Could the Parti Québécois actually abolish the monarchy in Quebec?

Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon says he wants to defund the office of the lieutenant-governor and pass a law to sever the province’s ties to the British monarchy.

“A Parti Québécois government will abolish whatever monarchy exists in Quebec,” St-Pierre Plamondon told reporters Tuesday.

St-Pierre Plamondon, whose party is leading in the polls ahead of the Oct. 5 election, promised to redirect the office’s budget toward combatting homelessness. This year, the office has a budget of $1.3 million.

But is a phaseout of the monarchy feasible?

It would be far from easy, according to constitutional experts. They say the PQ’s plan would face legal challenges, and attempting to bypass the Crown could paralyze the province’s legislature.

In Quebec, King Charles is represented by Lt.-Gov. Manon Jeannotte, whose principal constitutional duty is granting royal assent to bills passed by the National Assembly.

Section 41(a) of the Constitution Act, 1982, stipulates that any modifications to the office of the King, the Governor General or the lieutenant-governor must be approved by the House of Commons, the Senate and all 10 provincial legislatures.

Karine Millaire, an expert in constitutional law and an associate professor at the Université de Montréal, said a unilateral move by the province would be unconstitutional.

And cutting the office’s funding to the point the lieutenant-governor could no longer do their job would also be legally perilous, she told CBC News.

She pointed to the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark 2014 ruling on Senate reform, which explicitly prohibits the “indirect abolition” of core institutions. 

The top court ruled that governments cannot do indirectly what the Constitution forbids doing directly, she said.

Jean-François Gaudreault-DesBiens, a law professor at the Université de Montréal, also said the legal path would be difficult.

“As long as Quebec is part of Canada, I don’t see how Paul St-Pierre Plamondon could achieve his goals through a simple law passed by the National Assembly,” he told Radio-Canada.

Another legal expert noted that if a PQ government attempted to bypass the lieutenant-governor, it could put the validity of any new legislation into doubt. 

Any bills passed by the National Assembly that failed to receive royal assent would not become law, said Dave Guénette, director of the Observatory for Research on Constitutional Issues at the Université de Sherbrooke.

Pressed again on Wednesday about the legal requirements, St-Pierre Plamondon doubled down, suggesting he is ready for a jurisdictional battle with the federal government.

“We are going to do what we have to do to get the monarchy out of Quebec, repatriate those funds, and send them to social causes,” he told reporters, noting that Quebec never consented to the 1982 repatriation of the Constitution.

The PQ’s unscripted announcement on Tuesday was sparked by a Le Devoir report revealing that a trip to Scandinavia and Greenland by Governor General Mary Simon cost taxpayers more than $700,000.

St-Pierre Plamondon estimated that Canada spends between $50 million and $60 million annually on the monarchy nationwide.

That estimate is consistent with one made by the Monarchist League of Canada.

Based on Quebec’s proportion of the national population, St-Pierre Plamondon said Quebecers send $12 million to $15 million a year to Ottawa to support the Crown — funds he noted Quebec cannot stop paying unless the province becomes independent.

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If elected, St-Pierre Plamondon also said his government would break with parliamentary tradition by asking the lieutenant-governor not to attend the opening address of the new legislative session.

The PQ has pushed constitutional boundaries regarding the monarchy before.

In 2022, under intense pressure from the PQ, the National Assembly unanimously passed a bill ending the requirement for elected members to swear an oath to the King before taking their seats.

That change is the subject of a legal challenge in Quebec Superior Court. The plaintiffs in that case argue the provincial government overstepped its jurisdiction, and that removing the oath also required the unanimous consent of Parliament and the provinces. A ruling has yet to be issued.

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