Obviously monarchy is an outdated concept, but this is a strange hill to die on. The King, or The Crown, is the merely the symbol of Canada’s sovereignty. That’s it. It’s no different than Americans pledging allegiance to the flag. They are not literally pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth anymore than we are literally pledging allegiance to Charles the man. It is just symbology. Neither Charles nor the GG has any real power in Canada and if they ever tried to use their symbolic powers independently of our elected government, it would create an instant Constitutional crisis.
The part I find strange is that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with municipal affairs. I, for one, want my elected municipal officials to do municipal things, like fix roads and ensure the water treatment plant is working. I don’t particularly want them spending their time fighting an abstract battle about our Constitutional framework. Do the majority of Canadians want to revisit our Constitution and eliminate the Crown so that we are no longer a constitutional monarchy? I’m not saying that is a bad idea in principle, but I lived through the constitutional crises of 1980s and the Quebec separatism of the 1990s and it is rife with unnecessary conflict. It could literally break up the country, and almost did. I do not think that we would be better off as a republic, purely from a practical perspective. The Westminster form of government, for all of its anachronistic monarchical symbols, works well in practice.
Obviously monarchy is an outdated concept, but this is a strange hill to die on. The King, or The Crown, is the merely the symbol of Canada’s sovereignty. That’s it. It’s no different than Americans pledging allegiance to the flag. They are not literally pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth anymore than we are literally pledging allegiance to Charles the man. It is just symbology. Neither Charles nor the GG has any real power in Canada and if they ever tried to use their symbolic powers independently of our elected government, it would create an instant Constitutional crisis.
Sounds like not such a strange hill tbh
The part I find strange is that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with municipal affairs. I, for one, want my elected municipal officials to do municipal things, like fix roads and ensure the water treatment plant is working. I don’t particularly want them spending their time fighting an abstract battle about our Constitutional framework. Do the majority of Canadians want to revisit our Constitution and eliminate the Crown so that we are no longer a constitutional monarchy? I’m not saying that is a bad idea in principle, but I lived through the constitutional crises of 1980s and the Quebec separatism of the 1990s and it is rife with unnecessary conflict. It could literally break up the country, and almost did. I do not think that we would be better off as a republic, purely from a practical perspective. The Westminster form of government, for all of its anachronistic monarchical symbols, works well in practice.
couldn’t have said it any better myself