Chris Selley: The King is coming, and Quebec is already flipping out

The reviews have been flowing in for King Charles III delivering the throne speech in Ottawa on May 28, and they’re mostly appreciative. Such is the galvanizing power of President Donald Trump that even some skeptics of constitutional monarchy seem to think it’s a reasonable idea in the circumstances — to show America, and the world, that the foundations of Canadian democracy are too robust for any unhinged president to undermine.

“Canada’s existence has been called into question by the president of the United States,” as Carleton University political scientist Philippe Lagassé wrote in the National Post this week. “Having the Sovereign, the personification of the Canadian state, open the federal legislature sends a message: ours is a country of institutions that date back a thousand years, inherited from the United Kingdom but shaped by our unique history and aspirations.”

The biggest fly in this ointment is that Quebec exists, and the potential for nationalist hijinks on or around May 28 is off the charts. One hopes Prime Minister Mark Carney knows exactly what he might be getting himself into here.

“It’s … striking that, at the first opportunity, Mark Carney turns to a foreign sovereign and an institution clearly hostile to Quebecers, to defend a concept — sovereignty — that this same federal regime has long rejected and devalued when it comes to Quebec,” Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon fumed in French on social media.

“Inviting King Charles III to open the new legislature reveals Liberal values that are fundamentally at odds with those of Quebecers, who reject this institution and are committed to democracy and modernity,” the Bloc Québécois chimed in (translated from French).

“What contempt for Quebec! What ignorance of its history!” author and philosopher Rejean Bergeron exclaimed in Le Devoir (also translated from French). “Doesn’t Mark Carney know that a large proportion of Quebecers are allergic to anything (to do with) the British crown? That the national assembly has decided to no longer make the oath to the King of England mandatory?”

A Leger poll in 2023 found 78 per cent of Quebecers felt it was “time for Canada to reconsider its ties to the British Monarchy,” versus 63 per cent nationwide. (Charles is visiting and addressing Parliament in his role as King of Canada, of course, not of Britain.)

That’s not to say the monarchy is a “big issue.” Seventy-eight per cent of Quebecers don’t lie awake at night hating the monarchy, any more than the 59 per cent of Ontarians who also think (per Leger) that it’s time to reconsider the monarchy. But it would only take a few elected officials to create a giant headache for Carney.

Some nationalists are arguing the Bloc’s terminal umbrage at Ottawa isn’t enough this time. In his article in Le Devoir, Bergeron even called the Bloquistes “collaborators.” This has always been a source of contention within the separatist movement. The obvious comparison is Sinn Féin, whose seven elected MPs at Westminster don’t swear allegiance to the King, don’t take their seats at Westminster, and don’t collect their salaries — which is only logical, since they don’t think Northern Ireland should be part of the United Kingdom, just as the Bloc doesn’t think Quebec should be part of Canada.

If Bloc MPs did that in Ottawa, they would rob their constituents of a lot of influence.

But they might be able to have their cake and eat it too. St-Pierre Plamondon “achieved (a) breakthrough when he challenged the outdated and colonial custom of requiring Quebec MNAs to swear an oath to the king before being able to take their seats” in the provincial legislature, nationalist commentator Mathieu Bock-Côté noted in French in Le Journal de Montréal.

“What will the Bloc Québécois MPs do?” Bock-Côté asked, effectively throwing down a gauntlet. “Will they behave like good children? Or will they surprise us with a bold move?”

Meanwhile Québec Solidaire (QS), the third party in the national assembly and the most left-wing, has proposed either defunding the Lieutenant Governor’s position or simply not appointing a replacement for the incumbent, Manon Jeannotte. That is not a fringe position, to be clear: In another of its disturbing cavalcade of unanimous decisions, in 2023 Quebec’s legislature voted to abolish the Lieutenant Governor’s office.

“The move could create a constitutional vacuum,” Le Journal de Montréal reported (in French) — you need a lieutenant governor to give royal assent to provincial legislation — “but (QS co-leader) Ruba Ghazal points out that MNAs managed to abolish the obligatory oath to the King without creating a crisis of legitimacy.”

Indeed. So, what the heck, maybe you don’t need a lieutenant governor to give royal assent to legislation. Who’s going to tell us that we do, if not ourselves? The United Nations? NATO? Maybe nothing matters.

If the Bloc launched a campaign to free its MPs of the most basic obligation of sitting in the House of Commons to swear allegiance to the monarch, would anyone try to stop them — after no one tried to stop them in Quebec? It’s certainly difficult to see why they wouldn’t at least try.

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