In a presidential ruling regarding the refusal to take the oath of allegiance rendered on 1er November 2022, the President of the National Assembly in office, François Paradis, gave “the formal order to the Sergeant-at-Arms to ensure […] that elected officials who have not taken the oath cannot take their place in the hall of the National Assembly or in one of its committees”. He added that, “ [d]In the event that a person refuses to comply with this prohibition, the Sergeant-at-Arms [pourrait légitimement] to expel him”.
Note that President Paradis should perhaps have refrained from commenting on this question, because he is no longer an elected member of the National Assembly and this deprives him of all legitimacy to render such a decision and give such an order. . Due to the refusal to take the oath to King Charles III by three elected members of the Parti Québécois, who received 600,708 votes, or 14.61% of the valid votes, the question of the refusal to take the oath of allegiance to King Charles III and the consequences of such a refusal is now a political issue that should be decided by the elected members of the National Assembly as a whole.
The primary mission of the President of the National Assembly is to defend the sovereignty of the National Assembly with regard to its internal management. This sovereignty is a formal constitutional principle, recognized by the courts as parliamentary privilege. An essential aspect of the exercise of this privilege resides in the duty of the Speaker of the Assembly to protect the freedom of its members to exercise their function as Members.
The decision of 1er November 2022 is surprising to say the least, both in terms of its content and its contextual form. Excluding elected members of the National Assembly is a gesture that is at odds with what the institution of parliamentary privilege suggests. It would therefore be appropriate that the first act of the next president to be elected by the National Assembly on November 29 is to cancel this decision. This is so that the National Assembly can, collegially, take the tacit or explicit decision not to exclude from its midst elected deputies who have not taken the oath of allegiance to the king. Against this, section 128 of the Constitution Act of 1867 on the oath could legally do nothing.
In ruling on the question of the oath, Mr. Paradis did not take into account the guarantee of freedom of expression and conscience, and thus ignored the existence of fundamental freedoms enshrined in the constitutional law that is the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. These freedoms should also be given the weight they deserve and lead to an act to allow members who have taken an oath to the people of Quebec to take their seats in the National Assembly.
This act could be the adoption of a law, which the current Minister of Justice has moreover undertaken to present quickly, and would moreover follow up on the proposal formulated in the minister’s parliamentary reform bill that the oath of allegiance to the king “become optional and that the decision to subscribe to it or not rests with each deputy”.
It is important to emphasize once again that, according to a recent survey by the firm Léger, Quebeckers are of the opinion, in a proportion of 65%, that people who would refuse to take the oath of allegiance to the king at the time of taking office should be allowed to sit. The future Speaker of the Assembly should take note of this desire and therefore refrain from ordering the Sergeant-at-Arms to expel duly elected Members of the Assembly, which in itself is a sovereign institution.
Recalling the doctrine that Parliament enjoys the absolute privilege of being masters of its internal procedure, we still consider it relevant to adopt a motion to allow Members who have not taken the oath to King Charles III to sit in the Blue Room and at parliamentary committee sessions from the start of the new legislature. If such a motion referred to the government’s desire to pass a bill whose application should be retroactive to November 29, 2022, it should be declared admissible and deserves to be debated. The new Presidency of the Assembly would thus demonstrate its primary concern for the democratic principle.