Excellent summation, Muffin! Eugene Forsey couldn’t have put it better!
Most British politicians today regard the Commonwealth as a rather irritating irrelevance which they are obliged to pay lip service to because the Queen is keen on it. The rot set in in 1971 when Britain turned its back on its old Imperial trading partners and joined the European Economic Community (as it was then). A condition of membership was that we had to withdraw the Most Favoured Nation status that the old Dominions enjoyed and discriminate explicitly in favour of Common Market Member States . The Dominions protested, having orientated most of their export markets at Britain as an outgrowth of the old colonial trading arrangements, but it was no use. Today, if you arrive at a U.K. airport, you will be whisked through immigration if you are a German, Greek or Estonian national, but Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders must have a visa and be subject to the full Immigration Service catechism.
Nobody here had recalled that Canada’s constitutional arrangements were a matter for anyone but Canada until Trudeau raised the matter, and the British Parliament had to take an irritating amount of time out of the always-crowded legislative timetable to pass an Act ‘patriating’ the British North America Act to Canada.
Despite its decline in prestige over the years most Commonwealth members still see it as an organisation worth belonging to, and South Africa, which left in 1961 (anticipating it’s almost certain expulsion for the racial policies of the Nationalist government), has recently rejoined, while Mozambique, which never belonged at all, has recently joined as well.
I can’t help but wonder whether those same politicians see the irony in their annual veneer of obsequiousness towards Her Majesty.
Until recently, Canadian landed immigrants who were also citizens of another Commonwealth country were visa-exempt for entry to the U.S. They still needed to meet all the other qualifications for the U.S. immigration category, but they were saved the (sometimes considerable) headache, delay, and expense of applyign for a visa at a U.S. Consulate before entering - they just showed up at the border with the appropriate documentation.
There can be advantages to being a citizen of a Commonwealth country when in another Commonwealth country. For example, IIRC, Commonwealth citizens who reside in the UK can vote in UK elections. But this is up to each country; there are no uniform rules accross the Commonwealth. So Australian citizens can vote in the UK, but UK citizens cannot (with limited exceptions) vote in Australia.
Contrary to what Mark VII says, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian citizens do not need visas to enter the UK (although they do require entry clearance if they wish to stay more than six months). But citizens of many other Commonwealth countries do need visas to enter the UK (e.g. India, Nigeria, Guyana) and, conversely, citizens of some non-Commonwealth countries do not need visas to enter the UK (e.g. Ireland, the USA, South Korea). UK Visa policy, in short, has little or nothing to do with Commonwealth status. I don’t know if it ever did.
Forsey’s bible: “How Canadians Govern Themselves” http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/idb/forsey/index-e.asp
He may have meant “passport,” in which case he is certainly correct. And you do need to get it stamped when you go in, which constitutes a temporary visa. So how don’t you need a visa?
It is of course something of a sterile argument, given that the Constitution says
Even assuming the monarchists are right and the GG is our Head of State, then that simply means that our Head of State remains in power at a foreigner’s whim. Big improvement.
Not only that, but there is nothing to stop the Queen appointing a foreign GG, albeit she hasn’t done so in recent years.
On our trip to Chicago in May, a woman on our airport-to-hotel shuttle related such a story to us after finding out I am from just north of the Montana-Alberta border. She was from the southern side, and had watched this going on when she was young.
If the constitutional monarch of Australia is similar to the constitutional monarchy of Canada, which I believe it is, then constitutional custom prevents the Monarch from appointing a Governor General on a whim or otherwise against the direction of the nation.
In Canada, the Head of State is responsible to the Commons, meaning that by constitutional custom the Head of State must accept the advice of the Commons.
If the Commons, through the Prime Minister, advise the head of state to appoint a particular Governor General, the Head of Sate must comply (thus the Head of State can not appoint a Governor General that the Commons does not want).
The Head of State does not have the power to act outside of the advice of the Commons. In fact, it would be unconstitutional for the head of state to refuse a bill (MacDonald, our first Prime Minister, pointed this out), the Head of State has never refused a bill in the history of Canada, and the Head of State has not refused a bill in Britain for almost 300 years.
Should the Prime Minister and government not have the confidence of the Commons, then the Head of State can call an election. This ensures that the Prime Minister and government remain responsible to the Commons, rather than face gridlock (which occurs in nations that do not have responsible government such as the USA).
In short, Head of State is a creature of the Commons that carries out the directions of the Commons and protects the Commons from an uppity Prime Minister. There is great value in having a head of state with such powers.
Regardless of the sound legal and practical considerations of such a system, having a foreign Head of State remains offensive to many Canadians for many valid reasons, ranging from it being paternalistic on its face to have a foreign head of state, to historical concerns over the clash of cultures against Britain. The trick is to repatriate the office of the Head of State without disrupting a very well balanced system. One approach, as has been posited in Australia, is to simply keep the existing system, but cross-out the Monarch and leave the Governor General in place as Head of State.
In Canada, as long as the constitutional customs were to be maintained, this finely tuned structure of checks and balances could conceivably continue if the Commons decided to replace the Monarch with the Governor General as Head of State, but to do so would require a formal constitutional amendment. Until such an amendment is made, the Monarch remains as the Head of State, the Governor General is the representative of the Head of State, and the Commons call the shots, with the Prime Minister and the Head of State both being held responsible to the Commons.
I’m aware of all that, but it’s all just convention, not law. Which means you can drive a truck through the holes.
Not only that, but the whole position of the constitutional monarchists on the issue of whether the GG is or is not the head of state stinks to high heaven of hypocrisy. It consists of saying (on the one hand) that it is very very important to keep the foreign monarch, while on the other hand saying that we have no need to worry because the foreign monarch is unimportant.
I believe that the technical term is “blowing and sucking at the same time.” 
AAAACK! Please disregard the above post by me. I screwed up on the coding, resulting in my words being attributed to Princhester. I offer my most sincere apologies.
Following is the correct post:
If it were not for constutional custom, Canada would not have a Prime minister in the fist place. The very existence of the office is by way of constitutional custom. I wouldn’t want to underestimate the durability of constitutional custom.
I believe that the technical term is “blowing and sucking at the same time.”
Sure. But crises do happen (read about Whitlam and Kerr and 1974 if you want an example) and at the moment we have a crazy system in which the actual chief executive exists only by custom not law, and the head honcho (note careful avoidance of loaded term :)) enshrined by the constitution is a foreign monarch.
Through the looking glass we have gone.
I’m not sure that people who hold such opinions are hypocrites. Traditionalists, yes. There seems nothing inherently hypocritical in wishing to keep largely symbolic ties.
On the face of what I wrote, I can see your point. But actually, the leading lobby group opposing a republic (Australians for a Constitutional Monarchy) don’t suggest that they just want to keep symbolic ties. They say:
At the heart of keeping “the highest office” beyond politics is the role of the Queen, because the politicians in power appoint the G-G and she is a key brake upon the politicisation of that appointment.
So they do think the Queen is important, except when trying to appease republicans, when they pay lip service to the idea that the Queen is unimportant.
It’s situations like this, and the Electoral College in the States, that make me happy that Great Britain has no written constitution.
Incidentally, I think it’s inevitable that Australia becomes a republic in the next generation or two. Old codgers like my aunt, who emigrated from “the mother country” 50 years ago, represent a dying breed compared with the new immigrants from southern Europe and east Asia.
How’s that?
Actually, no.
All foreign nationals, Commonwealth citizens or otherwise, need a passport to enter the UK - unless they enter from Ireland, in which case no passport is needed because of the Ireland/UK common travel area.
A stamp in a passport is not a temporary visa. It’s just a statement that you did in fact enter the UK at a given point on a given day, but it’s not a statement that you had an affirmative right to do so. It shows that the immigration officer found no reason to exclude you, that’s all. It doesn’t affirm that you have a positive right of entry and, if they subsequently decide to throw you out for whatever reason, there is no “visa” which needs to be cancelled or revoked.
For one thing, written constitutions tend to lead to an increase in the power of the courts, something that Britain is saved from to a large degree because of its unwritten constitution.