Sovereignty and the Oath of Allegiance to the Monarchy
Published below is the intervention by Louis Davignon on the subject of sovereignty and the oath of allegiance to the monarchy at the meeting organized by the PMLQ on October 16, to discuss the election results.
In his letter to the Secretary
General of the Quebec National
Assembly, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon states his "intention to
swear
allegiance only to the people of Quebec and not to the King of
England." This intention of the leader of the Parti
Québécois deserves to be encouraged and supported
because the oath of allegiance to the British monarchy is not
only an
archaic, outdated and retrograde relic of another era, but it is
also
the concrete expression of the fact that the sovereignty of the
Quebec
nation, the First Nations and the Canadian people is denied by
the British North America
Act (BNA Act). The BNA
Act in fact asserts that sovereignty is held by the
Crown, i.e. Charles III of England.
Following the patriation of the BNA Act in 1982, in practice, sovereign power, here understood as executive power, was transferred to the Prime Minister of Canada and the Premiers, according to them. But is this really the case? Are we not instead subject to a shared sovereignty between the British Crown and the Prime Minister and Premiers who also claim to receive a mandate from the people and not just from the Crown via the Governor General or the Lieutenant Governors in the provinces?
As an example, I would like to refer to an eloquent demonstration of the sharing of sovereignty: when the Conservative government of Brian Mulroney had to go to England in the 1980s to have the Queen quickly appoint new Conservative senators in order to obtain a Conservative majority in the Canadian Senate.
In the colonial history of Quebec and Canada, there was a time when the monarch (i.e. the sovereign) appointed what he or she called his or her representatives in Council. These representatives were not elected, but appointed, as the Senators in the Upper House in Ottawa still are today. Over time, and following various developments that would take too long to recount here, the Crown decided that these representatives in Council in the lower house would be elected by the population in an undemocratic electoral process that, apart from the extension of the right to vote, has not changed much over the years. Today, these representatives in the federal and provincial legislatures continue to be subjects of the British Crown and sworn to it.
But
then questions arise. Are the elected representatives 'its [the
Crown's] elected representatives in Council,' or are they
representatives of the citizens who elected them? Shouldn't the
mandate
of representation given to them by the citizens be the only
mandate
recognized? If the Quebec
National Assembly does not recognize this representative mandate
on the
grounds that an elected official refuses to take the oath of
office to
the Crown, then it recognizes that the Crown has precedence over
the
National Assembly and the citizens. In this case, Premier
Legault will
have to explain
the value of the mandate to govern Quebec that he claims to have
received from the Quebec people. Will he claim to be accountable
to the
Crown or to the people of Quebec?
In a political system where the people are sovereign, they would at least have the last word on the choice and appointment of their representatives and the mandate given to them. Consequently, the loyalty of elected officials would be to the people and, simultaneously, to the voters of their constituency. These elected representatives would be accountable to the people and to their constituents and to no other authority.
Additional means can be envisaged and discussed for the people to assert their sovereignty and realize it in practice or enforce it. But refusing to pledge allegiance to a monarch, a foreign one at that, and agreeing to take an oath only to the people of Quebec is already an act of affirmation that sovereignty cannot reside elsewhere than in the people.
Paul St-Pierre Plamondon deserves our full support so that he can move from his "intention to swear only to the people of Quebec and not to the King of England" to the act of "swearing only to the people of Quebec and not to the King of England" so that he can move from words to deeds.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 30 - October 18, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520303.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca