![]() My legal advice in Canada was that as a Canadian citizen I had the right to receive an honour in another country where I was resident and also a citizen for services deemed to have been rendered in that country and that I had an unanswerable argument in Canadian courts establishing that right. ![]() The issue was not justiciable in the United Kingdom, as my membership in the House of Lords was not disputed in that country. I replied that of course the Queen must not be bothered with such trivia and asked that my nomination be deferred. When I said that to Blair, he replied that he and the Queen both knew that, but that the Queen had expressed the desire not to be asked to choose between the conflicting advice of two prime ministers of countries of which she was the monarch. It was clear that Chrétien, through Pelletier and Fellowes, was giving untruthful advice to the Queen. I had already given Blair a legal opinion from a prominent Canadian law firm that dismissed the Nickle Resolution and subsequent policy as not relevant to the current case, and this had been confirmed to him by his high commissioner in Ottawa. There were in fact a number of Canadian citizens already sitting in the House of Lords and their status incited no objection from the Canadian government, as the Nickle criterion was residence and not citizenship. Pelletier was referring to the Nickle Resolution of 1919 that was a non-binding request that Canadian residents not be given British or foreign honours. Article contentĪfter about five days, Blair phoned me back and said that Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Jean Pelletier, had advised the private secretary to Queen Elizabeth, Robert Fellowes, that Chrétien was rejecting the Foreign Affairs department’s opinion and that Canadian law required him to oppose my appointment to the House of Lords. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He welcomed me as a British citizen by telephone an hour later. Blair graciously sent his driver to my home (in London) with an application for British citizenship and told me to put him and the home secretary, Jack Straw, as my British sponsors and sign it and return it to the driver. The Canadian chief of protocol replied to the British high commissioner that if I became a dual citizen and did not use my title when in Canada, the Canadian government would have no objection. This was entirely a courtesy, as the British accept citizens of Commonwealth countries as members of the House of Lords without the requirement of British citizenship. Prime Minister Tony Blair, with whom I was friendly though a political opponent, asked the British high commissioner in Ottawa to ascertain if this was an agreeable appointment to the Government of Canada. (Rupert Murdoch declined, as he was only briefly a British resident.) I was, at this point, a Canadian citizen but had been a British resident for 11 years. In 1999, the leader of the Opposition in Britain, William Hague, invited me to become a Conservative member of the House of Lords, an honour accorded to most proprietors of large British national newspapers. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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