Oct. 27 () –
The Parliament of Canada has rejected this Wednesday a proposal from the sovereignists of the province of Quebec for the country to cut ties with the British monarchy, after the Bloc Québécois party described the institution as “racist”, “archaic”, “almost archaeological” and “humiliating”.
With 266 votes against and only 44 votes in favor, the request for the State of Canada to break its relationship with King Charles III has been denied, although the proposal has obtained support among several deputies of the Social Democratic New Democratic Party (NDP ) and the Liberal Party, as reported by the Canadian House of Commons.
Among the reasons given by the deputies who have rejected the measure is that the motion would serve so that the leader of the Bloc, Yves-Francois Blanchet, “obtain relevance and attention from the headlines”, and to put the spotlight on most important issues for Canadians, according to CTV News.
Likewise, they would have added that the citizens of Canada “are much more concerned about other issues, including the economy, the climate and health care”, further questioning whether a separatist party should have a say in deciding who symbolically runs the country.
Blanchet, for her part, accused the new monarch of the United Kingdom of being a “foreigner who knows nothing about Canada” and who would have “difficulty passing the country’s citizenship test,” the CBC network has collected.
“They tell us that we are a secular democratic country, but they protect a king who is the head of a Church (…). It is archaic. It is a thing of the past, it is almost archaeological. It is humiliating. It is completely illogical to have this monarchy. We need to get out of this monarchy because it’s important to do so,” Blanchet said Tuesday when she tabled the motion in parliament.
However, ending the monarchy in Canada would require an agreement from the Lower House, the Upper House, as well as the country’s ten provinces, to carry out a “unanimous consent amendment” to the Constitution.
For this reason, the motion is symbolic since, according to Canada’s Constitution, it would take more than a vote like that of the country’s House of Commons to cut ties with the UK monarchy.
