In the person of Charles III, and since September 10, 2022, a new Canadian monarchy was born. From the Governor General of Canada, Mary Simon, the Proclamation that His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur George has now become, by the death of Sovereign Elizabeth II, King Charles III, attested to this. The lieutenant governors of six Canadian provinces also registered proclamations in similar terms (Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland). The Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec did not imitate his colleagues and was content to highlight the accession to the throne of His Majesty King Charles III through a press release.
Discriminatory and illegitimate
Succession is based on rules enacted in the United Kingdom and to which the Parliament of Canada has given its consent, in particular through the adoption of the Succession to the Throne Act 2013. The rules which led to the accession of Charles III to the throne of Canada maintain the prohibition made to people of Catholic faith, and only to people of this religion, to become king of Canada. They also enshrine the requirement that the king join the Church of England.
These requirements are discriminatory and go against the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. They are also contrary to the Law on the secularism of the State according to which ” [l]The State of Quebec is secular” and the secularism of the State is based on the principles of “the separation of the State and religions” and of “the religious neutrality of the State”.
The proclamations of September 10 did not give rise to any parliamentary assent, and even less popular. They go against the desire to abolish the monarchy in Quebec, a desire that was again illustrated by a survey carried out by the firm Léger from August 11 to 16, 2022 at the request of the Institute for Research on Self-Determination. of peoples and national independence and revealing that 61% of Quebecers (and 69% of Francophones) considered that such an abolition was a good idea. These proclamations therefore have no legitimacy.
A consensual abolition
To put an end to the monarchical regime in Quebec, an initiative is needed, that of abolishing the office of lieutenant-governor. Such an avenue was considered in 1967 by the Quebec Liberal Party. Thus, in the Report of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs of the Commission politics of the Quebec Liberal Federationthe chairman of this committee and deputy, Paul-Gérin Lajoie, proposed that a “new constitution of Quebec [remplace] our obsolete monarchical institutions by properly Quebec institutions emanating from the will of the Quebec people” and that the “office of lieutenant-governor [soit] transformed accordingly.
In 2015 and 48 years later, the Coalition avenir Québec made a similar proposal. In A New Project for Quebec Nationalists, she asserted that “ [l]he common institutions and the functioning of Canadian executive federalism must be reformed to evacuate certain legacies from another era” and that “should[it] be abolished the office of lieutenant-governor”.
These proposals deserve to be revived, and it should not be difficult to forge a broad consensus on this issue by obtaining the support of the Parti Québécois, Québec solidaire and the Conservative Party of Quebec. As was done by the assertion that ” [les] Quebecers form a nation” and that ” [l]he French is the only official language of Quebec” as well as “the common language of the Quebec nation”, the National Assembly should be invited to affirm, as another fundamental characteristic, that “the State of Quebec is a republic”.
And inspired in this by three Swiss cantons, the Republic and canton of Geneva, the Republic and canton of Jura and the Republic and canton of Neuchâtel, Quebec could also be designated by the name “Republic and State of Quebec “.
In order to proceed with the abolition of the office of lieutenant-governor, the Constitution Act, 1982 may have to come into play because its section 41 also provides that any amendment to the Constitution of Canada relating to the office of lieutenant-governor must be authorized by the Senate, the House of Commons and the Legislative Assembly of each province. But it should be remembered that this law was adopted without the consent of Quebec and that a legitimate response to this unilateral act by the rest of Canada would be to establish, by an equivalent unilateral act, a Republic of Quebec without the consent of the rest of Canada.
A more complete democracy
Giving Quebec a republican system that gives its citizens the power to freely participate in the choice of their head of state and to choose, just as freely, their mode of designation is a way forward. If it had the effect, as the editorialist Robert Dutrisac suggested, of “shaking off the monarchical yoke”, such a gesture would have the consequence that the people of Quebec would no longer see themselves imposed on a king of British nationality acceding to this function by hereditary way and could choose a personality of Quebec “nationality” at the head of his State.
As Paul Gérin-Lajoie proposed, such an avenue should also be part of a process to develop a future Quebec constitution for which the current government has shown an interest. It would prove to be an opportunity not only to abolish the office of lieutenant-governor, but to establish a more complete democracy and to truly assert itself — and finally to constitute itself — as a people.