Oath to the king: PSPP puts its finger on the bobo

I may be a convinced separatist, but I admit I was a little annoyed when Paul St-Pierre Plamondon announced that he wanted to enter the National Assembly without taking an oath of allegiance to Charles III.

Not that I take that oath. On the contrary. But since 1970, many separatists have sworn not to submit to it, before falling into line.

Was it really necessary to lend oneself once again to this bravado which turns against itself? Isn’t ordinary mortals likely to see it as bad theater, more a matter of separatist folklore than of the demands of current nationalism?

Moreover, the real ideological transgression, today, consists less in challenging the British crown than Canadian ideology. Anyone who attacks the government of judges in Canada attacks the true sovereign. Who attacks multiculturalism and mass immigration attacks the real taboos of our time, and not those of the day before yesterday.

Crown

And yet, yet, the initiative of the PQ leader is causing a stir. As expected, it arouses the mockery and exasperation of the commentators who participate in the radio-Canadian ideology.

But it also reveals to everyone the presence at the heart of our institutions of a colonial archaism: it is indeed necessary to take an oath to the British crown to honor its democratic mandate.

And who does not do so is then kept outside the Assembly – even if PSPP intends to prove that we can sit by avoiding this ordeal.

Above all, it forces the other deputies to reveal themselves. We would like to ask them, if we had them before us: you publicly take this oath to Charles III, but do you believe it?

If they tell us that they don’t really believe in it, we’ll get back to them by asking them: do you often make oaths in front of your compatriots that you don’t believe in? When in life should you be believed, and when should you not be believed? Because an oath, whatever one may say, is not nothing. Do you often lie in the line of duty?

And if you don’t believe it, why do you still do it? Ah! Because the Canadian regime requires you to? Does Canada force you to do other things you don’t believe in?

Lying

In other words, PSPP may have hit the nail on the head, by showing how a ritual that requires us to take an oath to a foreign sovereign, which we cannot generally avoid, is symptomatic of a deeper blockage in Canada, in which François Legault apparently wants to confine our destiny.

In Canada, we must submit our identity laws to the discretion of federal judges. We must let Ottawa decide the general parameters of our national democratic life. And so on.

I do not know if PSPP will succeed in its bet. But it might surprise us. At the very least, he just reminded us that the upcoming swearing-in ceremony, in his own way, will also be a joke.