The Republic of Canada?
Not bloody likely

Australians will soon vote on whether to replace the monarchy with a republic; Canadians don't seem to care.

JEFFREY SIMPSON

G&M, 7.8.99

THE REPUBLICAN OPTION IN CANADA: Past and Present
By David E. Smith, University of Toronto Press, 352 pages

Sherlock Holmes solved one of his celebrated cases by remarking on the dog that did not bark. Canadians have their own dog that refuses to bark: a republican movement such as the one leading Australians toward ditching the British monarchy.

Canada -- a country where a quarter of the population speaks French and those of British stock decline daily as a share of the whole -- would seem an unlikely place for the British monarchy as national symbol. Canada within the Commonwealth always pushed hardest for colonial autonomy, yet Canada as a fully sovereign country retains the most anachronistic, and in some cases ludicrous, institution of all: a foreign monarch.

The royal family, the Queen herself excepted, has entertained but hardly inspired its loyal subjects with antics fit for soap operas and C-grade movies. Most of the family members are intellectually vacuous and profoundly snobbish. The ditzy Prince Charles, the future king if you can believe it, looks bemusedly lost in whatever circumstances he finds himself. His estranged wife, Diana, died in the car of her umpteenth lover during a tryst in Paris, her death the occasion for secular canonization by populations weaned on television sitcoms and People magazine. That the British should find the monarchy a source of amusement and value is their business; that Canadians should find the institution of the remotest relevance and utility is, at least on the surface, surprising.

The monarchy in Canada has its defenders -- the Monarchist League and columnists who have made its defence their personal crusade. But as political scientist Reg Whitaker recently wrote, most Canadians would say of the monarchy what Rhett Butler told Scarlett O'Hara: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Polls have shown Canadians split over retaining the monarchy, with a slight majority in favor of its abolition. When at least half the voters support an idea, especially one never even extensively debated, a political party will usually fill the vacuum. But not in Canada. After the century's last election, in 1997, not one party leader would defend the monarchy. They all ran from the issue, observing that the times were not propitious for a debate. Meanwhile, Australians will be voting this fall in a referendum to scrap the monarchy and replace it with an Australian republic. The referendum follows a constitutional convention that thoroughly debated the issue and made recommendations for the referendum question. The convention, in turn, flowed from an election campaign in which the monarchy's future figured prominently.

Debate, then, in Australia; silence in Canada. Why? David Smith, one of Canada's leading political scientists, suggests monarchy is bred in the Canadian bone, and not because of sentimental attachment to things British. Republicanism never sank roots in Canada, because it depended on rules and laws that imposed rigidities, whereas monarchy was flexible, a highly desirable political property in a country as ill-focused as Canada. Republicanism, as practised in the United States, for example, assumes power resides with the people; monarchy assumes it lies with the Crown. As such, the competition for political power in Canada will be fierce, since the winner monopolizes power in the Crown's name.

When critics today bemoan the imperial prime ministership, they are inferentially bemoaning monarchy, because the leader of a parliamentary government under the Crown wields far more unfettered power than a president in a republican system where power lies with the "people." Smith writes: "The Canadian political system is one of hierarchy and exclusion. Politics is an occupation, monopolized by those in office -- in effect by political parties -- and, within the parties, by leaders."

No wonder, then, that Canadian political leaders are content with the assumptions of monarchy, because the system enhances their power. Canada grew up in contrast to the United States and under the British thumb. Monarchy was what the British knew and what the Americans disliked, so Canada had little choice in the matter. As the 20th century ebbs, however, Canadians are still clinging to an institution few care about. Australians are moving toward abandoning the monarchy because it makes them feel too British; Canadians are retaining the monarchy since to ditch it would make them feel too American.

Smith's treatise is not for the general reader, but rather for the serious student of political theory and Canadian (and comparative) politics. His tract neither endorses nor despises monarchy. It analyzes, ever-so-soberly, why Canadians opted for the system and, more intriguingly, why so few people have called it into public question -- the dog that did not bark. The symbols of monarchy -- the Queen and her mixed-up family -- may be increasingly inappropriate, but the monarchy is more than the Queen. It's a whole way of thinking about government and the relationship between it and the "people."

Slowly, this ingrained belief in the centralization of power in the hands of the monarch's advisers -- the prime minister and his cabinet -- is coming under assault. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is republican in its philosophy: "rights," natural law and the "people," not the monarch and common law; the stunted Canadian Senate; the prime minister's overarching control within government; the insensitivity of bureaucracy. These are all symptoms of an excessively centralized political system for a highly decentralized country.

Smith cautions, however, that replacing one system with another -- even such a superficially simple change as replacing the Queen with a Canadian head of state -- would entail many complications. That's what the Australians discovered when republicans split between those preferring a popularly elected head of state or one elected by a qualified parliamentary majority. In Canada, changing the status of the head of state would require the unanimous consent of 11 governments that have difficulty agreeing what year it is. Even if the dog wanted to bark, Canada's absurdly rigid constitutional amending formula would stifle it. Canada, it seems, it stuck with monarchy for a good while yet.