This is quite an ignorant question that I should know, but…
What is the deal with Canada and the Queen?
She likes beavers.
And I always thought it was a hockey thing. Live and learn.
Could you be more vague, perhaps?
come on. answer me. why the allegiance today?
‘samatter? You got sumthin’ against The Queen?
What? She never calls you any more? And now you’re trying to turn the country of Canada against her?
C’mon! She’s a harmless old lady. She’s got great diction. She carries sweets in her handbag (and she’ll give you one if you can produce a Canadian passport). And she smells nice. Is it any surprise that Canada is more than a little fixated on her? Who else have they got to put on their money? Trudeau? I admit, he was pretty hot in the seventies, but please. The Queen’s got a great smile. Projection is everything, you know.
ok… why the continued allegiance?
Several of the former colonies of the UK have continued to maintain a relationship to the monarchy. Canada has moved away from that relationship to a certain extent, especially as they messed around with a Canadian constitution several years ago. At this point, I suspect that making an issue of separation is simply not high on the list of many Canadians for issues that need to have energy expended to address. Since the queen has no real authority in any matter of Canadian law or politics, it is simply easier to let the old tradition continue than to raise the issue and create a big fight to discover how many people want to continue vs how many people want to sever the ties.
Dealing with the economy, the medical services, and watching the Quebec situation all provide enough problems to worry about without spending more time and energy establishing the “correct” relationship to the monarchy.
(If Charles ascends to the throne and begins to use it as a bully pulpit for some of his favorite themes, that might change, but ER is probably going to live so long that he’ll be doddering before he climbs up there.)
I don’t think so. The Queen can get, and indeed has gotten, quite meddlesome in the affairs of the Commonwealth countries. IIRC, in Australia, she has the power to dissolve parliament, a right she actually exercised a decade or two ago when she decided she didn’t like the one that was newly (and democratically) elected. I’m pretty sure she has the same power over the Canadian parliament, though I don’t know if she’s ever used it. I know that she has the power to adjust the size of the senate, which she did back in the 1980s. (The story I heard was that the prime minister didn’t have enough of his party members in the senate to ratify his laws, so he had the number of seats increased by the queen and appointed some cronies. Yes, the Canadian senate is appointed, not elected.) I’m also fairly sure that the queen has veto powers in certain situations, though I don’t know exactly under what circumstances.
Since 1982, when the Canadian Charter Of Rights And Freedoms was repatriated, the queen has zero authority in Canada, and is a traditional figurehead only who is dearly beloved by people over sixty, who remember getting out of school to see her when she visited.
The queen’s rule in Canada is through the post of Governer-General and Lieutenant-Governor-Generals (for the country and the provinces, respectively). In the past, those posts had some authority; no longer. They are purely ceremonial now. The Privy Council reports directly to the Prime Minister. The queen no longer has any involvement at all, even ceremonial, in Canadian politics. When Trudeau had Lizzie sign off on a bunch of senators, it was a formality, and nothing else.
That being the case, it’s a nice bunch of traditions we’ve got, and we don’t feel like changing them. I served in the army from 1988 to 1991, and swore allegiance to her and her representatives in Canada, meaning the real government that actually runs things.
Except she didn’t. In fact, it’s quite possible she never even knew it happened. The expansion of the Senate was done at the behest of the elected Prime Minister (Brian Mulroney) who TOLD the Governor-General what to do. The Governor-General’s job is to do charity functions and cut the ribbon at museum openings; when it comes to government functions, he or she takes orders from the PM. The PM appoints them, after all.
In point of fact, the Queen has no real power in Canada. If she tried to exercise it the Canadian public would be outraged and the monarchy would be thrown away faster than a losing lottery ticket.
So why does Canada hold on to the monarchy? Because it’s a hassle to get rid of it, and since the monarchy has no real power, it’s not a sufficiently important issue to motivate anyone to action.
Leaving aside what Canada receives from Her Majesty; what does Her Majesty receive from Canada? I know the British parliament passes a considerable sum to the Royal family each year. Does Ottawa mail a check over as well? Or do Canadians ride the Windsor Express for free?
The Queen does in fact have authority in Canada, or at least her representative the Governor-General does. Nevermind that there hasn’t been the opportunity to exercise it recently. In the event that no party wins a majority in Parliament, the GG gets to select which party tries to form a government.
Whether or how soon this may happen is hard to say, but if the Alliance can cobble together enough conservative support, and the Bloc Quebecois remains in place, a coalition government would have to be formed. The GG would probably just give it to whoever gets the most seats, but anything is possible. Israelis are familiar with this situation.
In the event of a constitutional crisis, it’s possible the GG could exercise additional power, such as happened in Australia, but I’ll await a post from someone more familiar with the constitution to clarify this.
This is just idle speculation: The Queen as head of state and head on money is a sore point with Quebeckers. A change in this status might be offered the next time an ill-fated Meech Lake accord comes along.
Except that the GG exercises no discretion in the matter, because there are well-established parliamentary rules for the formation of governments, minority, coalition, or otherwise. The GG is merely the mouthpiece for those rules, and has no authority to alter or contradict them. In the event of a constitutional crisis, the Supreme Court would decide the issue, not the GG. The GG would just announce the result in parliament.
I’m not sure that our parliamentary even offers many opportunities for an electoral crisis to occur; certainly nothing on the scale of the recent U.S. election.
I lived in Quebec during the 1995 referendum, and the queen was such a low priority on the list of complaints that Quebeckers had as to be non-existent. Given the fact that the queen is now nothing more than a focus of certain traditions (that many Canadians are fond of), I can’t see offering that as at all useful.
I wasn’t aware of this. I would like to read more about it, if you have any suggested links. My search turned up mostly election guide glossaries and the like.
However, this site suggests that the GG has more potential power than you give her credit for.
I have no great respect for the monarchy, but anxieties about decisions made in such delicate matters would arise no matter which body was responsible. Have Americans forgotten already how the supreme court acted last December over the election of Shrub. This sort of hard decision is always going to have to be made in any decision process and whether it is Queen and precedent or the Supreme Court and precedent, mistakes will be made. Both the Queen amd the Supreme Court are supposed to be above common politics, but we know from experience that this is not the case. Other parliamentary democracies place such decisions in the hands of the Speaker of the Lowert House or such similar, but again questions of possible bias occur.
Those are plausible, though remote, scenarios under which the GG would have some authority to act according to her judgement, though as I read it, she couldn’t act at all without the firm backing of the judiciary and the parliamentarians. A little more than just a mouthpiece, but not much more, and only under circumstances that are theoretical at best.
God, Adrienne Clarkson is so unqualified for those possibilities.
However, the post of GG is part of the Canadian government now, not the British Monarchy (as it was in the past), so there’s no inroad there for Queenie.
[aside]
One of my favourite Kids In The Hall sketches had Scott Thompson doing Queen Elizabeth addressing Canada on TV to discuss a recent newspaper headline reading “Canada Abandons Monarchy”
Then Edward, the idiot prince, shows up to ask “Momsey, do you like my joke newspaper?” Queenie looks at the camera and lets out a long, shrill laugh.
[/aside]
Actually it doesn’t, at least not for the Royal’s private expenses, which are covered entirely through revenues from estate owned by the Queen and her relatives personally, not by the state. British public coffers simply pay the expenses for her office as Head of State and for the maintenance of Royal castles and palaces, but it would have to do so even if Britain were a republic.
The Monarchy’s official website http://www.royal.gov.uk gives clear information about the family’s finances at http://www.royal.gov.uk/today/finance.htm ; payments from Canada are not mentioned, so I think there’s no monthly tribute-to-your-King cheque. Yet the Canadian government will, I suppose, pay for her expenses if she stays in Canada (it would do the same for every other Head of State, too).
AFAIK the Canadian army does, however, send a few of their soldiers to the Beefeaters guard in Buckingham Palace.
Just a formality? As a matter of technicality, I’m pretty sure those senators couldn’t have been appointed without that signature. What would have happened if the queen (read here “queen” as “queen or her governor general, who in theory reports to her”) had refused? Do you think the Opposition would have let that one slip? “Oh, Mulroney, that was very sneaky of you trying to install more of your minions in the senate so that you could override our judgment. Of course, you didn’t get the appointments officially approved, but we’ll let it slide this time because we don’t want our political power anyway.” Yeah, right.
Oh really? The Queen did exercise her “real power” in Australia quite recently, and it was only two years ago that the Aussies had a big referendum in which they voted to keep her as monarch.
If the Queen or her rep, the GG had refused to sign on the basis of some legal grounds, then the judiciary would back them up (i.e., the Supreme Court of Canada), meaning that the PM had tried something outside the rules of parliament and the law of the land. The ultimate arbiter of the PM’s actions, then, are the Canadian courts, not the Queen.
If the Queen or the GG did so for political reasons (as in, they don’t think that a particular bill should pass, or that the PM’s choices for senator are appropriate), they would get written out of the process so fast it would make Lizzie’s crown spin.
The repatriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982 meant that Canada is a perfectly sovereign nation. All the powers of the Canadian government derive from that document, with no reference to any extra-national agency or person. That some ceremonial aspects involving the queen or the GG are retained is meaningless as far as the legitimate machinery of government is concerned, because the Canadian government is the ultimate authority of the machinery of government (checked by the Canadian judiciary).
Comparisons with Australia, or any other commonwealth country, are meaningless because every commonwealth country has a unique relationship with the British crown.