The leader of Canada’s Quebec separatist party has renewed calls for the country to sever its ties with the “incredibly racist” and “slave-driven” British monarchy ahead of the coronation of King Charles III.
The Bloc Québécois leader, Yves-François Blanchet, tabled a motion on Tuesday, widely seen as purely symbolic, in the House of Commons.
“It’s archaic. It’s a thing of the past. It’s almost archaeological. It’s humiliating,” Blanchet told lawmakers of Canada’s longstanding ties to the monarchy.
Speaking in parliament, the Bloc leader said members of his party had been “forced” to swear allegiance to a “conquering” empire, rendering their oaths to the crown “meaningless”. He said Bloc members of parliament were sincere in their oaths to Quebecers, not to the monarchy.
Blanchet said Charles, who has visited the country 18 times, was a “foreigner who knows nothing about Canada” and would struggle to pass the country’s citizenship test.
Since the death of Queen Elizabeth last month, a number of Commonwealth countries, including Canada, have questioned their ties to a system that a growing number of citizens see as antiquated and irrelevant to their daily lives.
But the debate has also exposed the way in which the monarchy is deeply entrenched within the bureaucratic structures of Canada’s federal and provincial governments.
The motion has little chance of success – and would not sever ties even if it passed, because the country’s constitution requires the assent of all 10 provinces and both houses of parliament.
Other lawmakers criticized Blanchet’s motion as a stunt meant to generate publicity.
The Conservative member of parliament Pierre Paul-Hus called the motion “part of the Bloc’s long tradition of political spin” and said the party was increasingly irrelevant to Canadians.
“They are looking for a pretext to justify their very existence in this chamber, which they call a foreign parliament,” he said.
Ahead of the parliamentary vote on Wednesday, Blanchet doubled down on his gambit, writing in an editorial that remaining part of the Commonwealth was “at odds” with the democratic values of Canadians.
He said retaining the monarchy costs Canadian taxpayers millions and, citing a poll from April, suggested a strong majority of Quebecers and a majority of Canadians want the monarchy gone.
“The results speak for themselves: there is no province in Canada where the percentage of people who support the monarchy exceeds the percentage of those who oppose it,” he wrote.
Referencing the often-strained relationship between Quebec and much of Canada, he wrote that no citizen should be forced to give away power or pledge allegiance to a country “that is neither like us nor shares our interests”.
“Our respective peoples deserve better than the monarchy, of that I am sincerely convinced,” he wrote.
