And then I'm, you know, I'm gonna run with it too. You need to know government, you need to know that I if you want to present me to the world this way, while I am going, I'm going to show up in all of my meaty self, I'm gonna bring my whole meaty self to this role. So you know, I've kind of taken that baton within our group, and I do I would have done it anyway. But I mean, I really do kind of push for a lot of things in the work that we do I push for greater indigenous representation at our ceremonies, push and keep asking questions and keep asking for updates on the call. calls to action that are relevant to us and specific to us at IRCC. I talked about being meaty at every one of my ceremonies, you know, by looking at me, people might not know that I made tea or that I'm indigenous. So it's important. It's important that I tell people that and that I tell the people before me that are coming to be new Canadians, because representation doesn't matter if you don't actually know who's who's in front of you, and who's presiding your ceremony. So I make a point of it, I wear a beaded flower on my robes as another, just another symbol of my meaty identity and my heritage. And yeah, I try and bring my whole self and make a point of talking about reconciliation, whenever and however I can. So

Stuart Murray  15:50  
Suzanne, I'm just gonna throw something in because I know that sometimes when you know, when you're involved in an organization, you mentioned IRCC, immigration, refugees and citizenship, Canada IRCC, you mentioned that, so I just wanted to sort of get clarity on that. But you know, one of the things that I would love to get from you is this notion that, you know, you are, as you say, a very proud, a Matey woman, indigenous woman. And I know they've changed. And I want to talk a little about the change of the oath. But your very first day on the job, you know, your very first opportunity to look at a group of newcomers that you're going to welcome into the Canadian family. Was there anything that you looked at that you said, initially, wow, this is really this tradition that I'm now involved in, is either like baked in colonialism, or it's baked in a time that is never been changed, and I cannot possibly sit here in all honesty, without advocating for something that is more representative of who this country is, from my perspective?

Suzanne Carriere  16:52  
It's a great question. And the obvious answer is the Oath of Citizenship and administering the oath of citizenship. If people are not aware, when people become new Canadian citizens, they pledge allegiance to the Queen when I first started and now pledge allegiance to the king and their heirs and successors. So it's about as colonial as it gets. And certainly, there's a little bit of, of discomfort there and something that I had to think about and, and part of a decision making process for becoming coming into this role. But there's, I always like to think that it's things are not always a perfect fit in any job, a lot of jobs within the federal government, certainly citizenship judges, not the only one, there's a lot of things that aren't a great fit. But it's better for us to be there and to be in the room and to be, especially in leadership positions. It's so important to have indigenous people in leadership positions. And you know, I haven't talked to them about this specifically. But, you know, I think of our new premier wall canoe and our new ministers, you know, in the Hani Fontaine, Bernadette Smith, who also had to, to take office have to had to pledge an oath that was similar to that. And so there, yeah, there are things that are a little bit uncomfortable. But it's better for us to be there than not be there. And

Stuart Murray  18:16  
I think that's a that's a great way to look at it. And it's always a tough decision and leadership, because you can be offended by something. And that's fair comment that you're offended to the point you say, I don't want to participate. Again, all fair comments. But if you're trying to sort of educate and make change, and sort of lead people to look at a different perspective, it's hard not to do that, if you're not involved. And so, you know, from your perspective, being involved, even though as you say, it's not about perfection, it's about learning. It's about how does this grow? How can you change it? So, you know, congratulations to you for seeing that and doing that. And I just want to pick up on one element that you mentioned is that you were on your robe, you were an identification to say that you are a proud Matey woman or a proud member of the Matey Red River. Did you have to get permission to do that? Is there anything again, just in terms of some of the changes that you're starting to see starting to bring forward from what would be kind of maybe a more traditional roll?

Suzanne Carriere  19:18  
Thinking back I think it was more of a statement that I kind of was like, just so you're aware at the beginning, it wasn't a beaded flower that I wore, it was a kind of a meanie, meaty sash that I wear on my rolls and I kind of probably said in a way that was asking but more making a statement that it was something that I was choosing to do. Nobody's ever said anything to me about it. I like to do that every now and then every once in a while we have special ceremonies that are a little bit more have a little bit more indigenous content than others when when that happens. I might also throw on a beaded orange shirt. I've been known to wear beaded red dress earrings and When the occasion is when it's appropriate, I did a ceremony last year on Canada Day actually with a prime minister and that's what I chose to wear. Interesting.

Stuart Murray  20:08  
And where did you do that? Where was the venue for that? Suzanne?

Suzanne Carriere  20:12  
This was last year in Ottawa. I love Lebreton Flats. Yeah, we did. I actually was part of the CBC noon hour special. It was a whole one hour televised maybe even two hours, a televised show that included a lot of entertainment, a lot of special guest, Jeremy Hansen, the Governor General, the Prime Minister, the Minister of heritage, it was a big, big production, and part of it included a modified citizenship ceremony that I was honored to be a part

Stuart Murray  20:42  
of, you shouldn't be honored. Because if there's nine citizenship judges, did you mean to be in Ottawa must be a special opportunity? Or do you go to Ottawa quite often,

Suzanne Carriere  20:52  
and don't go to Ottawa often, certainly not for citizenship ceremonies. I did that one last year on Canada Day and one just last week, incidentally, where we launched a and this is a new initiative as well launched a video that's now shown at all citizenship ceremonies, whether they're held virtually or in person. And it's a video about indigenous peoples explaining a little bit about them, and also where Indigenous peoples have the opportunity to welcome new Canadian citizens. And so we just launched it last week at a ceremony at the Canadian Museum of History with Minister Mark Miller. And I was again honored to be able to preside that ceremony. And I think it's a really nice fit and a nice, it's a nice tie in in terms of myself being a citizenship judge. And now in terms of this video that's now being played. But you have indigenous peoples who have this history of welcoming people to this land, and who are the first ones here, and I just think it's so appropriate, and such a nice tie and type of people who have been here since time immemorial, welcoming new people to the country eautiful video. Now that's being shown and just a nice, a nice touch that was missing from citizenship ceremonies before.

Stuart Murray  22:06  
So you have presided over 1950 citizenship ceremonies, that number is growing, because you've done a couple more? What would a typical day in the life of a citizenship judge be? Suzanne, you know, you know that you've got an event at whatever time So walk us through what your preparation is, as you enter the venue, it could be the Canadian Museum for Human Rights via rail, or in this case, libretto and flots. What's your level of preparation? What goes into the involvement of what a citizenship judge does on the day of ceremony?

Suzanne Carriere  22:43  
Sure. So that's certainly evolved over time pre pandemic, virtual ceremonies did not exist. So all ceremonies were done in person back then I would maybe preside 12 to 15 ceremonies a month. The rest of the work is like I said, it's there's file work, there's decision making. And there's also promotional work for a ceremony, we would Yeah, show up to the venue meets any special guests ahead of time that are if they're participating in the ceremony, meet with the hosts. So a lot of our ceremonies, we don't have a host per se, we're in a space that's IRCC space. Those ceremonies, typically, we don't have a lot of special guests or any special guests. Those are more I don't want to say a more bare bones ceremony, but but they are it's typically the new Canadians, we have a clerk who kind of acts as the emcee of the ceremony. And then the presiding official, whether that's a judge, like myself or somebody else, yeah, we have some opening remarks for the ceremony, then we all swear the Oath of Citizenship together and any other guests that are in the room are welcome to do it, as well. If they want to reaffirm their Canadian citizenship, then we'll typically have some congratulatory remarks if there are special guests, some closing remarks by the judge, and then we all single Canada together, which is so It's so heartwarming, it really, really is. I mean, it's, it's mind boggling when I hear the numbers, you know, and when I say 1950, or whatever it is, and yet every single one of them is still so special. I it's just it never gets old. It never ever, ever gets old. And then because it's a big day for people they like to take photos, the new Canadians often like take photos with the with the judge or any other special guests that might be there. So then we do that it gives us an opportunity to chat more informally. And and then that's it. And some days we might have more than one citizenship ceremony up to three in a day. person up to three a day, virtually as well virtually obviously is quite different because there's no opportunity to kind of have the one on one chats which we sometimes can do at the end of a ceremony if it's in person. So, it, the virtual ones are different. So post pandemic, again, I was I was lucky enough, I presided the very first online citizenship ceremony. So that was kind of neat. On April 1, so you know, the world's kind of shut down mid March of 2020. On April 1, we did an emergency citizenship ceremony for a man who needed to travel. And so he needed a Canadian passport so that he could come back to Canada. But then yeah, for a couple of years, I mean, everything was online. And then maybe in 2020, to fall of 2022, Summer, maybe we started again, doing some in persons, it's still a bit lopsided, we do a lot more virtual than in person, but we're trying to get the virtuals are never gonna go away at this point. But we're trying to get back to a balance of, you know, maybe half and half or that kind of thing. So

Stuart Murray  25:56  
when you say the virtues will never go away, Suzanne, what why do you why do you feel about?

Suzanne Carriere  26:03  
Well, I think, partly it's an efficiency thing. But it didn't exist pre pandemic, but now that we have it, you know, I can sit here in my home in just south of Winnipeg, and I can preside ceremonies that are for clients or for new Canadians in in Edmonton and Calgary and Vancouver, you know, we can we can be everywhere we can be anywhere, we can have more people in the Zoom ceremony than we do typically have in an in person ceremony. So numbers wise, and of course, for access reasons. For some people, it's difficult to to do an in person ceremony in pre pandemic, they didn't have any other option. But I suspect most people want to have an in person ceremony. I'm not sure that we're ever going to get to a point where that's all exclusively and particularly

Stuart Murray  26:53  
as a new Canadian. I mean, I just think it'd be, there's such a sort of like a human element of sort of being able to do something in person to have that opportunity, you know, and yet having said that, what I think is admirable? Is it oh, there would be a lot of Canadians that I'm sure or I'll just say, new Canadians who were waiting for their citizenship ceremony. And when COVID hit, it would be like, oh, what happens to us now? Where do we go? How do we fit. And so the fact that you were able to sort of, you know, pivot, and make those new Canadians still feel part of Canada, even though it was done through a Zoom meeting, that's got to be pretty special. Mm hmm.

Suzanne Carriere  27:32  
I was certainly an adjustment. And when we felt it, and it took a while for us to get started. Because, of course, you know, if you if we all transport ourselves back to those early days of the pandemic, I'm not sure we want to a lot of us probably still have PTSD about it. But you know, it was just emergency stuff that was happening first, right. So in terms of immigration, refugees, and citizenship, Canada, our department had to keep working on immigration and refugees by citizenship, because people are already in Canada, it was less of an emergency. So for sure, on the citizenship side, people had to wait a little bit longer, before the resources could be taken from the real emergencies and be put more on the citizenship side and to get the ball rolling on our end. So there was for sure, a bit more of a pause there. And then when we did get started, we were doing one on one ceremonies on Zoom. So that was an interesting time. And then eventually, you know, obviously started ramping up. And now we're at the point where we do probably on average, we invite about 150 new Canadians per citizenship ceremony that's done online. Okay,

Stuart Murray  28:42  
just to ask a question. You know, you're responsible for a welcoming, and you say there's some administrative stuff that you do besides the actual day of the ceremony? Do you have the ability, Suzanne, to look at an application and say, I'm not sure that for whatever reason, you don't have to get specific, but you have the ability to say, you know, for whatever reason, I would have to say that maybe this particular individual is not somebody that we should consider welcoming into the Canadian family, do you have that ability

Suzanne Carriere  29:11  
that is part of our role, although the what we're looking at is quite narrow the Citizenship Act, obviously, there's some requirements that people need to meet in order to become new Canadian citizens. One of them is the amount of time that they spend in Canada before they can become Canadian. So people can not just arrived in Canada and request citizenship. When a person applies for citizenship, we go back five years, we call that the relevant period. So we go back five years, and then in that five years, they had to have been in Canada for at least three of those five years, not in a three year chunk or anything, but we count all the days that they were in Canada, we don't count the days that they were outside of Canada and it has to add up to at least 1095 days, which is the equivalent of three years so Really, that's what we're looking at, for the most part, anything in terms of like criminality, or those kinds of things are dealt with before. Got it? The department, they deal with that that doesn't come to citizenship.

Stuart Murray  30:12  
Okay. And that's only fair because I mean, at some juncture, that's a pretty heavy burden. And there's a whole department. I mean, there's only nine of you. There's a whole department. So you've expected the fraction, the number

Suzanne Carriere  30:22  
of miles that come to citizenship judges for decision is just the tiniest little fraction of the total number of applications for citizenship. In

Stuart Murray  30:31  
June of 2021. You were honored, obviously, to preside the very first citizenship ceremony in Canadian history, using a revised Oath of Citizenship, recognizing the rights of indigenous peoples, as I mentioned in our opening remarks in response to trc, called action number 94. What was the change in that? Suzanne, and from your perspective, being the first I mean, when you're kind of leading something, and you realize this is I mean, everything is recorded, it's all part of history, people 100 years from now can look back and say, Suzanne carrier was the very first to sort of do this, what was the change in the oath? So

Suzanne Carriere  31:11  
there's a new wording that was added to the oath where we, instead of new Canadians, just saying that they're going to follow Canadian law. We talk about respecting also the constitution of Canada, which recognizes and affirms the aboriginal and treaty rights of First Nations, Inuit and maytee. Peoples. So that's the new wording that was added. And again, it was in response to trc call to action number 94. Number 94, did have some Suggested Wording, but it did take a while. That's not the wording that was landed on in consultation with indigenous groups. There was specific wording that so it did, it did take a while. And there were a few attempts to get it adopted into law, the new wording, some that didn't go anywhere. And then really, the new wording that we use today was actually making its way through the house and through Senate. And then the discovery of the 215 unmarked graves at the Kamloops the former site of the Kamloops Indian residential school happened. And then that really fast track things because that was at the end of May of 2021 when he tried to find you and by June 21 of 2021, which was national indigenous peoples day, the new wording the bill Ciate received royal assent. So then the next morning on June 22. Starting from that day on, we were using the new wording of the oath. So that very first ceremony was quite emotional because the whole Kamloops discovery was very fresh. And the Kamloops discovery played our role in the new wording coming out when it did. It did fast track things. There's no no question about that. And so it was an interesting ceremony where we wanted to recognize and celebrate the new awarding, but also temper that with the pain that people were feeling. Yeah,

Stuart Murray  33:11  
you know, the one element of that that is so incredibly emotional, that, you know, the whole nation, I think just came to a stop at one point and one of the elements and I want to, you know, come back to somebody that you and I both know, well and not see honorable Murray Sinclair, when he was heading up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it was interesting how many people if you really wanted to pay attention to what was being discussed, he talked a lot about this. I mean, he wasn't being specific or prescriptive. But he talked a lot about the fact that through the residential school system, there were a lot of missing young people. At that point were words obviously way more for Murray he just such a super amazing guy, as it were the other two commissioners, but when it started to sort of become reality, and in you as a as a as a citizenship judge, trying to welcome new Canadians. And there's this, this this incredibly dark cloud that is all of a sudden become a part of who we are as a country as a nation and and you're trying to say to people, yeah, we want to celebrate this great nation, but at some point, we have to celebrate and be very open and mindful that there's an element of our country that we need to step back and understand and and try to find a way to heal. And so, with your passion and your background, Suzanne, how do you integrate that? So that people understand that as a as a nation? We're trying to grapple with something that is very, very difficult and challenging, yet we're proud to be Canadians.

Suzanne Carriere  34:55  
Yeah, it was a very interesting time for sure. Because you're right indigenous people had known about this already, they talked about this already about children who didn't make it home from Indian residential schools. And yet, the Kamloops discovery really changed everything. It really was the moment where a lot of non Indigenous Canadians really, finally, if I can say took notice of how terrible that legacy of residential schools was, and the pain was, it was intense, all across the country, for indigenous and for non Indigenous peoples. So, it was very, very interesting. And I remember discussions with my colleagues, my fellow judges, because, you know, we're presiding citizenship ceremonies, you know, pretty much daily. And so we were grappling exactly as you said it grappling with how do we celebrate how do we make this a celebration for the new Canadians, but we have to acknowledge what's going on like we, we have to talk about this. And we were all talking about what had happened in Kamloops in our ceremonies around that time, many of us just openly, you know, crying and while we were presiding the ceremonies, because it was such an intense moment of such intense grief and raw pain for so many people. So it was interesting times. But it was important to talk about and and I think we all we all did, it's it's an interesting place to be. And when I love this work, I really, really love this work, because so many people Canada is obviously a top destination country, for people that are leaving their countries for whatever reason, right? There's a million different reasons why people leave their countries, whether it's because of war or other instabilities in their countries, or whether it's because they're seeking better opportunities, or whether it's for work or for education, or to follow a loved one. There's, there's so many different reasons why and still to this day, a lot of people have their we have this reputation in the world, Canada has this reputation of this just this bright, sunny place, and it's rainbows and flowers. And, and it's a bit of a bit of a reality check for people when they hear some of the things that happened in this country, and that are still happening in this country with respect to indigenous peoples. And so I think it's, it's amazing, and I have the greatest conversations with people and things that come up all the time. You know, I thought this was quite interesting. This happened to me just this week. And I thought it was great. I thought I have to talk about this with Stuart. But we had a citizenship ceremony this week where I right after the exam online, right after the oath taking immediately after we were done, message popped up on the Zoom chat. And one of the new Canadians out of 140 ish that we were that day, immediately publicly, disavow disavowed a portion of the oath that he had just recited. He wanted to disavow pledging allegiance to the king and his heirs and successors, and said that in this in his message and his public disavow, that he was standing in solidarity with indigenous peoples well, because of because he came from a country I spoke with him a bit after the ceremony because I wanted to, I wanted to give him the opportunity to share his thoughts, but because he had come from a country that had also experienced colonization, yeah. And then when he came here, he really didn't know about that part of Canada's history. And when you learned it, you know, and kudos to him, he did a lot of learning about it. And when he he wanted to become a Canadian citizen, but it just didn't sit well with him that he had to it's a legal requirement to recite the oath of citizenship. If you don't swear the oath, you don't get your citizenship, right. And so he knew that he had to go through this step. But he was really torn about it. And so he had done some research and learned that this was something that you could do was to disavow a portion or the Oath of Citizenship. And so that's what he did. So anyway, my long winded answer to your question is like, I love doing this work. And I love newcomers, a lot of newcomers get this, a lot of newcomers do come from countries where colonization was a reality. And I find that a lot of times in the conversations that I have with people, some newcomers are just even more open to reconciliation with indigenous peoples than Canadian born. People are. I'm not obviously not in every case. But I just love seeing new Canadians that take this so seriously. Like I thought that was very unusual. It's it does not happen very often that somebody wants to disavow part of the oath that they just Warren Buffett's to me and I know that some people kind of go, oh, well, that's kind of that's a bit of an icky situation. And I love it. I take the opposite stance, which is, this person is taking this so seriously, that he's actually thinking about words that he's swearing, and thinking about is this. Is this really what I want to be saying? Does this make sense for me? So I thought that was

Stuart Murray  40:27  
that was great, timely and appropriate,

Suzanne Carriere  40:29  
timely and appropriate. And and, you know, going back to the new Oath of Citizenship when it was new, in June of 2021, I also remembered as sometimes after ceremonies, people search me out on social media, I'm out there on Instagram. And I remember getting a message from somebody that I had sworn in maybe a year prior to the new oath. And they just said that they wish that they could join another ceremony again, so they could swear the new oath. And I just thought that was so special as well, we could do that, you know, year or, or whatever it was, after they became a Canadian citizen, that they're still, they're still thinking about that moment, and what swearing the oath meant to them, and what it would mean to them now, with new words added to the oath. So these wonderful, wonderful moments that happen, you know, on a fairly regular basis where I'm just so it gives me such hope that people are, they care about what it means to be a Canadian citizen, they care about what happened here, even before they came to Canada, and they care about what's happening now. And so all of these things, just give me great joy and give me hope. And I know you mentioned, the Honorable Murray Sinclair. He is the only person that I quote in my ceremonies, and I quote him in every single one of my ceremonies, because I heard him speak one time. And what he said about reconciliation is that it turns on a very simple concept, which is, I want to be your friend, and I want you to be my friend. And I love that quote, so much, I use it, at every single set citizenship ceremony, I use it when I'm doing promotional work, I use it, when I'm doing interviews or anything in the media. I use it all the time, I met him once and told them that I use it all the time. And I thanked him for saying that. He said a lot of amazing things, he's very quotable. A lot of amazing things that he said, a lot of people talk about, you know, education got us in this mess, education is gonna get us out of this mess. But the friendship code is the one that I liked the most. Because in my work, when I'm working with a newcomers to Canada, we're, um, we're working with people of all different cultures, all different backgrounds, all different levels of English proficiency. So when you talk about reconciliation, they might not know what that word means. But when you talk about friendship, I think that everybody around the world knows what a friend is right? And, and I work with a lot of kids too, if I'm doing presentations in schools, or, obviously, we have a lot of children who come to our ceremonies as well. So whether you have a great grasp of the English language or not, whether you're four years old, or 94 years old, no matter what your religion is, your skin color, your your sexual orientation, your gender identity, no matter what we all know what a friend is. So that is the quote that I like to use, not just when I'm speaking with other people, but I like to use that quote, as well, in terms of guiding a guiding principle in my wife,

Stuart Murray  43:36  
I may have been at that same, that same event, Suzanne, and again, it struck me the same way. And I thought, how can you get angry with you know, at some point, you know, people look at differences. And because we're different, they're different. They're and they focus on the differences. And you know, that's kind of, kind of, to some extent, human nature, but you look at it and say, when somebody says, Look, I know we may look different, we may have sort of a different approach to the world, we may look at politics different or religion, politics, we may look at it differently. But But please understand above and beyond all, I want to be your friend. It's like, how disarming and how wonderful. I mean, it's almost like that notion of saying, how do we learn to simply just be kind to one another, you can disagree, you can have a whole different approach. You can have lots of other elements of who you are, you don't have to change who you are, or how you think, maybe how you think a little bit, but just just be kind. You know, like, what is so hard about that? And so, Suzanne, I want to just if I could just get you to maybe sort of think about this, with July 1 Being a day and I'll just share with you, you know, one of my experiences when I became the co chair for Manitoba 150. I was blessed when I worked at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to meet a tremendous number of elders and some very, very solid knowledge keepers who I just rely so much on one of the elements that they said to me was, you know, this notion and this really was interesting Suzanne because it followed Manitoba, 100 and 50th kind of fold it on the heels of Canada's 150. And in Canada, they refer to it as the birthday of 150. And a lot of my indigenous relatives said to me, be mindful. Birthday means started day one and your 100 and 51st nations indigenous people in Canada long, long before Manitoba was 150. So they they basically said their advice was call it an anniversary. It's simply an anniversary date, you know, 150, it's an anniversary. You know, with that in mind, when you think about the fact that here we are coming up to July 1. And I think if my math was right, a Canada will be celebrating 157 anniversaries? How do you want new Canadians or Canadians who were born here to feel about July 1, when they think about what what that day is? How would you like them? To if it's whether it's to honor to celebrate, I want to use the words I like them to come from you. But how would you like them to sort of view July 1?

Suzanne Carriere  46:11  
Well, one, I love Canada. And if people want to celebrate Canada, I want them to celebrate Canada, I want to celebrate Canada, I love this country, I really do. And I do think that Canada is worth celebrating, I see it every day in my work, the lengths that people go to, to come here in Canada is special. It really, really is. But Canada has a lot of words to and so we know about some of these words, we need to keep learning about some of these words. And I want people to I want people to celebrate Canada, but I want them to do it in a mindful way. And I want them to keep learning and I want them to be open and I want them to be friends. So you learn if your friend has hurts you ask them what their hurts are and you listen to them. You don't assume what their hurts are and you don't. You don't tell their story for them. You listen to them. And so I want people to listen to indigenous peoples. I want people to honor indigenous peoples. I want people to remember some of the past and injustices against indigenous peoples and to realize that a lot of those injustices are still ongoing. But I also want them to celebrate Canada because it is special. And for us, Canada date for us. I mean in our department with immigration, refugees and citizenship Canada, Canada days, the biggest day of the year. But we've had to adjust over time on how we celebrate Canada Day because we always do set the citizenship ceremonies on Candidate A, it's one of our biggest days of the year. We run ceremonies all across the country. But you know, we've had to adjust at times in 2020. We were just starting to ramp up virtual ceremonies. We had one virtual ceremony across the entire country that was kind of live streamed and that people could take in 2021 very different story. We had the Kamloops discovery. We were meant to do one ceremony on Candidate A and I was meant to preside it. And as we got closer and closer to that day, the pain was just too fresh and too raw. And eventually I had to tell the department that if they insisted well, one, I didn't think that we should have a ceremony on that day. I just didn't think it was the right message to celebrate Canada Day in light of the discoveries that had just happened, you know, weeks earlier. And so at some point, I was told no, the decision was made to go ahead. And then I said, Well, then I'm not presiding if you'll need to find somebody else to preside that ceremony because I just can't do it in good conscience. Then what happened is a lot of the judges, a lot of my colleagues all said the same thing. We kind of took a bit of a stand. And what happened eventually is we had a I ended up having a meeting with the minister at the time, which was Marco Mendocino. And we talked about, do we go ahead. I said I didn't want to go ahead. And he thought that we could do it in a respectful way. We had a long conversation. I use the same quote I always use. I talked about the friendship code. Do you think that's what a friend would do? Right? You really have this throw this party on Canada Day. Anyway, we ended up canceling it. We reschedule all those people had already been scheduled. And here's the funny thing. We had scheduled 154 people, as you say, to celebrate the 154 years of Canada, and I told the Minister think about that. Think about what that what message that conveys that conveys a message that we were only here for 154 years. How does that look to an indigenous person? So we really had to think about what we were doing and what we were. We ended up canceling this Are we rescheduled everyone for the next day. Wasn't Canada Day anymore. operations resumed. But it was interesting just how things ebb and flew over time, the year after we went back to just one ceremony. Now we're kind of ramping up, you know, not to say that everything's good, and we're sweeping it under the rug. But the, you know, the mood has changed. We can, I think what's happening across the country over the last few years is people are still celebrating candidate, but in different ways in more meaningful ways. And so that's what we're trying to do, as well. Yeah, then a real, real journey. But I do think that Canada is something to be celebrated, but in a mindful way, and in an intentional way. And always being mindful of the people that were here since time immemorial, and what their experiences of Canada quote unquote, are and why Canada is today and what we want it to be and what we aspire, what we want Canada to be going forward as well. Well,

Stuart Murray  50:52  
I would just say that Suzanne Carriere, you make an amazing citizenship judge, and I appreciate you coming on this podcast and having this conversation. I love your approach. I love how you're trying to advance something that, you know, really talks about the fact that you know, 150/7 anniversary, you know, in in the world that's still pretty young. And the fact of life is, we've got a lot of learning to do. And as long as we're open to learning, then that issue about becoming friends just starts to become a little bit closer and closer together. So thank you so much for spending some time on this, on this podcast, I really appreciate everything. And I would just sort of say only because of what you do, and how you do it and how passionate you are. And again, as we get closer to July 1, what's one last message and I'll say to you before we say goodbye. But one last message that you would like to say to those new Canadians who are going to become Canadians on July 1.

Suzanne Carriere  51:56  
For those new Canadians, I always just say Welcome home. Welcome to our family. And I just always think it's amazing. We we have people here in Canada from all around the world, like literally every corner of the world. And I love that here in Canada, you can still maintain your culture, maintain your language, do all those things, but also be part of the Canadian family. So I just say welcome. Thank you. Thanks for choosing us.

Matt Cundill  52:21  
Thanks for listening to humans on rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on Rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray, social media marketing by Buffy Davey music by Doug Edmund. For more go to human rights hub.ca

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  52:42  
produced and distributed by the sound off media company

Transcribed by https://otter.ai