Mr. Speaker, before I officially begin my speech, I want to thank the voters of Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères for putting their trust in me for a fourth time in this election. It is a great privilege that I do not take lightly. I will do my best to do right by the people of Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.
Since today's debate is on the Speech from the Throne and since my leader gave me the monarchy file, that is what I will be focusing on today.
In the most recent election, many Quebeckers chose to hold their noses and vote Liberal. What was the first thing that this government did the day after the election to thank Quebeckers? The government had a great surprise for us. It invited the King to come. When I saw that, I thought it was ridiculous, that the government was laughing at us, thumbing its nose at us, that something was happening that was not right. However, no, this was serious and not just a joke.
We know that the Acadians were deported because they refused to swear allegiance to the King. We know that after the conquest, an oath of allegiance was forced on the newly conquered people, requiring them to renounce their Catholic faith in exchange for the right to hold public office. We know that in 1837-38, the Patriotes were hanged in the name of the monarchy. However, after all that, Quebeckers have been told to be Canadians and to vote for Canada. Now that the election is over, do they feel like throwing a big party paid for with their taxes, attending a royal parade and inviting Charles III? Had that been the Liberal message during the recent election, I have a feeling that there would have been fewer Liberal members.
There is no hiding the fact that the King is the living embodiment of old colonial oppression. The Prime Minister decided to invite the King because, for him, royal power is not just an insignificant old relic. It means something to him and he sees it as important. One does not extend a royal invitation on a whim.
Nations are built on symbols, which are a way of expressing who they are. The decision to invite the King was a way of embracing this dreaded symbol that Quebeckers reject, of reminding them of it, and of rubbing it in their faces. However, it was starting to fade from memory, since it had been half a century since a monarch was in Parliament. Back when I was in university, I took a constitutional law course where I was taught that if a power goes for too long without being used, it gathers dust, and eventually that power starts to smell musty and it becomes obsolete. It is like an old car parked at the back of the driveway that is starting to rust. At some point, it cannot be driven anymore and has to be scrapped. This is pretty much the same thing.
In fact, a kind of break happened recently. I say “recently”, but it was before I was born, which, in terms of all of Canada's history, could mean recently. As everyone knows, the Constitution was repatriated in 1982. Incidentally, Quebec never agreed to it, but that is another story. What exactly happened at the time? The Queen brought the Constitution over from London, saying that it was no longer her responsibility, but ours. She surrendered it to us, in a sense, because it has not been revisited ever since.
Now, thanks to the Liberals, we have gone back 100 years. Journalists asked the Prime Minister why he invited the King. He was a bit surprised by the question and did not understand why he was being asked that, because it seemed quite obvious to him. He replied that he saw it as a symbol of our sovereignty from the United States. The question then becomes exactly whose sovereignty are we talking about, because it is not our sovereignty. It is the sovereign's.
I do not think that having a foreign monarch come here is a sign of sovereignty. It is more like a sign of subservience and submission. The proof is in the order in which they walked when the King arrived. That said it all. First came the King. Next came the Governor General, and then the Prime Minister. The more legitimate people are, the further back they go.
It was the same for members of Parliament. When the King arrived in the Senate and sat on his throne, the unelected senators sat comfortably at their desks, while members of Parliament, who are elected by the people, stood at the entrance.
It is shameful. We are not in the middle ages. Given that, the government said that we needed to send a message to President Trump. The message sent by the government to President Trump is more or less that Canada cannot be his subject because it is already someone else's subject. Canada already belongs to someone else: the King of England. What is next? Are we going to replace the flag with the Union Jack or replace the national anthem with God Save the King, while we are at it?
In fact, it is rather incredible that 150 years after it was founded, Canada is still a country that is incapable of existing on its own. It absolutely needs to revive its old colonial connection to justify its existence. Do we really want to be butlers, a sub-country? I believe that Canada also has the right to evolve at some point.
We are told that we had to invite the King because we wanted to prove that we are different from the United States. If having a King is the only difference between Canada and the United States, then we have a problem. They must really be desperate. In fact, this really says a lot about English Canada's identity crisis. They are incapable of standing up on their own. If we need the King to prop us up, then we are on shaky ground. In Quebec, we are not going to ask Emmanuel Macron to come and help define who we are. We know that we are Quebeckers. We know who we are.
We then heard the member for Saint‑Maurice—Champlain say that it was a great day for Canada, that the entire world was watching with great excitement. The Bedouins in the Sahara were watching with bated breath. In the trenches of Ukraine, the fighting stopped because they had to watch the King's speech. Prayers were interrupted at the Vatican, in Jerusalem, in Mecca. I mean, come on. Aside from the U.K., who is interested in some old man reading a speech written by someone else? I would say pretty much no one. It is completely ridiculous. When they say "the world", they mean the U.K. That is pretty much the only place where people would have taken an interest in the throne speech. This is clear proof of an anglocentric view of the world. To them, the world is the Anglosphere. They think that the world revolves around them.
The invitation to the King was, above all, a concrete example of the old English Canadian loyalist tradition. English Canada was founded by loyalists who left the United States after it gained independence 250 years ago. They did not want to be part of a republic, a sovereign country. They decided to flee to Canada, where there was still a king. Afterwards, they tried to make us disappear by any means possible. It became a country of Orangemen. The Durham Report was implemented, the Métis were brutally repressed, Louis Riel was hanged and French was banned in every Canadian province. The reality is that Canada is a country built on our exclusion and marginalization. That is the reality. Now Canada is telling us that it has not changed, that the same royalists are still around.
The royal romanticism we see today is celebrated like a sort of nostalgia for the loyalist Canada of the good old days. Surely members can understand why I am not really interested in partying with them. I do not understand why they cannot grasp why Quebec is not joining them and why we are not celebrating everything I just described alongside everyone else. These are actually horrors.
I have a suggestion for them. They can have their monarchy party. They can have their fun. They can spend as much of their tax money as they want on crowns and trinkets, but they need to do it on their turf. What we are going to do is build our country on our turf. That is my suggestion, which I hope will meet with strong support in the House. I think that is the solution to the current conflict.
