The Parti Qu脙漏b脙漏cois is taking on a famous target in the provincial election campaign: the Queen.
Party leader Pauline Marois has been referencing the monarchy in her speeches and refers to it as a waste of money; an outdated institution; and a sign that Quebec has no place in Stephen Harper's Canada.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Marois was asked about that kind of talk and whether it might be impolite during the Queen's Jubilee year.
"It doesn't bother me at all to attack royalty," she replied to a reporter from the Toronto Star.
"It's not because it's the... event... what's that... the Jubilee - I was looking for the term - not because it's the Queen's Jubilee we should avoid commenting."
After last year's federal election, the Harper Tories provided Marois with some new targets and she has consistently hammered away at them.
Moves to hire people who can't speak French to senior federal positions, and to place the monarchy on prominent display in fed-eral institutions, have become a familiar PQ attack theme.
On Tuesday, Marois ridiculed the Harper Tories for replacing the paintings of Alfred Pellan with a large portrait of the Queen in the Foreign Affairs building in Ottawa. The commissioning of a separate portrait, a new one for Rideau Hall, was "money badly invested," she said.
And Marois called it wasteful to have a lieutenant-governor in every province.
"What's not useful is having sums spent for no reason to have him sign laws he has nothing to say about, and accepting the premier's demand to have an election. If you ask me, these are completely outdated institutions and we should question them," she said.
