Sky News contributor Sophie Elsworth says it has been reported Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is forcing his very few staff to address him still as “sir,” despit...
I see what you mean about the optics of the governor general being Canadian, but legally they’re still bound to do what the monarch says, and the monarch is not bound to do what parliament says! Like, for example, if the UK wanted to drag us into a war, some Canadians might be keen…even if it’s a minority, if the governor general were one of them, we’d either be going or have a conditional crisis on our hands.
You’re right, of course…what’s going on in the US does show the flimsiness of “western liberal democracies” in the face of fascist tactics. When push comes to shove constitutions and laws are words on paper (and Canada relies on many norms that are not even that!) and they only matter if everyone with power agrees they matter.
On paper, the US has much more robust rights in respect of their government than Canada does, but to your point, that has obviously not lead to a more society with less government overreach!
So I basically agree, I think it’s not right to say it’s all completely meaningless though. Like…there may well be things that the king could do to abuse his power for which we wouldn’t have the will to remove the king from power. I guess that’s my point; let’s do it on principal first. I don’t see any reason to leave the letter of the law in a shitty place (and it doesn’t seem you disagree that having a king is shitty) just because outright fascists would ignore it if they came to power. Little fascists may be stopped, non-fascists may find their path smoother, etc.
That said, if you’re thinking the accelerationist approach of “let adversity harden the will of the people, and we’ll build a new world in the ashes of the old” then hey, more power to ya. Sign me up for the mailing list =P
If the King overstepped, there would just be no more King.
If the King did anything in your hypotheicals, we’d just say “the King is not of sound mind” and either the King would have to abdicate, or we’d elminate the monarchy. No rational King wants to be the one to end the monarchy, and since any action by the King would result in the end of the monarchy, any action by the King would therefore is automatically considered the actions of someone not of sound mind, and therefore should be ignored. If the King didn’t abdicate due to no longer being of sound mind, we’d end the monarchy.
The population having a strong will doesn’t mean we’re going to break out a guillotine or whatever. It just means being willing to vote, protest, call your MP, etc. It means actually caring about the institution of democracy. If it came down to the King saying one thing, and the parliament saying the opposite, which would the people consider legitimate? Maybe a lawyer could argue that the King’s orders are technically legitimate, but if people care about democracy, they can just ignore the legalisms. That’s how it goes in a constitutional crisis.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it’s not lawyers that protect us from tyrants. It’s just having an educated population that won’t accept tyranny. Americans, are accepting of tyranny, so they’re descending into tyranny. There’s nothing lawyers can do to stop it, because the lawyers on the Supreme court, the lawyers in the DOJ, and the laywers in the GOP are going along with it. The law doesn’t prevent tyranny it’s people not willing to go along with tyranny that prevents it.
We have a King and we won’t go along with the King’s commands unless they come from parliament. We’re aware of the King we know who he is, we know what to watch for. Americans didn’t have a King, but they made their President into a Kings. Most of them don’t even know it happened because they didn’t know what to look out for. They know the President has power, but don’t know which powers he should and shouldn’t have.
We have a King and we know what power he should have: none.
You say “if the king oversteps” and my point about law and norms and all that is that they shape perception about whether a particular thing is overstepping. Lawyers don’t usually protect us from tyranny, lawyers usually enforce tyranny; it’s just the kind of tyranny that is commonly accepted. And that acceptance matters…because people think it does, sure.
I think you have a very idealistic understanding of what we call democracy these days…if a 60/40 split happened like I talked about earlier came up, you think there would be mass mobilization? You think Canadians have stronger political convictions than folks in the US? I dont…Canadians seem to love to not care about Canadian politics…disinterest in politics seems to be a point of pride to differentiate themselves from those annoying Americans. And it’s way worse than 60/40 there and just look at the place. It’s a mess.
You say you think the king should have no power and everyone knows it but the commander in chief of your military is a direct personal appointee who serves at their pleasure.
A crisis doesn’t occur without a context…it would be about something, and certainly something that one side thinks it can win on. I think you imagine any constitutional crisis would be immediately and unanimously handled in a democratic manner by everyone involved, no matter their interest in the underlying matter that lead to the crisis…we’d just all be on-side and do the right thing…I think that is extraordinarily naive!
You say “if the king oversteps” and my point about law and norms and all that is that they shape perception about whether a particular thing is overstepping.
You mentioned before that most people don’t even know about these things. Why is that? Because the norm is the King does as the Parliament wants.
I think you have a very idealistic understanding of what we call democracy these days…if a 60/40 split happened like I talked about earlier came up, you think there would be mass mobilization?
This is what I mean about the people having a strong will. If they do, then yes. If the don’t then we lose democracy.
Again I go back to the example of the US. Them being a republic makes no difference. If the people don’t have the will to stand up to a tyrant, then there will be tyranny.
A crisis doesn’t occur without a context…it would be about something, and certainly something that one side thinks it can win on. I think you imagine any constitutional crisis would be immediately and unanimously handled in a democratic manner by everyone involved, no matter their interest in the underlying matter that lead to the crisis…we’d just all be on-side and do the right thing…I think that is extraordinarily naive!
Sure, but what does the existence of the monarchy have to do with any of that? Trump is a continuous constitutional crisis, doesn’t seem like eliminating the monarchy prevents any of that happening. If anything having a monarch makes it more obvious when there’s an abuse of power. Americans don’t understand that Trump is undermining their precious constitution, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Americans know the President should have some power they just don’t know which powers he shouldn’t have. We know our head of state is supposed to only be a figurehead. It’s more obvious when someone is taking some power when they’re supposed to have none than someone show’s supposed to have some power taking more than they should.
Thanks for the interesting chat; i hope it’s nice for you. I am tearing my hair a little, but in a fun way.
By this logic, why have laws at all? Why not just have an absolute monarch and trust “the people will stand up” if power is misused? Laws aren’t magic, they’re often used to perpetuate awful things, but they do shape what people see as overreach. The reason cops who kill don’t get lynched is because people believe the legal system will eventually punish them.
I also don’t think the US being a republic makes no difference. Trump isn’t a king, and has struggled to get this far. He’s faced injunctions that actually stopped some harms. In Canada, it would be 100x easier. Parliament can just say “notwithstanding the Charter” and ignore all rights, and courts could not stop it (unlike in the US, where they could, but SCOTUS won’t because it’s been packed with lunatics).
One interesting proposal related to your ideas from constitutional scholars about how to do away with the relationship to the british royal family (looters, genociders, and pedophiles that they are) is to simply deem the King of Canada to be an individual…effectively making the King a fictional entity. That would actually make sure he has no power, eh?
I see your point that “if we all agree he has no power, any exercise will clearly be a problem” … except the monarchy is in constant contact with the governor general. You won’t know why the GG makes her choices. The monarchy has vast “reserve” powers (which as the name implies, are generally kept in reserve…like a Chekov’s gun). Australia’s governor-general dismissed their PM in 1975 using those powers. In Canada, the last clear example of undemocratic BS was 1961 when the LG of Saskatchewan refused consent to a passed law. But we have a perfect example in 2008: do you think the GG didn’t check with her boss about proroguing to save a minority PM from a no-confidence vote? That was a real exercise of real power by an appointee of the crown.
Or consider this situation: https://donshafer1.substack.com/p/the-day-37-british-columbia-mlas . Imagine the King has business interests in BC and would benefit from this financially. He calls the GG, who calls the LG of BC to say “get this moving.” If the LG (or GG) went public, she’d lose her job. So she’d quietly do it. And if it leaked? Conservatives would say “we must stay connected to the crown…tradition!.. and who wants these human rights laws anyway?” Plenty of Liberals would fold too, saying “well, technically, the king actually does have the right to pick whoever he wants, and we shouldn’t shake things up too much…maybe we could just get the king to agree to take it back and appoint her again? no? maybe another lady…an indigenous one? no? how about a white lesbian, would that do? okay, perfect, we’ll call that a win!”
Laws are needed for a civilized society. but civilization is a safe area we’ve created for ourselves in a dangerous jungle. When we step outside of our civilization we’re in a lawless place and we’re just surviving based on or abilities and judgement. There’s no legal way to eliminate the jungle, it will always be there. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother to have nice things when living in our civilized society.
A lot of these hypotheticals and real world scenarios are just people going out from civilized behaviour to the edge of the jungle. Whether it’s a King making commands or a President ignoring the court, these are things that shouldn’t be done based on the norms and laws of our civilization. So we’re in jungle rules, we have to figure out how to deal with the problem based on just our abilities and out judgement.
I see your point that “if we all agree he has no power, any exercise will clearly be a problem” … except the monarchy is in constant contact with the governor general. You won’t know why the GG makes her choices.
Parliament would know. Their job is to represent the will of the people. If the GG or King weren’t doing as they were told by Parliament, the PM has able opportunity to say to the country “that’s not what I wanted them to say.”
Or consider this situation: https://donshafer1.substack.com/p/the-day-37-british-columbia-mlas . Imagine the King has business interests in BC and would benefit from this financially. He calls the GG, who calls the LG of BC to say “get this moving.” If the LG (or GG) went public, she’d lose her job. So she’d quietly do it.
There were 50 MLAs that voted against that. How would the LG be able to do this quietly without the 50 people that voted against it knowing about it? When legislation gets royal assent, it’s done so publicly. Someone reads it out in Parliament and the Governor gives it a nod. It’s all a formality really, but who would be the person in parliament reading out legislation that didn’t pass to a Governor in the first place? You’d have to have the Parliament’s Clerks in on the scheme and not have them leak it to the the representatives, And they would be fired if caught doing any of this. Laws obviously have to be published so people like your self can use them in court. How would a GG, LG, or the King himself be able to do something without the elected representatives who voted against it knowing about it?
And I think you have it backwards. If something like this were to happen, there would be no more King. Even if the King were to force laws to come into being somehow (don’t know how it would happen, so it wouldn’t be the normal process, therefore very obvious) people would know and either the King would have to undo the action and abdicate or we’d just cease to be a monarchy. We’d be in the jungle and we’d be acting on our abilities and judgement.
I’m not sure I like this jungle analogy, but in the analogy, I guess my point is that some laws “expand” civilization and “shrink” the jungle. They reduce the accessibility of “lawlessness” on the part of the government. You’re right, they can always still get there, but they make the jungle further away, make it harder to get there.
It’s simply not true that we’d know if the GG was being influenced by the monarch. If the GG decided to use reserve powers (or consider using them and decide not to, like they did in 2008) we would have no way of knowing whether the King of England was behind it or not. And if your thought is “it doesn’t matter we’d remove any GG or LG that tries to use any power at all” you’re obviously incorrect about that :P
I’m not saying a law, like the proposed one to abolish the HRT, would be passed in secret. I’m saying the political pressure would be secret. Of course the law must be passed publicly, and you’d have all kinds of yelling on both sides about it. In the alternative, if parliament passed something and the GG refused to give royal assent, likewise that would be very public. The influence on the GG, however, would not be!
I would love to imagine that any constitutional crisis would be resolved immediately in favor of democracy and not on the basis of the underlying issue but I think that’s very hopeful. I’m not sure how to make it more clear…I could come up with more hypothetical situations to demonstrate where the king could exercise undemocratic influence, but I don’t know why that would help! I’ll try one more and then I’ll leave it if this doesn’t help explain what I’m talking about:
Let’s imagine a parliament with a thin liberal majority, but it’s expected to flip soon due to some unpopular decisions. Parliament narrowly passes a law that the residence at the Citadel of Quebec is going to become a public museum operated by the federal government. The Conservatives hate this because they consider it a waste of taxpayer dollars. The King privately opposes it because he quite likes having a vacation home in Quebec (and the GG actually uses it, so maybe she feels the same way). The GG doesn’t give royal assent, but says it’s for some technical deficiency, expecting an election to remove the issue…or alternatively simply says outright that the Conservatives are correct and the government can’t afford it…or somesuch mildly-plausible excuse that the milquetoast canadian middle class will accept (I only suppose the thin liberal majority in order to make this plausible excuse, but you could certainly imagine others if the liberal hold on parliament was strong). If the GG does not give royal assent…you think we’d go into a constitutional crisis? I don’t think anyone would think it’s worthwhile (which, of course, means that such a law wouldn’t pass…which is its own kind of influence being exercised passively by the Crown!).
You’re overestimating the value of laws. Laws don’t create civilization, the civilization creates laws. The jungle is always there, we just generally avoid it because going to the jungle means our survival is down to just our abilities and judgement. It’s far preferable to stay in civilization where we have our best chance of survival.
Your hypothetical examples all depend on people being weak willed in the face of a constitutional crisis. If people are weak, there being a King or not a King makes no difference. The US has no King, but people are weak towards Trump, and it’s the same result as your hypotheticals, just different titles.
And why would the King risk his cushy life to do any of these things? Why would someone who is in a position like that for the rest of his life risk it all for some short term gain?
So corruption can happen in a republican, and it seems to me it’s more obvious when someone doesn’t give royal ascent, and it’s very unlikely a King who has guaranteed housing in a palace for life being waited on hand and foot would risk that for a small bump in his stock portfolio. It seems you’re imagining the King behaving like a corrupt politician, but you’re not explaining how replacing the King with an actual politician makes that less likely to happen? If anything a term limited politician is more likely to do any of these hypotheticals, get that money in the limited time they’re in the position to get it. And the people that voted for that politician are more likely to look the other way than if a King started doing shenanigans.
As I said, I think the “jungle vs civilization” analogy is a little weird. I don’t think laws create civilization. But I do think laws matter for fascists. If they didn’t they wouldn’t need to pack the supreme court. Project 2025 wouldn’t be so focused on laws and the judiciary. They’re not meaningless…at the edge of the jungle? I guess? in this analogy?
So, when you talk about people being weak willed, you’re saying that a fascist coming to power is a kind of personal moral failing of the individuals in a society. I think that’s pretty absurd, and takes all responsibility away from the systems that shape people’s “willpower,” as well as their understanding of what is and is not overreach. If that’s true then there’s just nothing to be done? Just let the fascists have all the places with people who have weak wills? lol
Okay, so I don’t know why you will not engage with a hypothetical as a means of seeing the problem I’m talking about. Obviously the king isn’t going to upset the balance of power in the Commonwealth for his vacation home in quebec…if you can’t generalize that to something more important (such as, in Australia, the cold war), then there’s no point in talking about hypothetical situations…the point is to generalize from them. But that’s fine, it doesn’t really matter.
And for what it’s worth, his cushy life isn’t going anywhere whether the commonwealth crumbles or not. The king of england could cease to be the king of canada and it wouldn’t cost him anything (except, I guess, a vacation home in quebec he never uses). I’d be thrilled if the UK decides to guillotine them, but they won’t and I guess I have to make peace with that.
I’m not proposing replacing the king, I’m proposing kicking the king out. Just don’t have a king. If we must have a king, I would prefer to have a Canadian monarch and to stop legitimizing the genocidiers, looters, and pedophiles in the house of windsor…but I don’t see that we need a king. We could still just have a governor general appointed by the PM…make the system actually and definitely work the way you say it works (and I agree it works 99% of the time…but why the fuck are we leaving 1% on the table just to glorify those assholes? Like…we know it doesn’t work that way 100% of the time given the handful of examples I’ve shared).
Honestly though, why? Like…I haven’t seen you say anything in favor of having a king, or of having this king in particular?
I see what you mean about the optics of the governor general being Canadian, but legally they’re still bound to do what the monarch says, and the monarch is not bound to do what parliament says! Like, for example, if the UK wanted to drag us into a war, some Canadians might be keen…even if it’s a minority, if the governor general were one of them, we’d either be going or have a conditional crisis on our hands.
You’re right, of course…what’s going on in the US does show the flimsiness of “western liberal democracies” in the face of fascist tactics. When push comes to shove constitutions and laws are words on paper (and Canada relies on many norms that are not even that!) and they only matter if everyone with power agrees they matter.
On paper, the US has much more robust rights in respect of their government than Canada does, but to your point, that has obviously not lead to a more society with less government overreach!
So I basically agree, I think it’s not right to say it’s all completely meaningless though. Like…there may well be things that the king could do to abuse his power for which we wouldn’t have the will to remove the king from power. I guess that’s my point; let’s do it on principal first. I don’t see any reason to leave the letter of the law in a shitty place (and it doesn’t seem you disagree that having a king is shitty) just because outright fascists would ignore it if they came to power. Little fascists may be stopped, non-fascists may find their path smoother, etc.
That said, if you’re thinking the accelerationist approach of “let adversity harden the will of the people, and we’ll build a new world in the ashes of the old” then hey, more power to ya. Sign me up for the mailing list =P
If the King overstepped, there would just be no more King.
If the King did anything in your hypotheicals, we’d just say “the King is not of sound mind” and either the King would have to abdicate, or we’d elminate the monarchy. No rational King wants to be the one to end the monarchy, and since any action by the King would result in the end of the monarchy, any action by the King would therefore is automatically considered the actions of someone not of sound mind, and therefore should be ignored. If the King didn’t abdicate due to no longer being of sound mind, we’d end the monarchy.
The population having a strong will doesn’t mean we’re going to break out a guillotine or whatever. It just means being willing to vote, protest, call your MP, etc. It means actually caring about the institution of democracy. If it came down to the King saying one thing, and the parliament saying the opposite, which would the people consider legitimate? Maybe a lawyer could argue that the King’s orders are technically legitimate, but if people care about democracy, they can just ignore the legalisms. That’s how it goes in a constitutional crisis.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this, but it’s not lawyers that protect us from tyrants. It’s just having an educated population that won’t accept tyranny. Americans, are accepting of tyranny, so they’re descending into tyranny. There’s nothing lawyers can do to stop it, because the lawyers on the Supreme court, the lawyers in the DOJ, and the laywers in the GOP are going along with it. The law doesn’t prevent tyranny it’s people not willing to go along with tyranny that prevents it.
We have a King and we won’t go along with the King’s commands unless they come from parliament. We’re aware of the King we know who he is, we know what to watch for. Americans didn’t have a King, but they made their President into a Kings. Most of them don’t even know it happened because they didn’t know what to look out for. They know the President has power, but don’t know which powers he should and shouldn’t have.
We have a King and we know what power he should have: none.
I think I must not be making my point clearly.
You say “if the king oversteps” and my point about law and norms and all that is that they shape perception about whether a particular thing is overstepping. Lawyers don’t usually protect us from tyranny, lawyers usually enforce tyranny; it’s just the kind of tyranny that is commonly accepted. And that acceptance matters…because people think it does, sure.
I think you have a very idealistic understanding of what we call democracy these days…if a 60/40 split happened like I talked about earlier came up, you think there would be mass mobilization? You think Canadians have stronger political convictions than folks in the US? I dont…Canadians seem to love to not care about Canadian politics…disinterest in politics seems to be a point of pride to differentiate themselves from those annoying Americans. And it’s way worse than 60/40 there and just look at the place. It’s a mess.
You say you think the king should have no power and everyone knows it but the commander in chief of your military is a direct personal appointee who serves at their pleasure.
A crisis doesn’t occur without a context…it would be about something, and certainly something that one side thinks it can win on. I think you imagine any constitutional crisis would be immediately and unanimously handled in a democratic manner by everyone involved, no matter their interest in the underlying matter that lead to the crisis…we’d just all be on-side and do the right thing…I think that is extraordinarily naive!
You mentioned before that most people don’t even know about these things. Why is that? Because the norm is the King does as the Parliament wants.
This is what I mean about the people having a strong will. If they do, then yes. If the don’t then we lose democracy.
Again I go back to the example of the US. Them being a republic makes no difference. If the people don’t have the will to stand up to a tyrant, then there will be tyranny.
Sure, but what does the existence of the monarchy have to do with any of that? Trump is a continuous constitutional crisis, doesn’t seem like eliminating the monarchy prevents any of that happening. If anything having a monarch makes it more obvious when there’s an abuse of power. Americans don’t understand that Trump is undermining their precious constitution, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that Americans know the President should have some power they just don’t know which powers he shouldn’t have. We know our head of state is supposed to only be a figurehead. It’s more obvious when someone is taking some power when they’re supposed to have none than someone show’s supposed to have some power taking more than they should.
Thanks for the interesting chat; i hope it’s nice for you. I am tearing my hair a little, but in a fun way.
By this logic, why have laws at all? Why not just have an absolute monarch and trust “the people will stand up” if power is misused? Laws aren’t magic, they’re often used to perpetuate awful things, but they do shape what people see as overreach. The reason cops who kill don’t get lynched is because people believe the legal system will eventually punish them.
I also don’t think the US being a republic makes no difference. Trump isn’t a king, and has struggled to get this far. He’s faced injunctions that actually stopped some harms. In Canada, it would be 100x easier. Parliament can just say “notwithstanding the Charter” and ignore all rights, and courts could not stop it (unlike in the US, where they could, but SCOTUS won’t because it’s been packed with lunatics).
One interesting proposal related to your ideas from constitutional scholars about how to do away with the relationship to the british royal family (looters, genociders, and pedophiles that they are) is to simply deem the King of Canada to be an individual…effectively making the King a fictional entity. That would actually make sure he has no power, eh?
I see your point that “if we all agree he has no power, any exercise will clearly be a problem” … except the monarchy is in constant contact with the governor general. You won’t know why the GG makes her choices. The monarchy has vast “reserve” powers (which as the name implies, are generally kept in reserve…like a Chekov’s gun). Australia’s governor-general dismissed their PM in 1975 using those powers. In Canada, the last clear example of undemocratic BS was 1961 when the LG of Saskatchewan refused consent to a passed law. But we have a perfect example in 2008: do you think the GG didn’t check with her boss about proroguing to save a minority PM from a no-confidence vote? That was a real exercise of real power by an appointee of the crown.
Or consider this situation: https://donshafer1.substack.com/p/the-day-37-british-columbia-mlas . Imagine the King has business interests in BC and would benefit from this financially. He calls the GG, who calls the LG of BC to say “get this moving.” If the LG (or GG) went public, she’d lose her job. So she’d quietly do it. And if it leaked? Conservatives would say “we must stay connected to the crown…tradition!.. and who wants these human rights laws anyway?” Plenty of Liberals would fold too, saying “well, technically, the king actually does have the right to pick whoever he wants, and we shouldn’t shake things up too much…maybe we could just get the king to agree to take it back and appoint her again? no? maybe another lady…an indigenous one? no? how about a white lesbian, would that do? okay, perfect, we’ll call that a win!”
Laws are needed for a civilized society. but civilization is a safe area we’ve created for ourselves in a dangerous jungle. When we step outside of our civilization we’re in a lawless place and we’re just surviving based on or abilities and judgement. There’s no legal way to eliminate the jungle, it will always be there. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother to have nice things when living in our civilized society.
A lot of these hypotheticals and real world scenarios are just people going out from civilized behaviour to the edge of the jungle. Whether it’s a King making commands or a President ignoring the court, these are things that shouldn’t be done based on the norms and laws of our civilization. So we’re in jungle rules, we have to figure out how to deal with the problem based on just our abilities and out judgement.
Parliament would know. Their job is to represent the will of the people. If the GG or King weren’t doing as they were told by Parliament, the PM has able opportunity to say to the country “that’s not what I wanted them to say.”
There were 50 MLAs that voted against that. How would the LG be able to do this quietly without the 50 people that voted against it knowing about it? When legislation gets royal assent, it’s done so publicly. Someone reads it out in Parliament and the Governor gives it a nod. It’s all a formality really, but who would be the person in parliament reading out legislation that didn’t pass to a Governor in the first place? You’d have to have the Parliament’s Clerks in on the scheme and not have them leak it to the the representatives, And they would be fired if caught doing any of this. Laws obviously have to be published so people like your self can use them in court. How would a GG, LG, or the King himself be able to do something without the elected representatives who voted against it knowing about it?
There’s a lot of process and ceremony involved in this: https://www.ourcommons.ca/procedure/our-procedure/LegislativeProcess/c_g_legislativeprocess-e.html How would you slip some secret laws through all of that process?
And I think you have it backwards. If something like this were to happen, there would be no more King. Even if the King were to force laws to come into being somehow (don’t know how it would happen, so it wouldn’t be the normal process, therefore very obvious) people would know and either the King would have to undo the action and abdicate or we’d just cease to be a monarchy. We’d be in the jungle and we’d be acting on our abilities and judgement.
I’m not sure I like this jungle analogy, but in the analogy, I guess my point is that some laws “expand” civilization and “shrink” the jungle. They reduce the accessibility of “lawlessness” on the part of the government. You’re right, they can always still get there, but they make the jungle further away, make it harder to get there.
It’s simply not true that we’d know if the GG was being influenced by the monarch. If the GG decided to use reserve powers (or consider using them and decide not to, like they did in 2008) we would have no way of knowing whether the King of England was behind it or not. And if your thought is “it doesn’t matter we’d remove any GG or LG that tries to use any power at all” you’re obviously incorrect about that :P
I’m not saying a law, like the proposed one to abolish the HRT, would be passed in secret. I’m saying the political pressure would be secret. Of course the law must be passed publicly, and you’d have all kinds of yelling on both sides about it. In the alternative, if parliament passed something and the GG refused to give royal assent, likewise that would be very public. The influence on the GG, however, would not be!
I would love to imagine that any constitutional crisis would be resolved immediately in favor of democracy and not on the basis of the underlying issue but I think that’s very hopeful. I’m not sure how to make it more clear…I could come up with more hypothetical situations to demonstrate where the king could exercise undemocratic influence, but I don’t know why that would help! I’ll try one more and then I’ll leave it if this doesn’t help explain what I’m talking about:
Let’s imagine a parliament with a thin liberal majority, but it’s expected to flip soon due to some unpopular decisions. Parliament narrowly passes a law that the residence at the Citadel of Quebec is going to become a public museum operated by the federal government. The Conservatives hate this because they consider it a waste of taxpayer dollars. The King privately opposes it because he quite likes having a vacation home in Quebec (and the GG actually uses it, so maybe she feels the same way). The GG doesn’t give royal assent, but says it’s for some technical deficiency, expecting an election to remove the issue…or alternatively simply says outright that the Conservatives are correct and the government can’t afford it…or somesuch mildly-plausible excuse that the milquetoast canadian middle class will accept (I only suppose the thin liberal majority in order to make this plausible excuse, but you could certainly imagine others if the liberal hold on parliament was strong). If the GG does not give royal assent…you think we’d go into a constitutional crisis? I don’t think anyone would think it’s worthwhile (which, of course, means that such a law wouldn’t pass…which is its own kind of influence being exercised passively by the Crown!).
You’re overestimating the value of laws. Laws don’t create civilization, the civilization creates laws. The jungle is always there, we just generally avoid it because going to the jungle means our survival is down to just our abilities and judgement. It’s far preferable to stay in civilization where we have our best chance of survival.
Your hypothetical examples all depend on people being weak willed in the face of a constitutional crisis. If people are weak, there being a King or not a King makes no difference. The US has no King, but people are weak towards Trump, and it’s the same result as your hypotheticals, just different titles.
And why would the King risk his cushy life to do any of these things? Why would someone who is in a position like that for the rest of his life risk it all for some short term gain?
So corruption can happen in a republican, and it seems to me it’s more obvious when someone doesn’t give royal ascent, and it’s very unlikely a King who has guaranteed housing in a palace for life being waited on hand and foot would risk that for a small bump in his stock portfolio. It seems you’re imagining the King behaving like a corrupt politician, but you’re not explaining how replacing the King with an actual politician makes that less likely to happen? If anything a term limited politician is more likely to do any of these hypotheticals, get that money in the limited time they’re in the position to get it. And the people that voted for that politician are more likely to look the other way than if a King started doing shenanigans.
As I said, I think the “jungle vs civilization” analogy is a little weird. I don’t think laws create civilization. But I do think laws matter for fascists. If they didn’t they wouldn’t need to pack the supreme court. Project 2025 wouldn’t be so focused on laws and the judiciary. They’re not meaningless…at the edge of the jungle? I guess? in this analogy?
So, when you talk about people being weak willed, you’re saying that a fascist coming to power is a kind of personal moral failing of the individuals in a society. I think that’s pretty absurd, and takes all responsibility away from the systems that shape people’s “willpower,” as well as their understanding of what is and is not overreach. If that’s true then there’s just nothing to be done? Just let the fascists have all the places with people who have weak wills? lol
Okay, so I don’t know why you will not engage with a hypothetical as a means of seeing the problem I’m talking about. Obviously the king isn’t going to upset the balance of power in the Commonwealth for his vacation home in quebec…if you can’t generalize that to something more important (such as, in Australia, the cold war), then there’s no point in talking about hypothetical situations…the point is to generalize from them. But that’s fine, it doesn’t really matter.
And for what it’s worth, his cushy life isn’t going anywhere whether the commonwealth crumbles or not. The king of england could cease to be the king of canada and it wouldn’t cost him anything (except, I guess, a vacation home in quebec he never uses). I’d be thrilled if the UK decides to guillotine them, but they won’t and I guess I have to make peace with that.
I’m not proposing replacing the king, I’m proposing kicking the king out. Just don’t have a king. If we must have a king, I would prefer to have a Canadian monarch and to stop legitimizing the genocidiers, looters, and pedophiles in the house of windsor…but I don’t see that we need a king. We could still just have a governor general appointed by the PM…make the system actually and definitely work the way you say it works (and I agree it works 99% of the time…but why the fuck are we leaving 1% on the table just to glorify those assholes? Like…we know it doesn’t work that way 100% of the time given the handful of examples I’ve shared).
Honestly though, why? Like…I haven’t seen you say anything in favor of having a king, or of having this king in particular?