This isn’t quite right: there was only one model put at the referendum. It was a model that many republicans did not support.
It’s not that difficult to change the system. I think it’s already the case that there are more countries of which the present Queen used to be monarch than there of of which she is monarch, so there are plenty of models for the transition from Commonwealth realm to republic. One one view, transition to a republic is in fact the normal evolution of a Commonwealth realm, and those which do not make the move are the exceptions. Similarly there are plenty of constitutional parliamentary republics - including, but not limited to, former Commonwealth realms - which have found effective democratic solutions to the “root of power” problem.
There may be good reasons for a Commonwealth realm to retain the monarchy, but “change is conceptually or practically not possible” is definitely not one of them.
True, with the result that an entire group of republicans actively campaigned against the referendum. Didn’t exactly help the cause. That is what I meant by splitting - albeit in a less than correct use of the term.
I guess my response to that is that “difficult” is rather a relative term. The gist of what I was pointing out – you know this, but it seems that the OP did not – is that in Canada the Queen is not just some nice lady that sometimes comes over and waves at us, but one of the fundamental functionaries in our system of government. So point #1 is that the transformation to a republic would be a sweeping change indeed, and point #2 is that the present Canadian Constitution is procedurally a difficult thing to change even for a minor matter, let alone a complete reworking of government. Not to mention the fact that every provincial government is modeled on the same system. So yes, pretty difficult, actually, at least in Canada in the present circumstances.
As an aside, some may see the monarchy as archaic, but over here in the colonies I tend to see the monarchy as personified by the Governor General rather than the Queen, even though he’s officially and legally her appointee and representative. So I tend not to worry about whether the Queen gets too much public money or whether Charles should step aside for William or whether the royal baby just pooped in its diapers, because frankly I don’t care and it doesn’t affect me. What I value is our Westminster Parliamentary system.
Fair enough. I think the way to go - if you wanted to go this way - would be to establish a strong political mandate for a transition to a republic, and then get down to the nitty-gritty of the required constitutional and other amendments, relying on the political mandate to ensure that those having different views on matters of detail would come to some agreement, rather than let the whole process fall apart. (This is pretty much the way the independence of Scotland would have been worked out, I think, had last week’s referendum gone the other way.)
Yes. But you can have a Westminster parliamentary system without a monarchy. Look at Ireland, for example. Or, given your own view of the matter, you could simply drop the claim that the Governor General and the Lt Govs are appointed to reprsent the crown, and (without altering the appointment power in any way) adopt instead a claim that they are appointed to represent the sovereign people, in exactly the way that they now represent the crown.
Tradition. And people here just can’t agree on what sort of republican model would suit us best. The politicians would want to appoint a Prez, the hoi polloi would want to vote for him/her.
There is a widely believed rumour that Australia’s Monarchist Prime Minister at the time of Australia’s last referendum on the subject in 1999 understood this very well. This this is precisely why he insisted that the vote be for a particular republican model. He knew very well that there would be disagreement amongst republicans about the right model and that this would split the vote and result in the whole effort failing.
Technically, yes, you could have a Westminster system that isn’t a constitutional monarchy, but it would be quite a different system that what we have now. You couldn’t just continue the present system and simply deem that the GG now has no connection to the monarchy, because you’d need something workable to replace the system of “appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister” that didn’t just consist of PMs appointing political cronies.
The solution in Ireland AFAICT is to make the equivalent of the GG an elected position, call it the “President”, and assign it more powers. This is not just a really major change, it’s also a basic philosophical difference: the supposed non-partisan arbiter of government protocols is now an elected position, which is by definition political. I’m not saying this is necessarily bad, but it is without a doubt hugely different. Having the many-headed determine the best candidate for a sensitive position isn’t always the best course – witness the pitfalls of elected vs. appointed lower-court judges.
Elizabetg sounds such a German name, and for some reason, this is a problem.
Which makes the problem not “vote splitting” but a “poison pill”. It was like having a referendum on legalising voluntary euthanasia and the question asks if we should kill everyone on their eightieth birthday.
If it ain’t broke - don’t fix it.
But there’s nothing to stop the PM even now appointing a political crony as GG. The Queen would certainly not demur. If he doesn’t do this today, it’s because (a) he wants his appointment to have some dignity and gravitas, and (b) the circumstances in which a GG can exercise political power are so vanishingly rare that it is does not make sense to jeopardise his first objective to have a politically slavish GG. All of this would still be true if the Queen were out of the loop.
Actually, the Irish president has fewer constitutional powers than the British monarch. She doesn’t, e.g., appoint the prime minister; he is elected by the lower house of parliament.
But, I agree, whether there are more powers or fewer, the system is somewhat different. My point is that it’s still a Westminster parliamentary system. You don’t need the monarchy to preserve that.
I believe the royal family are known somewhat irreverently as ‘The Germans’ by the press.
While many were born in the UK, they were a very Germanic family, just before WWI they had members as head of state in the UK, Germany and Russia. They socialised together and spoke German. This Germanic connection became an issue when WWI started and the monarchy were keen to be seen as British, during a period of patriotic fervour, and so the changed their family name from Hohenzollern-Saxe-Coberg-Gotha to…Windsor. I guess they are German moniker stuck during the abdication crisis, in the 1930s when the UK had a German speaking King with an uncomfortable fondness for having tea with Hitler. It is a patriotic gibe.
However, the notion that the monarch is not really English has a long history and a political purpose. The roots of the system of monarchy is that monarchs derive their power from…God (none of that Enlightenment nonesense about people.) God said let there be Kings to rule earth and that Divine Right was widely held during a time when Religion had rather more influence than Reason. Some Kings took the whole concept rather too far and got into a competition with developing Parliaments, which the Parliaments won decively.
The competition between Religion, Monarch and State for claims to executive power is pretty much at the heart of the political evolution of Europe.
In the UK curtailing the ambitions of the monarch was settled fairly early on with the execution of Charles I, who was both the wrong religion and refused to convene Parliaments. As far as the French were concerned, The King was the State. That concept was killed off in bloody revolution.
For the British, having a King who was foreign suited the Parliamentarians because he could be more easily kept out of politics so importing a suitably Protestant royal family made a lot of sense. If you want to replace the King, you could not just choose anyone, they had to be decended from an existing royal family. Finding one that was Protestant narrowed the field somewhat and the place to find Protestants was Scotland, The Netherlands and the German states. The UK had monarchs from each of these countries. The House of Hanover was interesting. George I was King of England, but he did not care to live there. George II was not much interested, George III was famously mad and George IV a louche playboy. For the most part they left the UK to develop its Parliamentary system without much interference from a meddling monarch. The French were not so lucky. Nor indeed were the Russians much later.
The UK managed to modify the monarchy and make it a constitutional institution rather than absolute. It does appear absurd and archaic, but then revolutionary politics of republics is also pretty awful. It is not difficult to see that many republics around the world are little more than absolute monarchies in practice. Democratic government does not come easily and I think we all know how difficult constitutions are to get right. The UK managed to create something that works largely by trial and error which has proved a useful model for other countries. Keeping the Head of State separate from the Head of Government is a good feature.
You have to go back an awfully long way in British history to find a truly English King.
There are republicans in the UK who think that all this monarchy business is rather silly and a head of state should be elected on a more rational, democratic basis. But I think they lived in dread of who would end up being elected. Knowing the British public, it would have been someone like Thatcher or Blair or these days someone from a TV talent show. This sort of possibility makes republican idealists twitch with nervous tics.
That money is not ‘wasted’ on a figurehead. The job is valuable and in high demand. If it really were so obviously pointless, do you honestly think statecrafters of the last few generations, a period of the highest rate of new constitution-building in history, would blindly jump into it?
High personal wealth does not, and should not, have any bearing on whether or not the incumbent pays for the State. Otherwise, the last few American presidents would have suddenly got sorely out of pocket.
In the late Middle Ages, the monarch did fund the state from their personal wealth, and taxes voted by Parliament were meant to be extraordinary and voluntary gifts to fund emergencies such as wars, or to mark grand occasions. As the state grew more complex, pressure mounted on the monarchy to fund by itself, and so the power of Parliament grew.
In 1760 the newly crowned George III surrendered his private revenue to Parliament in return for an annual stipend from the Treasury.
Now, since 2011, the monarch receives a percentage of the revenues of the Crown Estate - the rest going into the Treasury. So technically, the monarchy costs us nothing now.
I’m liberal too, but I thought being liberal meant you should make an effort to actually learn something about a topic and have an informed opinion, not mouth off from ignorance.
A few years ago the Canadian government (under Stephen Harper) decided to stir up Canadian nationalism. He had a few symbols to choose from (the beaver, the maple leaf, the monarchy, Céline Dion, Margaret Atwood) and he chose the monarchy. Since then I’ve paid to put portraits of Elizabeth in every embassy (and displace works of art at Foreign Affairs in Ottawa) and to rename the armed forces as Royal. My local post office also offered postage stamps about the Kate and William wedding (I had to look up their names) when it was in the news.
So yes, I’m paying for it. Not much, probably, but to me it’s the equivalent of paying a graffiti artist to disfigure an overpass.
in the UK any costs are easily balanced by tourism income.
because I’m British, I won’t speak for my Canadian friends BUT if you didn’t pay for the monarchy, you’d pay for something in it’s place - pictures of the president, stamps with maple syrup on (self sticking obviously), that sort of thing.
there’s a cost of a head of state whoever that is.
Funnily enough, I’d never describe myself as a monarchist but there are advantages of the system.
compared to the US, I’d suggest the Queen is rather cheaper than the Prez, you don’t get budget impasses and you don’t have to vote for a new one every 4 years 
Now if Charles keeps speaking out about stuff, I might have to change my mind
So you’re an anti-monarchist. Thanks for letting us know (I guess).
Also, I myself have never thought of Canadian nationalism as something that gets to be “stirred up”, a term I would sooner apply to a mob riot than to a national identity. Nor would I particularly consider the Queen, being sovereign of 16 nations and head of a Commonwealth of 54 nations in all, to be particularly representative of a unique Canadian identity. Mind you, I wouldn’t use Celine Dion, either! 
The three things I want to see in my lifetime are controlled fusion, a space elevator, and the Republic of Canada. I’m okay with the Governor-General remaining an appointed and confirmed and largely ceremonial Head of State; he or she just wouldn’t be Viceroy to someone else.
In fairness, the “Royal” styling for the Armed Forces is popular among a lot of people who don’t give a fig about the Queen, in large part because Canada’s greatest military moments were when it was styled that way. My grandfathers served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, not “Air Command,” and using the old name hearkens back to glorious times. “Royal Canadian Navy” sounds way better than “Maritime Command.” The former sounds like an outfit that can go out and sink some shit. The latter sound like a PC game from 1991.
I would vote to do away with the monarchy tomorrow if it could somehow be put to a vote without opening the rest of the Constitutional can of worms, but fact is those “Royal” names just sound cooler.
You have to look at in the context of each country.
In Canada, you need unanimous consent of the federal government and all ten provinces. As a political matter, that is a very steep hurdle indeed.
The last Prime Minister who tried to introduce a constitutional amendment that required unanimous consent (Mulroney) found that he had to put an enormous amount of political capital into the effort. He became enormously unpopular in the process.
The proposed amendments failed; Mulroney did not run for re-election, and his party was crushed in the next election, going from a comfortable majority to two (2) seats. His successor as PM lost her seat.
That’s a pretty grim record. Putting a lot of effort into constitutional amendments can be a political graveyard in Canada.
So yes, there are precedents for republican Comminwealth parliamentary systems. But as a political matter, in Canada it would be very difficult.