OTTAWA–With less than a month to the royal visit by Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Canada finds itself embroiled in a protocol flap in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper has scolded Governor General Michaëlle Jean.

It all has to do with Jean referring to herself as Canada's head of state instead of the Queen's representative. Besides touching off a firestorm among monarchists and constitutional experts, the Prime Minister's Office weighed in.

"Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada and head of state and the governor general represents the Crown in Canada," Harper spokesman Dimitri Soudas told the Toronto Star on Friday, adding "we're fortunate to have a governor general that works hard for Canada."

The royal visit is Nov. 2 to 12.

In a speech this week to an executive meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, Jean, governor general since 2005, twice referred to herself as the head of state for Canada.

"I, a francophone from the Americas, born in Haiti, who carries in her the history of the slave trade and the emancipation of blacks, at once Québécoise and Canadian, and today before you, Canada's head of state, proudly represent the promises and possibilities of that ideal of society," she said.

"Everywhere that I have travelled as head of state ... I have met truly remarkable young people," she went on to say.

The Monarchist League of Canada was not amused.

"It is an attempt to elevate the office into something it is not and never was intended to be and all at the expense of the Queen," said league chair Robert Finch. "The evidence is overwhelming that the governor general is not the head of state ... you don't have to be a constitutional scholar or a legal expert to grasp that concept."

Marthe Blouin, an aide to the Governor General, said it is not the first time Jean has used that term.

"She does ... mostly when she's abroad ... and for your information she is not the first governor general to use the term," she said, referring to Adrienne Clarkson and the late Roméo LeBlanc.

Jean's office argues the title is spelled out in a 1947 agreement – the letters patent of King George VI, the Queen's father, which "transferred all of the duties of Head of State of Canada to the Governor General."

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"As the representative of the Crown in Canada she carries out the duties of head of state and therefore is de facto head of state ... but the Governor General knows very well that the head of state is the Queen," Blouin said.

Said Finch: "Nowhere in the (1947) document does it state or remotely imply that the governor general is now the head of state."