Chris Selley: Trump has killed Canada’s anti-monarchy delusions

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Remember when the death of Queen Elizabeth II was going to prompt, at the very least, a serious rethinking of how the country works? Finally we might (as some pundits hoped) “grow up,” “move out of our parents’ basement,” and install a resident head of state. One chosen or elected through one of a variety of deeply flawed methods: a vote of Parliament and the legislatures, a general election, some kind of “citizens’ assembly,” or by just letting the prime minister choose. And the worst option, letting members of the Order of Canada choose, which is an actual real-life idea! Those are some of the options floating around out there in the ether, in roughly increasing order of terribleness.

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“This is the moment to have an honest debate on dissolving the monarchy, severing ties with Great Britain and taking the last momentous step on our journey to maturity,” author and journalist Andrew Cohen wrote in the Globe and Mail upon the Queen’s death. “We spared Queen Elizabeth the conversation. We cannot spare ourselves.”

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“The truth is the monarchy is totally irrelevant today, an utterly useless institution that’s nothing more than a non-stop soap opera — from Harry and Megan to Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein,” the inimitable Bob Hepburn wrote in the Toronto Star shortly before the coronation of King Charles III.

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“Do (Canadians) want to continue to be ‘ruled’ from England or do they want their head of state to be a Canadian?” retired University of Ottawa poli-sci professor John E. Trent asked in the Ottawa Citizen. Trent is described as “former Secretary General of the International Political Science Association” and “Senior Fellow at the Centre on Governance, University of Ottawa.” Nevertheless, we are not “ruled from England.” That is bonkers.

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There were plenty of very appropriate reality checks in the media too — maybe even a surprising number — about the constitutional ramifications of cracking open this rancid nut. The word “impossible” was even used, appropriately, on occasion. People aren’t interested; they don’t much care; if they can’t agree on what comes next — the rather key point that derailed Australia’s 1999 referendum on the monarchy — then it’s really a moot point.

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Anyway, there was no grand rethink. There was no rethink at all. And there was no reason to expect there would be. Justin Trudeau never seemed remotely anti-monarchy when he was prime minister. He spoke quite eloquently about how much he valued his time speaking with the Queen. But perhaps, even in 2022 when the Queen passed away, Trudeau had enough of that progressive façade left to provide hope to the deluded.

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There’s no such façade on Prime Minister Mark Carney, who famously invited King Charles to open Parliament in 2025, much to the chagrin of the anti-monarchists. (“The few monarchists left in this country might be applauding the decision to have King Charles III read the speech … but others of us think the new prime minister would have been better advised to have had Mike Myers in a hockey jersey take on that role,” pollster Allan Gregg argued. I assume it was partly in jest, but why joke about that?)

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Heck, in response to President Donald Trump’s talk of making us the 51st state, Carney is out there these days singing Sir John A. Macdonald’s praises. And under his watch, the Bank of Canada just released a rather handsome new $20 bill featuring Charles on one side and the Vimy Memorial on the other. That couldn’t really be a more explicit statement without writing it out in so many words: Canada’s history will always British, and it will always be French, and it will live forever in the soil of European battlefields.