Reasons to love the Queen: No. 1, she's funky
By MICHAEL VALPY,   Globe and Mail

Saturday, February 2, 2002 

Seven statements on the Canadian monarchy as the Queen, on Wednesday, marks her 50th anniversary as head of state:

1. In a 21st-century, postmodern, multicultural, immigrant nation with floating global citizens and melted borders, having super-celebrity Elizabeth II as the head of state is funky. Charles as head of state will be funkier, more cool.

2. Constitutional monarchy is a gift to Canada's surly federalism.

3. Canada has been a monarchy of some kind or another for 500 years. The tradition may be eccentric, it may be irrational, but it belongs to us, rooted deep in time in a world of nanosecond disposable obsolescence.

4. The Canadian monarchy irritates the political, academic and journalistic elites. Good. If ever a country was overwhelmed by tedious, anal-retentive elites in need of irritation, it's this one.

5. The institution works. It works with a minimum of fuss, which is why we seldom think about it. It has been thoroughly Canadianized over the years, which is why -- have you thought of this? -- Conrad Black no longer lives here.

6. In a world ruled by widget-sellers and moneychangers, Canada has a head of state from the realms of fairy tales and imagination. Lucky us. (See Statement 5.)

7. Getting rid of the monarchy would be a constitutional nightmare.

As for history -- monarchy is our history:

An 1892 court ruling on a case called Liquidators of Maritime Bank v. Receiver General of New Brunswick (important constitutional cases in Canada either have names like that, or deal with the sale of alcohol) declared that, within the constitutional jurisdiction of each level of government, the Crown in the provinces is co-equal with the federal Crown.

Liquidators defined Canadian federalism. The Queen as constitutional sovereign of, say, Alberta is not subordinate to the Queen as constitutional sovereign of Canada or vice versa. No one level of government can ride roughshod over the other, although the provinces keep trying.

In fact, the bifurcated Crown is a total Canadian invention. In the wake of the rebellions of 1837, Lord Durham introduced the whole slam dunk of responsible government (actually thought up by a shy Toronto lawyer, Robert Baldwin). It contained the out-of-the-box idea that the same executive authority -- the monarch -- could be accountable to the Parliament and people of Britain at the same time as he or she was accountable to the legislatures and people of the then-colonies of Canada.

Presto. Unlike Americans, Canadians didn't have to revolt to be self-governing and -- very quickly, as it turned out -- independent.

Go back further in our history, and you find the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the monarch's personal promise to Canada's first nations to protect their lands against non-aboriginal occupation.

(All this stuff is so completely, deliciously Canadian. It's our fabric, our warp and woof. It should excite every social-studies schoolteacher in the land.)

In 1978, then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau proposed to amend the Constitution so that the federal Parliament alone could change the monarchy -- for example, by vesting all executive authority in the governor-general alone. The provincial premiers -- Quebec's René Lévesque in the front row -- squealed strenuously. No way did they want to give the federal government sole authority to fiddle around with the symbolism of the head of state.

Thus, the Constitution Act of 1982 says the monarchy can be amended only by unanimous resolutions of Parliament and all 10 provincial legislatures.

Think of what that means. The members of the Quebec National Assembly are not going to smoothly pass a resolution assenting to some sort of republic whose head of state, bearing all the trappings of Greater Canadianism, will be chosen by some body of people, the majority of whom will be non-Quebeckers. Why would they opt for that over the safe abstraction of monarchy? They're not dumb.

If any government is dumb enough to introduce a resolution getting rid of the monarchy, the country will be paralyzed by a debate over whether Canadians will feel measurably more Canadian at home and abroad once the Queen goes -- or once Charles doesn't arrive -- which will be an absolute waste of time, because they won't.

So, after 50 years of Elizabeth and 500 of the monarchy, Canadians can continue to live with the splendid notion that the personification of their freedoms and rights -- the sovereign -- is above politics, and that the powers of government exercised by elected politicians belong to the sovereign and are only on loan to them.

It is in the Queen's name that laws are passed, courts render justice and the police arrest.

It is the Queen, -- not the state, not any government, not even the constitution -- to whom new Canadians swear an oath of allegiance.

It is the Queen, who gets 21-gun salutes. Not the prime minister.

It is the very visible Queen, who holds the constitutional fire extinguisher in case politicians get evil with Canadians' democracy.

Elizabeth rules OK.

mvalpy@globeandmail.ca