Mansoor’s Musings: Time for Canada to reconsider ties to monarchy

By Mansoor Ladha on April 28, 2023.

The countdown to King Charles III coronation scheduled for May 5 has begun. In readiness for the grand event, Consort Camilla will now be referred to as “Queen.”

While the celebrations are being organized, Canadians are again questioning whether it makes sense for the country’s head of state to be a hereditary monarch who lives in the United Kingdom. A time has come to reconsider Canada’s ties to the monarchy.

In a survey conducted by Leger, 81% of Canadians felt no personal attachment to the monarchy against 13% who did. Sixty per cent responded that they were not even going to watch TV coverage of the event.

Broken down provincially, Quebecers are most inclined to agree (79%), feeling much more strongly about it than those in Saskatchewan and Manitoba (54%), British Columbia (46%), Atlantic Canada (45%), Ontario (45%) and Alberta (42%). In total, 46% of those in English Canada support ending formal ties, compared to 79% of Quebecers.

In 2021, Barbados – once called “Little England” because of its British ties – was the first country to remove the British head of state and become a republic. Belize has signaled its interest in abolishing the monarchy and becoming a republic as well.

The issue was brought to the forefront by the prime minister of Jamaica who became the first one to explode a time bomb by saying that “the time has come” for the country to break its ties to the monarchy. In June 2022, Prime Minister Andrew Holness informed Prince William and Princess Kate during their Caribbean tour that Jamaica planned to become a republic by 2025.

Jamaica’s push to end its relationship is partly rooted in U.K.’s immigration decision in 2003, suspending visa-free access to the United Kingdom permanently, making Jamaicans as the only Commonwealth nationals requiring a visa to visit the land where their Head of State is based.

Other Caribbean nations have also left the monarchy to become republics, including Trinidad and Tobago, and the last country to remove the Queen as head of state was Mauritius in 1992. Former British colonies Belize, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Grenada, Antigua St. Lucia, and St. Kitts and Nevis, have indicated ending ties with the monarchy.

Australia, which replaced the Queen on five-dollar bank notes, plans to hold a vote to test Australians’ appetite for a republic. Assistant Minister for the Republic of Australia, Matt Thistlethwaite, told Al Jazeera that “Australia is now a mature and independent nation. We make our own decisions about how we govern ourselves; our economic relationship is predominantly linked to the Asia-Pacific region, our security relationship is based on the ANZUS alliance. We are not British anymore.”

New Zealand’s former Prime Minister Jacinda Arden said the country would not actively take any measures to become a republic in the short-term, but she believed the country eventually would.

Despite Canadians’ eagerness to eliminate the monarchy, experts believe that it will be a “complicated process,” requiring unanimous consent from the House of Commons, the Senate and each of the provincial legislatures to change the constitution – a process that could take years to complete. Because Canada’s Indigenous communities have their own treaties with the Crown, First Nations would also need to be consulted.

This is the question that will be facing 15 members of the Commonwealth, including Canada, as King Charles assumes office. Writer Scott White sums up the debate by saying the world admired the Queen, but it was time “to determine how the monarchy aligns with Canada’s current situation as an independent country and its aspirations for the future, especially if it wants to take itself seriously as a modern, 21st century nation focused on reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.”

Mansoor Ladha is a Calgary-based journalist and author of three nonfiction books: Off the Cuff, Memoirs of a Muhindi: Fleeing East Africa for the West and A Portrait in Pluralism: Aga Khan’s Shia Ismaili Muslims

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