Get off your high horse, take the oath and go to work.
This is the message we are sending to the three PQ deputies who were conspicuous by their absence on Tuesday, when parliament resumed. Pascal Bérubé, Joël Arsenault and Paul St-Pierre Plamondon do not want to take the oath to the king.
OK. We understood it.
The procedure is indeed anachronistic. But François Legault is committed to changing the law to withdraw this oath. Québec solidaire will introduce its own bill on this subject. This fight, it’s won, and that’s good.
It’s time to stop the circus. Rather than put on a show outside the Blue Room on Tuesday, the three PQ members should have stepped on their pride and gone to sit. The citizens elected them for that. The supportive deputies, no more enthusiastic about the oath to the king, did.
The PQ now say they will show up at the Blue Room on Thursday. They ask the new President of the National Assembly, Nathalie Roy, to arrange by then to let them in – for example by giving instructions to this effect to the Sergeant-at-Arms.
One may find it clever to throw the ball into the president’s court in this way. We rather retain that the Parti Québécois is relentless instead of concentrating on the important issues for Quebec. The capital of sympathy enjoyed by Paul St-Pierre Plamondon could eventually crumble if he persists in sulking instead of sitting.