The decision of the leader of the Parti Québécois, Pierre St-Pierre Plamondon, not to take the oath to His Majesty King Charles III, a refusal that will be imitated by the two other PQ deputies, Joël Arseneau and Pascal Bérubé, plunges the National Assembly into the unknown. It will probably be up to its secretary general, Siegfried Peters, a learned jurist, to unravel the skein.
In principle, this act of submission to the British crown is a condition, provided for in article 128 of the 1867 Constitution, for officially becoming a member of the National Assembly and passing laws there. In principle still, a deputy must be sworn in before receiving his elected salary or any other benefit provided for and receiving his budget from the National Assembly for his constituency office. But things are much more complicated.
Since 1982, an oath of allegiance has been added to the first. The member declares under oath that “he will be loyal to the people of Quebec”. But just before, he had pledged to be “faithful” and to bear “true allegiance” to Her Majesty. The question arises: how to be loyal to the people while paying true allegiance to a person whose authority does not come from the people and who, moreover, is a religious leader? Moreover, the oath of allegiance to Her Majesty is written precisely in the constitutional text, but it is in English only since there is no official French translation of the Constitution of 1867. The oath is not not the real one.
In normal times, it would be up to the elected representatives themselves to govern themselves in this matter through the intermediary of the presidency of the National Assembly or its Office in which the parties recognized as parliamentary groups are represented. But in the absence of a president, it is therefore up to the secretary general to step up to the front.
He could decide to prohibit the three elected PQ members from becoming full members, preventing them from appearing in the House and receiving their salaries and operating expenses. This would be an extreme solution, the three PQ members being declared elected by the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec in accordance with the Election Act. Of what right could one deprive the population of the three targeted constituencies of their democratically chosen representative? Paying them their emoluments but barring them from the National Assembly appears just as wobbly. The jurist Patrick Taillon suggests that the words of the royal oath be changed by referring to the head of state, or even to the institution of the state, rather than to the person of the monarch. It seems a bit confusing to us. And going shamefully into hiding as the deputies of Québec solidaire did in 2018 to lend the hated allegiance is unworthy of elected officials who are supposed to be faithful to their convictions.
The National Assembly is master of its procedure, and the courts do not interfere, which judgments have already established in full respect of the separation between legislative and judicial powers. Neither the Act respecting the National Assembly nor its regulations mention the requirement to take this oath. No sanction is foreseen if it is not pronounced.
What is necessary rather is that the National Assembly, sovereign, considers that this affair concerns its internal management and its prerogatives. The elected officials can very well decide that the oath to Her Majesty, which should moreover be done in English, is obsolete, which is undeniable.
In such a case, the commitment of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon will have advanced Quebec democracy by detaching us ever so slightly from the British monarchy, this strong colonial symbol that Ottawa persists in maintaining against the will of the Quebec people.