Maybe it’s time for our own Canadexit
Days away from Canada Day, with our 150th birthday just a year off, it’s time to ask:
How much longer until we sever our last links to Mother England — colonial and constitutional?
Imagine posing a variation of that question today to Britons, post-Brexit: How might they respond if asked to swear allegiance to an overseas monarch, much less a Brussels-based bureaucracy? We now have our answer. Thanks to Thursday’s vote cutting formal ties to the European Union, Britons have “taken back their country.” Or at least reclaimed their sovereignty, for better or for worse.
Odd, then, that diehard monarchists in Canada still cling to the Queen and embrace the mother country — both of them offshore. Perhaps it made sense once upon a time, mindful of American expansionism and British protection(ism), to transition from colonial offshoot to constitutional monarchy.
But as Canada Day 2017 approaches — 35 years after we got around to patriating our Constitution, 150 years after cobbling together Confederation — there is the undeniably unfinished business of repatriating the anachronism that is our head of state. If not now, when? Not anytime soon to be sure. Modernizing the archaic construct that is the Crown, so that the Canadian people can enjoy true national sovereignty, is a long-term project. But as our birthday celebration beckons, and with the Queen having just celebrated her own 90th birthday, the succession question will be upon us sooner or later.
For the moment, public opinion is weighed down by its own inertia (this is the province, after all, where the Beer Store held sway for decades). Our constitutional amending formula is constrained by the exigencies of unanimity. And the politics of referenda are utterly unpredictable — as the British now know, as Quebecers discovered not long ago, and as the antimonarchy Australians learned when trying to unburden themselves of the Queen.
Not just their Queen, of course, but our Queen. The Queen we share with the British, who guard their own sovereignty and identity so jealousy. The Queen also claimed by more than a dozen other countries, from Antigua to Tuvalu.
That Queen Elizabeth can simultaneously yet separately be sovereign to so many supposedly sovereign lands is a convenient constitutional convention and legal fiction, with theological echoes of the Holy Trinity: Queen of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, Queen of Australia, Queen of Belize . . . you get the picture.
Ah, but she is ours, the monarchists cry, Queen of Canada!
Just not ours alone. Which makes it awkward when sending a letter to friends in Britain, who might legitimately wonder, upon examining the postage stamp, whether it is airmail or domestic post.
There is also the recurring indignity of foreign dignitaries toasting our overseas Queen — ours, just not entirely ours.
The imagery of American presidents offering reciprocal toasts to the Queen when on Australian soil was a recurring theme during the 1999 referendum to abolish the monarchy.
Covering that campaign for the Star, just ahead of Australia’s own centenary celebrations, was an education for me — and a lesson in how misinformation, emotion and anti-elitism can win the day.
Back then, a strong majority of voters wanted to rid themselves of the Queen, but they emerged bitterly divided. Down in the polls, monarchists knew better than to evoke images of an increasingly unpopular British-based sovereign.
Instead of divine rule, they opted for divide and rule — shrewdly focusing on the tactical question of what would replace the Queen. Monarchists warned that a presidential system would engender a new elitism. They successfully split the republican vote between socalled elitists and populists, allowing the status quo to squeak through.
Against that backdrop, there is little reason to believe Canadians are ready to shed the monarchy anytime soon. But if we are ever to grow up as a country — and outgrow the motherland — there is no better place to start the conversation than in Ontario.
Yes, this is the historical homeland of United Empire Loyalists, whose official motto is: “Loyal she began, loyal she remains.” True, the Union Jack ensign endures in our provincial flag, a retort to the new Maple Leaf flag conjured up by renegade royalists in the mid-1960s.
But who better than today’s Ontarians, with our distinctive diversity, to lead the way in modernizing our national identity? If Ontario could break free from the yoke of its own outdated self-image — white proto-monarchists showing their undying loyalty to the realm centuries ago — Canada’s biggest province could reshape the national debate.
Whatever your views on Brexit, it’s hard to argue that a Canadexit from the House of Windsor would wreak havoc on our constitutional system. As our 150th birthday approaches, and as Canadians ponder the arrival of King Charles III and Camilla, the conversation about cutting the ties that bind is just beginning.
Happy Canada Day in advance. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn