Canadian Citizenship Test: Responsibilities of citizenship practice questions

Pair each responsibility with its limit: obey the law (no one is above it), take responsibility for yourself and your family, serve on a jury when summoned unless excused, vote, help in the community, and care for heritage and the environment. There is no standing military draft.

Question 1

Helping at a food bank or at a child's school, without pay, is an example of which responsibility?

  1. Helping others in the community
  2. Serving a compulsory term in the navy
  3. Appointing senators
  4. Setting the Bank of Canada's interest rate

Answer: Helping others in the community

Volunteering is the responsibility of helping others in the community. It is not military conscription, which Canada does not impose in peacetime, and it is not the appointment of senators or monetary policy. The trap is to treat every public-spirited act as service in the armed forces.

Question 2

Which statement about military service is correct for Canada today?

  1. Every citizen must enlist at age 18
  2. There is no compulsory military service
  3. Only residents of the territories are drafted
  4. A two-year reserve term is required before a person may vote

Answer: There is no compulsory military service

There is no compulsory military service. Canadians may volunteer for the regular forces, the reserves or the cadets. Wartime conscription in 1917 and 1944 was a statute for those wars, not a present rule that everyone enlists at 18 or that voting depends on a reserve term.

Question 3

Voting is described, for citizens, as

  1. a task reserved for people born in Canada
  2. a duty of permanent residents rather than citizens
  3. both a right and a responsibility
  4. unlawful until a person has lived in Canada for twenty years

Answer: both a right and a responsibility

Citizens who are at least 18 have the right to vote in a federal election, and voting is also listed among the responsibilities of citizenship. Permanent residents may not vote federally. Birth in Canada and a twenty-year wait are not the rules of the franchise.