we the people: republicanism and democracy
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
— James Madison, 1778.
“Common sense, therefore, is as much outraged by the idea of royalty as common right is. Still, it is more than an absurdity; it is a plague, because a nation that prostrates itself in the presences of absurdity is degraded.”
— Thomas Paine, 1776.
When Harry Truman was a boy, his hero was the ancient Roman aristocrat Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. According to legend, Cincinnatus returned to his farm after his service as consul ended in 460 BCE, but came out of retirement in 458 BCE when the Roman republic was threatened with invasion. The Roman leaders had approached him with the request that he become “dictator.” In so doing, they gave him unbridled power to command Rome’s military forces so as to vanquish her enemies. As supreme leader, Cincinnatus led the Roman army against its foes, defeating them in a single day. Having defended Rome and restored order to its shaken government, Cincinnatus voluntarily relinquished his powers as dictator, having served in this role for less than two weeks. Once again he retired to his life as a gentleman farmer.
Truman always admired the mythic virtue of Cincinnatus as the heroic citizen, selflessly serving the Roman government and her people, saving the Roman republic from certain defeat, and then relinquishing vast powers in order to return to being a common citizen. “Who knows,” a young Harry Truman, then a farmer in pre–First World War Missouri, wrote to his sweetheart, Bess Wallace, “maybe I’ll be like Cincinnatus and be elected constable someday.”[1]
Instead, Truman became the thirty-third president of the United States in 1945. Eight years later, on January 15, 1953, Truman was called upon to give his farewell presidential address to the nation. He concluded his speech with the following words: “Next Tuesday, General Eisenhower will be inaugurated as President of the United States. A short time after the new President takes office, I will be on the train going back home to Independence, Missouri. I will once again be a plain, private citizen of this great Republic. That is as it should be.”[2] Cincinnatus continued to make an impression.
Just as monarchism has an ancient pedigree, so too does republicanism. Monarchism is amongst the oldest forms of government, but republicanism has arisen to become the prime alternative to the rule of kings and queens. Republicanism in world history has scored major victories over certain monarchies. Two of its greatest triumphs are rooted in bloodshed — the American and French revolutions. The former witnessed the termination of British Crown authority in the American Thirteen Colonies and the founding of the American republic. The latter came close on its heels. Beginning in 1789, the French Revolution shook that country to the core, resulting in the establishment of the French republic, the promulgation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789 and the execution of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette in 1793.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, republicanism trumped monarchism in the constitutional development of Britain and Canada. Herein lies a deep irony that even ardent monarchists who know their history must admit. According to Michael Valpy, a staunch defender of the monarchy, Canada is very much a “crowned republic.”[3] Although we are officially a monarchy, with Elizabeth II standing as our hereditary head of state, the way the country is actually run, the way government really works, reveals a constitutional system of government far more attuned to the principles of republicanism than monarchism. And even more ironic for monarchists, the accommodation of monarchical form to republican substance has been the key to preserving the monarchy in this country. Modern monarchists need republicanism. But do modern republicans need or want monarchism? If not, is monarchy doomed?
The American revolutionary Thomas Paine damned monarchy in 1776:
But it is not so much the absurdity as the evil of hereditary succession which concerns mankind. Did it ensure a race of good and wise men, it would have the seal of divine authority; but as it opens a door to the foolish, the wicked and the improper, it has in it the nature of oppression. Men who look upon themselves born to reign and others to obey soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large that they have little opportunity of knowing its true interests and, when they succeed to the government, are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.[4]
Republican thought was well known to Paine and his ideological allies such as Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. Republicanism had its roots in the ancient world, where it came to stand as a form of government opposed to monarchism. Whereas a monarchy is a top-down system of government based on the rule of a hereditary king or queen, with all power and authority — state sovereignty — vested in the hands of the monarch, a republic has as its head of state a ruler selected for a specified and limited period of time by the citizens of the state, with the ruler accountable to those citizens for the performance of his or her duties. In its classical meaning, republicanism is rooted to the idea that power should flow from the bottom up, from the citizens to their ruler and select lawmakers. But there is much more to republicanism than just this power flow direction. In a monarchy, the king or queen is sovereign, with everyone “beneath” him or her being “subjects” of the monarch, obliged to be obediently loyal to his or her “majesty.” In a republic, sovereignty resides not in any transient ruler or group of legislators, and certainly never in a king or queen. Instead, it dwells in the people. In a republic the citizens — the people — rule the state, with all public sector power and authority flowing from them.[5]
Republican and democratic values, the Athenian leader Pericles proclaimed in the fifth century BCE, were among the ideas and realities that made ancient Athens great:
It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life.[6]
So deeply held were these ideals of citizenship in Greece that the word idiot has its roots in ancient Greek, referring to anyone who is ill-informed about political life and thus uninterested in public affairs. The overarching republican ideal, as Abraham Lincoln so famously expressed in his Gettysburg Address[7] , is “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” with active and spirited public participation in government vital to the well-being of republican and democratic society.
Lincoln’s phraseology is also indicative of a vital evolution in republican thought from the ancient world to the modern. Classical republicanism was not necessarily democratic, as citizens in ancient republics could only comprise a very small fraction of the total population. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, and related to the experience and wisdom gained during and after the American and French revolutions, a growing awareness developed in modern republican thought recognizing that republicanism had to entail not only the equality of citizens and their right to participate in government, but also the right of all members of society to be considered citizens.
The United States of America, despite its many problems respecting racial discrimination and social inequality, is nevertheless one of the world’s most well-known republics. Americans have not been ruled by a monarch since their revolution. In true republican form, the American constitution explicitly delineates the roles, responsibilities, and powers to be exercised by the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. This constitution, beginning with its famous first three words, “We the People,” proclaims that sovereignty in the United States rests with the citizens of the nation. It specifies that the purpose of government is “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”[8]
Knowledge of the American political system is helpful in informing the Canadian debate on the future of the monarchy because the American republican model of government is the most familiar foreign political system to the majority of Canadians. However, it is not the only republican model. In addition to the presidential-congressional form of republican government found in the United States, parliamentary republics prevail in Germany, Italy, Austria, Israel, and India, to name a few. In these states, parliaments and first ministers exist just as they do in Canada, with the first ministers being constitutionally obligated to gain and maintain the legislative confidence of the parliament in order to sustain government. What makes these countries republics is that their head of state is not a monarch. Rather, she or he is commonly known as a president and — most importantly — is directly elected by the people. This head of state is duty-bound to represent the nation in all ceremonial functions, promote respect for the nation’s heritage and culture, and encourage good citizenship, charity, and civic-mindedness. If and when elections result in a hung parliament and a minority government, the president may be called upon to break legislative log-jams, order new elections, or transfer prime ministerial power from one party leader to another.
In the historic contest between monarchism and republicanism, the twentieth century favoured the republican side. In 1900, the majority of the world’s peoples were ruled by monarchs. Unlike British monarchs, who were circumscribed by the principles and practices of responsible government, most of these royal rulers were sovereign in the word’s strictest sense, unfettered by democratic constitutional obligations. At the advent of the twentieth century, the Russian Tsar, the German Kaiser, the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, and the Turkish Sultan exerted real power over their peoples. By 1922, all these monarchies had been smashed in the cataclysm of the First World War, and smashed again in its aftermath of revolutions and political turmoil. Following the end of the Second World War and the slow but inevitable demise of the European Empires, most of the countries of Africa and Asia emerged onto the world stage as republics, with the majority of the former British African and Asian colonies opting for republican forms of government while remaining part of the Commonwealth. Only sixteen of the Commonwealth’s fifty-three members recognize the sovereignty of the Queen and her heirs, and the vast majority of the member states of the United Nations are republics. In the debate between monarchism and republicanism, the history of the twentieth century suggests that the forces of modernity, social change, and progressive reform are with republicanism. The defenders of monarchy seem placed in the position of striving to protect an institution that appears to be not only a relic of a distant and unpopular past but also an obstacle to the forces of political and social modernization. Is monarchy fated to oblivion?
Republicanism is nothing new to Canada. It’s not even new to the United Kingdom. The English Civil War was rooted in the idea that Parliament and not the king was supreme in England, and the ten years of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate did constitute a form of republican rule. This decade marked England’s only period of republicanism, but when the monarchy was resuscitated, it was never to be the same. Charles II and all the English and British monarchs who followed him had to accommodate themselves to a political system and a people that increasingly valued parliamentary supremacy and the gradual emergence of responsible, democratic government. The monarch would reign but not rule.
As the British constitution evolved over these centuries, so too did those of her British North American colonies. By the twentieth century in Canada, the monarchy found itself increasingly subject to governmental actors suspicious of its British roots and eager to see its role in Canadian life diminished, perhaps even to the point of extinction. In the 1920s, the Liberal government of Mackenzie King pushed for greater Canadian autonomy within the British Empire. This decade saw the establishment of the Canadian Department of External Affairs, with Canada becoming self-reliant in administering its own evolving foreign policy agenda. These years were also spectator to the growing estrangement between Mackenzie King and the office of the governor general (highlighted by the King–Byng Thing of 1926). Prime Minister Mackenzie King would rarely meet with his governors general.[9]
Following the Second World War, successive Canadian federal governments made a concerted effort to Canadianize important features of public life. Beginning in 1947, the Canadian Citizenship Act, 1946 decreed that Canadians were not British subjects domiciled in Canada but rather citizens of Canada. This act also established Canadian citizenship as a distinct legal category separate from any previous British legal status, with an autonomous Canadian pathway for immigrants to become Canadian citizens.[10] Later that year, the Letters Patent Act, 1947 delegated to the governor general the vast majority of the sovereign’s authority respecting Canada. The 1952 appointment of Vincent Massey, the first Canadian to serve as governor general, marked the end of the era of British governors and the birth of a truly Canadian Rideau Hall. That same year saw another milestone: Elizabeth II was proclaimed Queen of Canada upon the death of her father, George VI. This proclamation marked the first time a British monarch had ever been granted this title, one held separate and distinct from that of Queen of the United Kingdom.
Most monarchists in Canada at the time applauded these initiatives, hailing them as illustrative of Canadian independence under the Crown. Yet, by the 1960s, many loyalists to the Crown were coming to see the institution of the monarchy in Canada as being under attack, with the battle led by federal Liberal governments. “Since the 1960s,” the noted monarchist John Fraser has accused, “successive administrations of the Canadian government had surreptitiously or sometimes even openly encouraged people to forget or snort at the Royal Family. Quietly, progressively, and often stealthily, the traditional symbols of the Queen’s Canadian realm vanished.”[11]
While many wouldn’t grieve the loss, Fraser’s observations are not unfounded. The Royal Mail had been transformed into Canada Post by the mid-1960s, a new national flag replaced the more traditionally British Red Ensign in 1965, and the maple leaf logo increasingly replaced the royal coat of arms on government buildings and documents. In 1968, the unification of the Canadian Forces also resulted in the abolition of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force. In that same decade, Prime Minister Lester Pearson privately mused to colleagues that were he ever to win a majority government, he would move to phase out the monarchy in Canada.[12] He found some people receptive to his call.
During the early years of the Pierre Trudeau government, Mitchell Sharp, secretary of state for External Affairs, was the strongest proponent around the cabinet table of abolishing the monarchy, or, short of this, of downplaying the Crown in Canada.[13] It was Sharp who urged the government to enhance the governor general’s role in dealing with ambassadorial etiquette. Prior to this time, one of the functions retained by the sovereign, even after the passage of the Letters Patent Act, 1947, was the power to appoint ambassadors. The monarch officially recognized all foreign ambassadors appointed to Canada and personally signed all the Letters of Credence appointing Canadian ambassadors to foreign countries. By 1977, both of these ceremonial functions had been transferred to the governor general.[14]
The 1970s also saw the beginning of a decades-long process of what monarchists such as John Fraser and D. Michael Jackson have termed the “de-monarchization” of Canada. To loyalists, it smacked of a full-scale deposition. Portraits of the Queen were removed from government offices, Canadian embassies, and even Rideau Hall itself. “God Save the Queen” was rarely heard as a royal anthem in Canada. The granting of Canadian honours (medals, awards, membership in the Order of Canada) increasingly came to be the sole preserve of the governor general. By 1973, the only Canadian honour left to the Queen to confer was the Royal Victorian Order. Royal tours to Canada became fewer. The Trudeau government showed, in Jackson’s words, “a distinct lack of enthusiasm” for the monarchy, symbolized by Trudeau’s famous pirouette behind the Queen’s back in Buckingham Palace in 1977. Even the governors general appointed upon the advice of Prime Minister Trudeau displayed a desire to raise their own profile and lower that of the Queen in Canada. Jules Léger supported the idea of the governor general being recognized, in law, as the official Canadian head of state; Jeanne Sauvé, always cool on the monarchy, publicly referred to herself more than once as “Canada’s head of state.”[15] On none of these occasions did the prime minister ever correct her.
In fact, it would seem many elected leaders were very much behind her. In 1978, the Trudeau government sought a constitutional amendment to the role of the monarchy in Canada, with the aim being to further “Canadianize” the office of the governor general while diminishing the status and function of the Queen. Bill C-60 stipulated that the governor general was to be styled “the First Canadian,” the head of state of Canada in lieu of the Queen — although she or he would continue to be officially appointed by the Queen acting upon the advice of the prime minister. (The bill further proposed that provincial premiers would have no role in selecting this new Canadian head of state.) While the monarch would be known as “the sovereign head of Canada,” it was the governor general — not the Queen — who would be listed as one of the three component parts of Parliament, along with the Senate and the House of Commons. All laws passed in Parliament, moreover, would be given royal assent in the name of the governor general, not the sovereign. In elevating the position of the governor general as head of state, the bill provided that “the executive government of and over Canada shall be vested in the Governor-General of Canada, on behalf and in the name of the Queen.”[16]
Bill C-60 also sought to codify the powers of the governor general, especially the reserve powers, thereby transforming these elements of Crown authority from prerogative to statutory law controlled by Parliament. In defining the authority of the governor general, the bill further stated that nothing in it should be construed as “precluding the Queen … from exercising while in Canada any of the powers, authorities or functions of the Governor-General under this Act.” Were this bill to have become law, the governor general would have become superior to the sovereign, with the latter deriving any powers he or she might exercise in Canada from the former;[17] the governor general, and not the Queen, would have been the fount of all sovereign power and authority in the Canadian state.
But this bill did not become law. It met with vociferous criticism from monarchists who were offended at its downgrading of the status and role of the Queen. Eugene Forsey referred to C-60 as “crypto-republicanism” and “an elaborate and ill-drawn measure” illustrating “an ignorance of responsible government that passes all understanding.”[18] The premiers were also unanimously opposed to the bill, objecting to it on grounds of process. They stressed that any changes to the institution of the monarchy in Canada would require the unanimous consent of the provinces. As it was presented to them, Bill C-60 was purely a piece of federal legislation only requiring the approval of the federal Parliament. Every premier in the nation, including Quebec’s Parti Québécois premier René Lévesque, viewed such federal unilateralism as unconstitutional. They opposed the idea that the appointment of a reconfigured governor general should be the preserve of the prime minister. They demanded a provincial role in the appointment process.
Faced with a wall of opposition, Trudeau withdrew his support for the bill. When he and the premiers returned to the issue of constitutional reform in 1980–81, they had far greater matters to deal with, such as the patriation of the constitution from the United Kingdom, a possible Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a new constitutional amending formula, and the reworking of the federal-provincial powers. These constitutional negotiations led to the Constitution Act, 1982, in which the institution of the monarchy merely played a minor role. To this day, Bill C-60 is the closest Canada has ever come to reforming the status and role of the monarchy in Canada.
The Constitution Act, 1982 is most famous to Canadians for giving the country its Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter recognizes the equality of all Canadians while affirming fundamental rights and freedoms necessary to any democratic state. The Charter has become a hallmark of Canadian democracy, enshrining into law the basic rights and freedoms that all Canadian citizens share equally. The Charter is very much a document rooted in the republican values of citizenship and equality, responsible government, and democratic rule by the people. Consequently, the Charter provides republicans with ammunition for challenging the continued existence of the monarchy in Canada on constitutional grounds.
Despite the constitutional failure in 1978 to reform the nature of the monarchy, the broad move to Canadianize the Crown persisted into the 1980s and 1990s. The Chrétien Liberal government harboured strong republican advocates. Deputy Prime Minister John Manley was a staunch republican who publicly endorsed the abolition of the monarchy. In 2001, Manley stated that the monarchy was “really an institution that’s a bit out of date for Canada to continue with.” On October 5, 2002, at the beginning of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee visit to Canada, Manley spoke to the media, saying “It’s not necessary to continue with the monarchy…. I have always said that, first, I think Queen Elizabeth is doing a good job … [but] personally I would prefer if we could have a uniquely Canadian institution.… It could be as simple as the continuation of the governor general as the head of state of Canada.”[19] John Fraser summed up Manley’s argument as follows: “Logic collapsed: Queen Elizabeth has done a great job for Canada; therefore let’s make sure there is no monarchy when she dies.”[20]
The governors general appointed upon the advice of Jean Chrétien (Roméo LeBlanc and Adrienne Clarkson) and by Paul Martin (Michaëlle Jean) were all criticized by monarchists as downplaying the role of the Queen and the heritage of the Crown. During these years, formal occasions at Rideau Hall increasingly repudiated a British connection. Portraits of members of the royal family were removed. The vice-regal salute (part “God Save the Queen,” part “O Canada”) was discontinued. In 2002, allegedly to minimize the focus on the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, Rideau Hall placed its emphasis on the fiftieth anniversary of the Canadian governors general. In 2004, at the Juno Beach commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, critics perceived Governor General Clarkson as upstaging the Queen when she referred to herself as Canada’s head of state, while Rideau Hall officials, who obviously knew better, referred to Elizabeth II as the “Queen of England.”[21] In 2007 a National Post story on interior redesign in Rideau Hall reported that the residence of the governor general, on Madame Jean’s instructions, was “highlighting paintings that draw less and less attention to the office’s British traditions.” Explaining the move of the sole remaining portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip, formerly hung in grand public view, to the back of the ballroom, a vice-regal administrator said, “We really want to create a Canadian interior.” Historical paintings depicting members of the royal family and British officials “had become a bit of an anachronism here” because they “did not fit in with the current role of the Governor-General.” A number of these old and no longer valued portraits of the royal family had been given to the Senate, while others found wall space in Rideau Hall “near the lower-level staff entrance, cloakroom and public toilets.”[22] In a 2009 speech in Paris, Madame Jean again referred to herself as Canada’s head of state. This time, however, the governor general was corrected. A brief statement issued by the press secretary of Stephen Harper’s Prime Minister’s Office read, in part: “Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada and Head of State. The Governor General represents the Crown in Canada.”[23]
The half century from 1960 to 2010 was a tough time for the monarchy and monarchists in Canada. The 1960s witnessed the end of an age of deference in Canadian society and politics. Citizens, not subjects, increasingly questioned the nature of authority, the role and purpose of governing institutions, the legitimacy of those wielding both private and public power, and the quality of their leadership. The constitutional debates of the 1970s and 1980s also emphasized the renewal of political institutions, including the constitution itself, while highlighting a growing focus on the ideals of individual rights and freedoms, political and social equality, and the improvement of Canadian democracy. Add to this dynamics such as the Quiet Revolution in Quebec and the rise of Québécois nationalism, Canada’s growing multiculturalism due to steady immigration from all parts of the globe, and the promotion of a distinct Canadian identity by successive federal governments. You then have the development of a social environment increasingly challenging, if not outright hostile, to the existence of an institution such as the monarchy.
It does not help the monarchy and its Canadian defenders, moreover, that the royal family is quintessentially aristocratic and English, and by necessity Anglican, and based in the United Kingdom, making only itinerant visits to Canada. Factor in the reality that public school systems across this country have failed for decades to properly educate Canadian students in the very basics of Canadian history and the nature and working of the Canadian political system, including the role of the Crown in this system, such that most Canadians now suffer from “civic illiteracy.”[24] Most Canadian students have trouble identifying our first prime minister, explaining the function of Parliament, or knowing how and why public policies get made, let alone understanding the role of the Queen or the governor general in the Canadian constitution.
These social dynamics combined have generated undercurrents of questions, scepticism, hostility, ignorance, and apathy, which have been corrosive to the reputation and standing of the monarchy in Canada. As John Fraser noted, by the first decade of this new century, “[t]he whole notion of the Crown seemed not so much in jeopardy as in steady, inexorable decline, and for the life of me I couldn’t see how the slide could be stopped.”[25] In a similar vein, the chief executive officer of the Monarchist League of Canada stated in 2010 that “indifference,” and not republicanism, was the single greatest peril facing the future of the monarchy in Canada.[26] As historian Michael Bliss, a committed republican, argued, “It [the monarchy] doesn’t mean anything to most young Canadians. It will die a natural death at the same time as the dwindling band of oldsters who still support it die off too.”[27] So is the monarchy dying in Canada? Is it becoming increasingly irrelevant to most Canadians? Do most Canadians actually wish to see it abolished?
Extensive surveys over the past quarter century have taken stock of Canadian public opinion with respect to the monarchy. They have also scrutinized whether Canadians support its abolition in favour of a republican form of government. This information reveals a number of narratives with good and bad news for both republicans and monarchists, although monarchists perhaps have the most to be worried about. If the monarchy is a fundamental part of the Canadian constitution, and if the Queen, as head of state, is supposed to be a symbol of unity, duty, and representation of all that is best about Canada, then the modern monarchy stands on a shaky foundation of public support.
In the two decades immediately after the Second World War, the limited public opinion polling on Canadian attitudes to the monarchy revealed strong majority support for the institution within Canada, with the notable exception of the province of Quebec. Through the 1970s and 1980s, however, as socio-demographic changes flowed through the country, survey data registered increasing strains of republican sentiment. While two-thirds of Canadians, when asked, tended to express support for the monarchy in Canada, one-third favoured the country becoming a republic.[28] By the 1990s, the growth in republican sentiment became ever more noticeable and threatening to monarchists. An Angus-Reid/Southam News poll in January 1993 asked respondents to reflect on Canada’s preservation or abolishment of “its formal constitutional connection with the monarchy.” Results showed that 51 percent favoured abolition, 42 percent sought preservation, and 7 percent were unsure.[29] Three years later, the same question resulted in 47 percent favouring abolition, 44 percent opting for preservation, and 9 percent unsure. In December 1997, close on the heels of Princess Diana’s death (the former wife of Prince Charles), a Pollara survey revealed that 41 percent of Canadians supported the abolition of the monarchy following the death of Elizabeth II, with only 18 percent opposing such a move. A further 39 percent of respondents indicated that they didn’t care one way or the other. This poll illustrates the lowest level of support for the monarchy ever reported in Canada. As the Ottawa Citizen noted on December 24, 1997: “For many people, any ember of love for the monarchy died with Diana, Princess of Wales, in that midnight tunnel in Paris. Only 18 percent would preserve the throne, 41 percent would abolish outright. The rest care not a candle, in the wind or otherwise.”[30]
As the new millennium unfolded, opinion surveys continued to reveal divided Canadian sentiments on the monarchy, but with supporters of republican options tending to outweigh their monarchist opponents. In February 2002, an Ipsos-Reid poll found a somewhat confused Canadian population. It reported that 79 percent of respondents supported “the constitutional monarchy as Canada’s form of government,” with an additional 62 percent of those surveyed believing that the monarchy helps to define Canadian identity. Despite these findings, 48 percent of respondents also indicated that “the constitutional monarchy is outmoded and [they] would prefer a republican system of government with an elected head of state,” and 65 percent believed that the members of the royal family were “simply celebrities who should not have any formal role in Canada.”[31]
By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, pollsters were beginning to look ahead to the inevitable end of Elizabeth II’s reign with more pointed questions. In March 2008, an Angus-Reid poll asked Canadians whether they supported Canada ending “its formal ties to the British monarchy.” A total of 55 percent of respondents expressed support for this idea, with 34 percent opposed and 11 percent undecided. But then the question was asked, “In the future, Prince Charles may become King of the United Kingdom and Canada. If Prince Charles does become King, would you then support or oppose Canada ending its formal ties to the British monarchy?” In response to this question, support for abolition of the monarchy in Canada increased to 58 percent, while opposition to the idea dropped to 30 percent, with 12 percent unsure.[32] A similar survey by The Strategic Council on July 1, 2009, found that 65 percent of respondents were in favour of ending all ties to the British monarchy once Elizabeth II’s reign comes to an end, with 35 percent supporting Charles as a future king. “At 65 percent,” noted Citizens for a Canadian Republic, “this is the highest level of support for ending the monarchy in Canadian history. Canadians, as do republicans elsewhere in the Commonwealth, seem relatively content with letting the Queen continue until the end of her reign — but after that, all bets are off. Prince Charles as a successor to the Queen is not a popular concept at all.”[33]
After a decade of generally grim polling data showing most Canadians to be critical of, or even hostile to, the monarchy, things began to look noticeably better for monarchists beginning in 2011. In June of that year, and simultaneous with the royal marriage of Prince William to Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, an Angus-Reid survey found that 58 percent of survey participants now supported Canada remaining a monarchy, while those in favour of its abolition had fallen to 33 percent. A Harris-Decima survey in May 2012 once again found surprisingly strong support for the monarchy in Canada. This poll indicated that 51 percent of Canadians wished to maintain constitutional monarchy as Canada’s system of government, thereby keeping the Queen as head of state. English Canadians expressed increasing levels of support for the retention of the monarchy, while opposition to this idea was strongest in Quebec, where just 24 percent of respondents said that the monarchy was important to Canada.[34] In July 2013, a Forum Poll again found resurgent strength for the monarchist position in Canada, this time associated with the birth of Prince George, the son of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge. In this survey, 48 percent of those polled supported maintaining the institution of the monarchy in Canada, with 37 percent in favour of its abolition and 15 percent undecided.[35]
Better news for Charles came in an Angus-Reid poll released on the occasion of the Queen’s ninetieth birthday on April 18, 2016. This sampling of public opinion found that 64 percent of Canadians surveyed continued to support Elizabeth II as monarch, while only 47 percent wished to see Charles as a successor king. The word most commonly associated with Charles in the minds of respondents was “boring.” But at 47 percent acceptance for his future kingship, this number represents the highest level of support recorded for Charles’s succession over the past three decades. While most Canadians surveyed still say they oppose his eventual succession, almost half of Canadians may be warming to him. Is the glass half full or half empty? Similar divisions remained when Canadians were asked if the country “should continue as a monarchy for generations to come.” A total of 42 percent of respondents were in favour of this proposition, while 38 percent were opposed, with 20 percent undecided. In seeking to put the best republican spin on these findings, Tom Freda, director of Citizens for a Canadian Republic, asserted that the poll results showed that it’s time for a parliamentary debate on monarchy abolition in Canada. Given the Queen’s age, he said, it is better to have this debate now rather than waiting to discuss the future of the Crown with the Queen on her death-bed.[36]
The polling data on Canadian attitudes toward the monarchy over the past thirty years reveals deep divisions respecting the monarchy in this country. While the survey data ebbs and flows, indicative of how current events in the “celebrity narrative” of the royal family — the death of Princess Diana, the marriage of William and Kate, the birth of royal children, the Queen’s ninetieth birthday — can and will influence survey results, the deeper storyline here is troubling for monarchists. Over these decades, support for maintaining the monarchy in Canada with the Queen and her heirs as the head of state has rarely been a majority attitude among Canadians. For most of those thirty years, this position attracted the commitment of only about a third of Canadians. Republican sentiments over this time period have tended to better represent the viewpoints of most Canadians respecting the monarchy. Most Canadians, when asked, express the idea that they wish to see the monarchy in Canada terminated at the end of Elizabeth II’s reign, with a Canadian becoming head of state, preferably through some form of election to the position of governor general.
Monarchists will find comfort in the turnaround in polling data since the marriage of Prince William to Catherine Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, in 2011, but even here, this resurgence in support is problematic. How deep and long-lasting will it be? Is it strong enough to reverse a republican trend that has been growing for the past half century? Even if it’s true that roughly half of Canadians now support the maintenance of the monarchy and the role of Charles as king, why only half? For an institution that proclaims to represent all Canadians to one another and the world, and aims to make all Canadians feel proud of their country, heritage, constitutional order, and social culture, why do half of Canadians not feel this love? As many republicans argue, if the monarchy were truly so valuable to Canada and Canadians, the vast majority of Canadians would clearly recognize this value and give the monarchy their heartfelt support. But they do not. The monarchy has not fervently lived in the hearts of most Canadians for at least half a century, and it has never been part of the psyche of French Canadians. It has also failed to engage younger Canadians. So even at 50 percent support, monarchists still have big questions to answer. And none is perhaps as big as whether Canadians want to see Prince Charles succeed his mother as king.
Even most republicans are prepared to see Elizabeth II live out the rest of her reign in constitutional peace. But will we, at some point in a future that is drawing increasingly close, truly wish to see King Charles III proclaimed as our new sovereign? Even though Canadian support for the preservation of the monarchy in the second decade of the twenty-first century has rebounded in favour of the monarchist position, this shift in public opinion cannot and will not stop the broader debate about the future of the monarchy that has been part of Canadian politics for over three decades. The future of the Crown in Canada remains precarious, and the debate on the status of the monarchy in this country continues.