For more than a week, Quebecers have had fun watching Paul St-Pierre Plamondon challenge our political class by demanding the right to sit in the National Assembly without taking the oath to Charles III.
PSPP plays its cards well and inspires sympathy. It reveals the part of absurdity at the heart of our institutions: a Quebec deputy, elected by his electors, cannot join the other parliamentarians, because he refuses to swear allegiance to a foreign sovereign.
But PSPP cannot lock itself into this quarrel without it turning against him.
PSPP
Ordinary mortals, sooner or later, will want to leave the domain of symbols to talk about something else, in a tumultuous period when we will need enlightened politicians. Does he have a plan B?
Let me add the essential: it is one amusing thing to denounce the residues of the British monarchy in our institutions, it is quite another to directly confront the structures of power which today hinder the full affirmation of the Quebec identity, the ardent defense of our interests as well.
The true sovereign of Canada today is not in London, but in Ottawa.
I am speaking first of the Supreme Court, which claims to interpret a sacred, almost revealed text, the constitution of Canada, with the pseudo-bill of rights that accompanies it.
In Canada, elected governments are subject to judges, and more particularly to Supreme Court judges, who consider themselves to be the great sages of our political system, while they often behave like militant ideologues. It is they, today, who have a form of monarchical power in Canada. It is their legitimacy that must be challenged.
The true sovereign also takes on the figure of media power in the Canadian radio style. It is the clergy of our time, which decides what is good and bad, and which can condemn to ostracism or to social death those who contradict it, especially as soon as we touch on the dogmas of multiculturalism, mass immigration and gender ideology.
The real sovereign, finally, simply takes on the face of the federal government. The provinces can’t do much against him when he decides to impose his choices on them, as we can see with the Roxham Road affair. Ottawa imposes on Quebec an incessant flow of illegal immigrants that it then has to take in charge, without being able to do anything about it. Ottawa decides federal transfers more broadly and forces us to manage within the space it leaves us. It treats the provinces as minor municipalities.
Courts
Today, separatists and nationalists are asked less to confront the British crown than to openly fight the real Canadian power.
We must refuse to kneel before the Supreme Court and stop formatting our laws according to its parameters, we must stop bowing to the moral injunctions of Radio-Canada, and we must exercise the powers that Ottawa has confiscated.
The battle, then, will no longer be political folklore. It will be much more robust.