Andrew Coyne/The Globe and Mail: You are entitled to your opinion. What you are not entitled to do is break the law. The framers of our Constitution thought the oath important enough to include it. Whether or not you think they were right to do so, the fact remains it is in the Constitution.
When the members of the Quebec legislature voted to exempt themselves from it, they weren’t simply passing a law intended to address some social ill or other that happened to infringe on a provision of the Constitution, or that might be interpreted as having done so. They were directly and deliberately flouting the Constitution, and for no purpose other than flouting the Constitution – asserting a power they do not possess, in the name of an independence they have not established…