In his latest work, full of wisdom, perhaps ultimate, Gilles Vigneault sings: “The tide is rising and time is running out. These words apply to the Canadian monarchy. His time is now running out.
Charles III is the crowned king of Canada. He may be the last. British youth no longer want the monarchy. According to a poll, a clear majority of Britons wanted nothing to do with the coronation. Only 15% of them practice the Anglican religion, of which the king is the head. The dozen member countries of the Commonwealth which retain the monarchy are almost all preparing to abolish it one after the other. You have to be blind to historical realities not to understand that we are approaching a major turning point.
In about five years, Canada risks being the only country in the Americas to have kept the monarchy at the head of its state. It risks being the only Commonwealth country to retain it alongside the constitutional mother country. By this time, the debate over the future of the monarchy will be well underway in the UK. Those who believe that Quebec will be able to escape this international debate live in an imaginary bubble.
In about five years, a Prime Minister of Canada will wake up one morning to read a poll that says there is a clear majority from coast to coast that wants to abolish the monarchy. In Quebec, the issue has been settled for a long time since we are 70%, which contributes to a slight Canadian majority. In total, the republic currently garners about 45% support in English Canada. This support has skyrocketed over the past 20 years.
We need majorities in all regions of Canada. This is already the case in some provinces. The monarchists are older and conservative, of British origin. A federal political leader of the near future will tell himself that if he wants to be re-elected, it is in his partisan interest to hold a Canadian referendum on the monarchy in order to reopen the Constitution. Quebec will once again be had if it does not anticipate these events.
Constitution
The 1982 Constitution will never be reopened by Quebec. It can only be reopened by Canada, which will never do so for the sole purpose of pleasing Quebec. He will do it to abolish the monarchy because Canadian popular sovereignty will impose it.
The debate over the monarchy is a crisis of Canadian identity. This is not a Quebec crisis, but it will also go through Quebec. Ignoring or minimizing it is a major political mistake.
The authors of the 1982 Constitution, burned by the 1980 referendum, chose not to include the referendum as a procedure for modifying the Constitution. The referendum has been in the Constitution of Australia, another Commonwealth federation, since its adoption in 1900. In 1982, the premiers of Canada and the other provinces reserved the modification of the Constitution to the traditional elites. They feared the sovereignty of the people, an idea that is Quebecois here and of French origin. They wanted to maintain parliamentary sovereignty, an English idea.
The beauty of the thing from the point of view of Quebec, is that Canada will not be able to avoid abolishing the monarchy without itself making the case of the constitution which it imposed on Quebec in 1982. When a constitution opposes the sovereignty of the people on a fundamental question, the only solution is to modify it. The Canadian referendum is the only way to unblock the Constitution of Canada and to make popular sovereignty prevail.
Quebec must never again be the seeker of a reform of the Constitution of Canada because it is not the constitution of our nation. The best thing to do while English Canada is arguing loudly about a foreign monarchy is to adopt our own constitution. In the end, Canada will have to seek the consent of Quebec because that is the paradoxical legacy of 1982. The condition of our consent to a major amendment to the Canadian Constitution should be respect for our own constitution.