The monarchy excites with unique pomp and pageantry. But we have a Governor General, who lives in a grand house, on a wooded estate in Ottawa, and travels abroad as our representative.
One of the arguments in favour of the monarchy in Canada is that it makes Canada different from the United States. It’s a storied institution that Canadians have, royalists crow, but Americans do not.
Being different from the U.S. is the engine of our identity. We live and breathe it. Confederation took place in 1867 out of fear the Americans would absorb us. Our distinctiveness is the aspiration — even the emblem — of our nationhood.
Sign up to receive daily headline news from Ottawa Citizen, a division of Postmedia Network Inc.
Thanks for signing up!
A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.
The next issue of Ottawa Citizen Headline News will soon be in your inbox.
So, expect to hear that argument if Canada considers dissolving ties with the Crown and becoming a republic. With the passing of Queen Elizabeth, it’s a debate whose time has come.
Does it make sense, though, this hoary assertion that our new head of state, King Charles III, makes us distinctive? Would we be so ordinary, so pedestrian, if we did not have this attachment to the Crown? Hardly.
The United States merges the roles of head of government and head of state. Both roles are invested in the president. Because of the extraordinary powers of the office, the president is famously called the most powerful man (only men have held the job) in the world.
His responsibilities include commander-in-chief, manager of the economy, chief executive officer. Since the dawn of the atomic age in 1945, the authority of the office has grown; the president can trigger a nuclear war, which was frighteningly apparent during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
The president can also fight a conventional war without a declaration of war from Congress, as presidents did in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
No doubt the presidency has majesty and ceremony of its own. The White House and Camp David, the U.S. Marine Band (President’s Own) and Air Force One — all confer a sense of grandeur. If this head of state wants to serve his guests sumptuous meals on his own airplane, no one complains. (In Canada, the pinchpenny kingdom of the tall-poppy syndrome, we howl.)
The president as head of state embodies the values of the country at home and abroad. Though he represents one of three branches of government, he is seen, in a way, as the state itself.
Canada is different. The prime minister is head of government. He travels abroad in that capacity, meeting his foreign counterparts. The Governor General is, in practice, head of state, with real but rarely used constitutional powers.
The powers of the Governor General have grown in the post-war period. But remember, while the GG is our de facto head of state, the King of England remains our de jure head of state.
The King of England is King of Canada, as he is king of Australia, New Zealand and many other members of the Commonwealth. What’s distinctive about sharing a monarch with other countries? Like his mother, Charles III will visit Canada but he won’t live here. This is something to celebrate?
The monarchy excites with unique pomp and pageantry. But the reality is that we have a Governor General, who lives in a grand house, on a wooded estate in Ottawa, and travels abroad as our (vice-regal) representative.
True, the Governor General does not have the stature of the American president, but how could she in a country one-ninth the size of America? The argument that we need a part-time head of state, living in London, to give us stature and style is hollow.
What’s different about Canada? It’s not hard to see. Medicare, bilingualism, peacekeeping (when we practised it), unalloyed multilateralism, liberal immigration and hockey fanaticism. A history of moderation, diversity and tolerance. A distaste for guns. A progressive country.
Over 155 years, we have never had colonies, have never waged wars of conquest, have never fought alone.
We won’t be more American if dissolve the monarchy; we’ll be more Canadian. The United States will remain the great republic, and we will be the new republic in North America. It will be the last, logical step in our nation-building and our march to maturity.
Andrew Cohen is a journalist, a professor at Carleton University and author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History.