A passageway exists to allow the leader of the Parti Québécois (PQ) to sit in the National Assembly even if he refuses to take the oath to King Charles III, as he repeated on Monday. But this will depend on the good will of the National Assembly, otherwise the debate could be transported to the legal arena.
Updated yesterday at 11:29 p.m.
On Tuesday, the newly elected summoned the media to the party headquarters in Montreal to reiterate his campaign commitment.
“I asked to take an oath to the people of Quebec and not to the King of England, and I ask the National Assembly not to take action and to let me sit,” he explained during his first media outing since the historic defeat of his political party on October 3.
Asked whether he would agree not to sit if his request was refused, the leader of the PQ evaded the question. Because according to Constitution Act of 1867a member elected in a provincial legislature must take the oath to the monarch, in the person of King Charles III in this case.
My commitment is to end this allegiance to a foreign Crown. That’s what I’m going to do, and I expect the National Assembly not to take action.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, leader of the Parti Québécois
Mr. St-Pierre Plamondon added that in the event of a refusal, “when we get there, we will see where we are”.
He says he has the support of the two other elected members of the party, MPs Pascal Bérubé and Joël Arseneau, and has legal opinions showing that there is no obligation for the National Assembly to take action against chosen ones who would refuse to take the oath to the British Crown.
The “synonym solution”
There is indeed a solution to which the National Assembly and the leader of the PQ could turn, believes constitutional expert Patrick Taillon, but it is probably not the one hoped for by Paul St-Pierre Plamondon.
Patrick Taillon qualifies this pathway as a “synonymous solution”. Essentially, the PQ leader and his deputies would agree with the secretary general of the National Assembly and with the lieutenant-governor to pronounce a term replacing the name of the sovereign.
For instance, [le mot] State replaces Crownand we understand that this replaces the term monarchy. Obviously, if this solution is good for him, it is also good for others and then there would not be many deputies who would take the oath to the king.
Patrick Taillon, constitutionalist
However, if the National Assembly maintains the hard line and refuses the request of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, the latter, and all those who refuse to take the oath to King Charles III could not sit in the Blue Room and receive their salary as a deputy.
In this case, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon should count on the support of the government of the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) to pass a bill to unilaterally abolish the oath of deputies, which would be legally possible, according to Patrick Taillon.
“A Hot Potato”
Still, it is “very clever” on the part of Paul St-Pierre Plamondon to thus return the ball to the court of the National Assembly for which this question of the oath represents a “hot potato”, considers Benoît Pelletier , professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa and authority on constitutional law.
I don’t see anyone who can decide. I see a swearing that will be done without conforming [à la Loi constitutionnelle de 1867] and we will find ourselves in a kind of legal vacuum.
Benoît Pelletier, professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa
Moreover, according to Mr. Pelletier, a possible legal challenge against Paul St-Pierre Plamondon would result in a victory on his part in the current political context. “It would be very, very serious to prevent someone from sitting because he has not taken the oath of allegiance to Charles III, because we are in a time, in an era, which greatly values the democracy, much more than before”, he explains.
Not the first
Remember that Paul St-Pierre Plamondon is not the first to oppose the oath to the monarchy. In 2018, the elected deputies of the Parti québécois had also taken an oath to the queen, specifying that they were doing so “until Quebec is independent”.
In 1970, six of the first seven PQ members elected to the National Assembly had also refused to take the oath. Confined to the benches of the visitors, they had finally yielded.
More recently, the 10 deputies of Quebec solidaire elected in 2018 had agreed to take an oath of allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, but out of sight.
On Tuesday, Quebec solidaire indicated that its deputies will take the oath to the king as a last resort and “reluctantly” next week.
However, according to Benoît Pelletier, they simply did not go “to the end” of the process. “There were oaths of allegiance taken in secret, oaths of allegiance taken with a grimace, I’m thinking of René Lévesque in particular, but I don’t think they went all the way,” he says. .