The Constitutional Attic

Air out the tent. Ready the fifth-wheel. Pack the hammer and the cleaning supplies. It's time to get out of town. Go to the lake. Open the cottage. Plant the garden. The first long weekend of the summer begins May 21.

The May long weekend in Canada is known officially as Victoria Day or the Queen's Birthday, because May 24 was Queen Victoria's birthday, and Victoria was queen at Confederation in 1867. After the Victorian era ended, the Monday before May 25 continued as a statutory holiday celebrating our ties to the monarch. For Canada is still a constitutional monarchy; Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain (http://www.royal.gov.uk.today/) is also Queen of Canada.

Is it time to clean out the constitutional attic? Do we really need a king or queen? True, the monarchy is part of our history, a sentimental tie to Great Britain, the last imperial power to rule Canada. As a shared heritage, the monarchy also links us to other Commonwealth countries, former colonies like ourselves. We take pride in the fact that a monarch as Head of State ensures that the figurative leader remains symbolically above the messy fray of partisan politics. Our parliamentary democracy with constitutional monarchy marks another way we are different from the powerful republic to the South, for our political leaders and appointees can be replaced between elections without subverting the ballot box.

How did this system develop? The Fathers of Confederation chose to implement the British system of constitutional monarchy with parliamentary democracy which had evolved over centuries. Until the Middle Ages, power fluctuated between wealthy landowners vying to be king. The Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings convinced the people that one man or one family was king because God chose them. Thus, to oppose the king would be both treason and sacrilege. The role of the Crown became one of mediating between the people of the realm (land) and the Divine. Personal confrontations between monarchs and religious leaders, attacks on parliament, regicide, civil war, and a bloodless revolution finally established the balance of power between Crown and Parliament. Parliament made the laws and advised the monarch what the people wanted. The monarch governed subject to the constitution, and performed symbolic duties, modeling order in the realm, including that old Divine Order.

Is the Crown, as embodied in an inherited monarch from a foreign country, an outmoded idea for Canada? Worse, is the Crown in its present form a divisive concept? It could be argued that the Crown as symbolic Head of State denies or ignores the sovereignty of First Nations who were here before colonization. It could also be argued that the Queen of England as symbol of the Executive of Canada perpetuates the old-think of Quebec as a defeated nation. It is also possible that accepting the Queen of England as the Queen of Canada requires a convoluted intellectual gymnastics that interferes with the ability of recent immigrants to bond to a new Canadian homeland.

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