A group of Quebec MPs recently elected during provincial elections refused to swear allegiance to King Charles III, Canada’s head of state, as required by the Constitution.
Eleven deputies from the left-wing Quebec Solidarity party took the oath in a speech broadcast on television “to the people of Quebec”, but they did not want to take the oath that binds them to the British crown, at the risk of not being able to take their seats in the Assembly Quebec National at the end of November.
The spokesman for his party, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, assured at a press conference that they had acted “with full knowledge of the facts.” “There was a campaign to change the era in Quebec, and if they sent us to Parliament, it is to open a door,” he added.
Under Canadian Constitutional law, any MP elected at the federal or provincial level must take an oath of allegiance to the British monarchy in order to serve
Swearing allegiance to the British crown has always been a source of conflict in Quebec, a largely Francophone province, which held two referendums, in 1980 and 1995, to secede from the rest of Canada. On both occasions the majority voted no to independence.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, head of the party, indicated last week that it was “a conflict of interest” because “you cannot serve two masters.” In addition, according to him, the monarchy costs “67 million Canadian dollars every year” and that oath is a “reminder of colonial domination.”
Reopen the Constitution
For his part, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed on Wednesday that “there was not a Quebecois” who wanted to “reopen the Constitution.” In fact, abolishing the monarchy requires a rewrite of the Constitution and the unanimous approval of Parliament and ten Canadian provincial governments, which can take years.
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