The Price of Dispensing With The Monarchy

Over on Musk's Xitter site, I spotted the following post basically arguing that we should dispense with the Monarchy in Canada. 

Let me start off by saying that I'm sympathetic to this position in general.  The Monarchy is at best an anachronism, and frankly the Royal Family has been more than a little annoying with its infighting the past few years. I grew up with Queen Elizabeth II as the monarch, and frankly I always admired her as a wonderful symbol of the state. Her children? Well ... somewhat less impressive. 

That said, Canada is already one step removed from the Monarchy. Let's face it, the role of the Monarchy in Canada is already delegated responsibility in the form of the Governor General's office.  It's not like King Charles flies to Canada to carry out duties as our titular head of state with any regularity, nor have any of his predecessors. Effectively, the Monarchy is a symbolic head of state in Canada already, with limited powers at best. 

If that's the case, why have it?  Lots of countries have successfully implemented other political structures that don't involve a monarch, so why shouldn't we? I'm not going to argue that we shouldn't, but I will argue that whatever we choose to do, we must consider it very carefully. 

There are actually some benefits to having a symbolic head of state with at best limited political powers. First, it creates a personage whose role is to carry out the "pomp and circumstance" aspects that come with being a state, and separates that role from the day to day grind of politics. 

In particular, Governors General like Adrienne Clarkson and Michaëlle Jeanne took it to heart that their role was to promote Canada on the world stage.  Both spent significant time and energy being very visible all around the world, to the irritation of some politicians who complained loudly about the costs (and largely because they were seen as upstaging the political leadership of the Prime Minister).  

However, the flip side to this is that it fundamentally frees Canadians to criticize their government and its leadership without running into the odd inconsistency of having such criticism turning into a "criticism of the nation".  We see this in the United States all the time.  Even a truly terrible president gets a very careful treatment in that country because he is the head of state as well as a political leader. 

I will point out that the Canadian legal system has similarly done an interesting job of separating itself from the Crown as a discrete entity.  In our legal system, the Crown exists as an anonymous representation of "the nation", and somehow that has done a great deal to moderate the content and enforcement of our laws.  Judges see themselves as interpreting the "will of the crown as expressed in law", and aren't so interested in personal reputation or getting re-elected. 

Now, let's consider a couple of possible scenarios where we might end up if we dispense with the Monarchy entirely. 

Scenario #1:  Traditional Republic

If we switch to a traditional republic with an elected president, we have several considerations.  First, what powers should that elected president have?  For the most part, I would expect that such a role would be expected to carry significant power, and we would end up rewriting our constitution to reflect that.  The powers might be as far reaching as those of the US president, or they might be somewhat more constrained.  

Make no mistake, any elected presidency is going to introduce partisanship and that's problematic.  (I've expounded on blowing up the party system for a long time). Allowing partisanship into our head of state has potentially serious consequences, and without a carefully considered set of powers and checks on those powers, I would be very cautious here.  We've already seen what happens when a President puts personal gain ahead of the interests of the state (*cough*Trump*cough*). 

Scenario #2:  Roll The Powers of the GG Into The Privy Council 

In Canada's system of government, Cabinet is the senior political executive arm of government.  It is the body which advises the Governor General directly, and the Prime Minister is its head.  

At first glance, it would seem fairly trivial to collapse the role of Head of State into that body.  That runs into a problem though.  As we saw with Harper, there's a strong temptation for a Prime Minister to assert a presidential role.  We already have problems with too much power in the hands of the Prime Minister, so I am very uncomfortable with this idea.  The potential for even greater abuses of power is huge.

Scenario #3: A Republic With A Ceremonial Governor General 

This is the "minimal change" model.  We decouple the Governor General from the Monarchy entirely, but otherwise leave the role as-is.  In terms of general familiarity, this is probably the least disruptive option, as it involves little fiddling with existing power structures. 

However, it's not ideal either.  The murky world of so-called "reserve powers" needs to be clarified considerably, as well as the limits of the GG's role as head of state.  A process would have to be created to formalize the appointment of the GG - possibly through the Parliament as a whole, rather than the Privy Council "advising the King". 

All three of these scenarios have trade-offs, and I won't advocate for any one of them at the moment.  I personally believe that our political systems need major change in order for the principles of Peace, Order, and Good Government to be renewed, so a minimalist approach may not be ideal given our current circumstances.  Similarly, the last thing we need is more populist politicking.