Lawyer Lawrence David Argues Quebec's Next Laws Will Be Illegitimate While MNAs Refuse the Oath of Allegiance
At a hearing Tuesday, the constitutional lawyer Lawrence David argued that laws passed by Quebec's next legislature will be illegitimate for as long as a majority of its members refuse to take the Oath of Allegiance. David, founder of the Public Interest Litigation Institute, says Bill 4 — the law that abolished the requirement to pledge allegiance to the King — leaves those members sitting inside the National Assembly unlawfully. Just under 100 MNAs were sworn in over the past week, and all of them renounced the oath.
Lawyers for the Attorney General of Quebec counter that there is no urgency to resolve the constitutionality of Bill 4 before the National Assembly reconvenes.
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David's position is blunter than the word 'illegitimate' first suggests: as he told reporters outside the Quebec Superior Court, members who refuse the oath are, in his view, not legally entitled to sit at all, or to take part in parliamentary activity, or to vote on bills.
The province's answer is a practical one. The law has been in place since 2022 and the legislature has kept functioning and passing laws without trouble, so the province's lawyers can ask what harm the courts are being summoned to fix. A constitutional defect that never produces a visible malfunction is a hard thing to sell.
Except the oath has bitten before. Before Bill 4 passed, the PQ's three MNAs were barred from sitting in the National Assembly's Blue Room precisely because they would not pledge allegiance to the King — the clearest sign that the requirement was never ceremonial decoration.