James Bowden's Blog

The Leaders’ Debate and the Demise of the Crown

During Radio-Canada’s leaders’ debate on 22 September 2022, the moderator Patrice Roy barely suppressed his own condescending laughter to ask the leaders of five political parties, “Should we still, in Quebec, swear allegiance to the British Crown, thus ‘Charles III’?” to become a Member of the National Assembly. He also noted that Québec solidaire (a left-wing secessionist party) had tabled legislation in the previous National Assembly to make swearing the oath optional.

Premier François Legault said that he wouldn’t mind studying the question and possibly making changes but that he did not regard it as a priority; Liberal leader Dominique Anglade and Conservative leader Éric Duhaime circumvoluted less elegantly and less succinctly to the same effect. But Paul St. Pierre Plamondon, the leader of the Parti Québécois, and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the “male spokesperson” of Québec solidaire, denounced unambiguously what they regard as the absurdity of the oath, St. Pierre Plamondon on republican and secessionist principle and Nadeau-Dubois on the “because it’s 2022” teleology. No one on the stage seemed to take the oath of allegiance seriously, and even moderator Patrice Roy let out some incredulous chuckles whilst putting the question to the four party leaders and one male spokesperson.

François Legault led his Coalition Avenir Québec to a second consecutive and even larger parliamentary majority on 3 October 2022, winning 90 out of 125 seats. And on 18 October, Legault rejected St. Pierre Plamondon’s unconstitutional idea of passing a simple motion that would permit the three Péquistes elected to take their seats in the National Assembly without swearing the oath of allegiance on the grounds that a mere motion of a legislative body cannot supersede a provision of the Constitution Act, 1867.[1] Being a lawyer himself, Paul St. Pierre Plamondon should already understand that concept.

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