The Federal Republic of Canada

[g_bambino]

Our monarchy is a redundant anachronism...

Then tell us how to replace it.

...that is indeed sybmolic of all the misdeeds and oppression that were carried out in its name...

What a canard; disparage the current institution for past acts it was not reasponsible for and which are judged criminal not by contemporary standards, but modern ones. Better abolish all governments, then.

[c/e]

Edited November 8, 2011 by g_bambino

[g_bambino]

Although it has the capability of acting unilaterally, precedent is that it does not.

Except in Canada in 1926, Alberta in 1937, Saskatchewan in 1961, the UK in 1974, and Australia in 1976, that is.

[Smallc]

Except in Canada in 1926, Alberta in 1937, Saskatchewan in 1961, the UK in 1974, and Australia in 1976, that is.

And the fact that it doesn't have to act unilaterally very often does, at least IMO, speak to the stability of the system that our constitutional monarchy has created.

[cybercoma]

Except in Canada in 1926

How did that work out?

[g_bambino]

And the fact that it doesn't have to act unilaterally very often does, at least IMO, speak to the stability of the system that our constitutional monarchy has created.

That's true. Much of the Crown's value lies not in the monarch or her representatives exercising power on their own accord (they don't, much), but simply in its possession of power, only lent to politicians so long as they follow the rules. It's been said to have the effect of tempering the personal ambitions of politicians, who, by their nature, seek power.

[c/e]

Edited November 8, 2011 by g_bambino

[g_bambino]

How did that work out?

Just fine: It led to the eventual establishment of the legally distinct Canadian monarchy five years later.

[cybercoma]

Just fine: It led to the eventual establishment of the legally distinct Canadian monarchy five years later.

Byng made his own decision and was forced to dissolve Parliament anyway. In other words, Byng had no practical power. Now, with constitution being repatriated in '82 and the charter being entrenched within it, the monarchy is entirely pointless. Legally distinct and entirely symbolic and ceremonial.

[Smallc]

I feel like you're just choosing not to get what a constitutional monarchy is so that your own argument can continue to stand.

[g_bambino]

Byng made his own decision and was forced to dissolve Parliament anyway. In other words, Byng had no practical power.

It seems odd that you're conflating two separate events into one in order to misrepresent both the role of the governor general and Byng's motives. The dismissal was one occurrence, done based on the circumstances at that exact time: the prime minister, with a very tenuous minority, was attempting to avoid a confidence vote by dissolving parliament and, in doing so, was reneging on an agreement he'd made with the Governor General at the end of October 1925 in which King promised to step down when parliament no longer held confidence in him and not request a dissolution. After that, Meghan's loss of confidence and the subsequent election that saw King's Liberals return with a majority were related, but entirely different events; the Governor General stepped back and let parliament and then the voters work the rest out, not because he was bullied into doing so by any politician, but because, with the crisis over, that was what convention dictated the governor general is to do. You make it sound as though there existed a battle between parliament and the Crown and the Crown, thanks to the Lord Byng of Vimy, lost. That's wrong.

Now, with constitution being repatriated in '82 and the charter being entrenched within it, the monarchy is entirely pointless. Legally distinct and entirely symbolic and ceremonial.

Then, why was the monarchy entrenched at the exact same time? What powers did it have before that were lost in 1982? Where did those powers go? And, as you keep saying, over and over, that the institution is "entirely symbolic and ceremonial", explain 1) why it is so hard to remove and 2) your detailed plan for removing it and what the more practical replacement is.

[+]

Edited November 8, 2011 by g_bambino

[cybercoma]

You want to separate the incidents in the King-Byng affair because it serves to support your argument that all power is with the Crown/GG. The power is with the people because the GG will only act on the recommendation of the elected Parliament via the PM. If you take this situation together, which it very much is a single situation, you have to acknowledge that the GG cannot act unilaterally because in the Byng situation parliament turned around and shot his decision down by bringing down the government before cabinet could even be formed. What I'm arguing is that the GG/Crown has no practical power. It must all be approved by the elected Parliament, which is elected and receives its mandate from the public (strong, stable, majority Conservative mandate). In this way, the GG/Crown is nothing more than a symbolic gesture whose purpose is nothing more than ceremonial. You could have an organ grinder with a chimp for the governor general. You could have a tree stump. It doesn't matter.

[WWWTT]

In this way, the GG/Crown is nothing more than a symbolic gesture whose purpose is nothing more than ceremonial. You could have an organ grinder with a chimp for the governor general. You could have a tree stump. It doesn't matter.

How about a cartoon character then?

Say "Bender" from the cartoon Futurama!

WWWTT

[GostHacked]

What are the real tangible benefits of being tied to the UK Monarchy?

[g_bambino]

You want to separate the incidents in the King-Byng affair because it serves to support your argument that all power is with the Crown/GG. [T]he GG will only act on the recommendation of the elected Parliament via the PM. If you take this situation together, which it very much is a single situation, you have to acknowledge that the GG cannot act unilaterally because in the Byng situation parliament turned around and shot his decision down by bringing down the government...

Good grief. All power is with the Crown: S.9 of the Constitution Act 1867: "The Executive Government and Authority of and over Canada is hereby declared to continue and be vested in the Queen." That does not mean, however, that the Queen (or the governor general) can exercise that authority on their own accord; by convention, they can only do so when there is a crisis that threatens the stability and continuity of government; otherwise, the power is lent to the elected politicians for use day to day governance.

I don't know what it is you think Byng expected to happen after King resigned. You seem to believe the Governor General thought himself an absolute monarch, ruling as an autocrat, but that meddlesome parliament got in the way and neutered him. Who knows why you'd come to such a conclusion, given that it was parliament that was about to deny its confidence to King anyway and it was only because of Byng's power to deny the Prime Minister's request for dissolution that parliament even remained in session. That Meighen couldn't command the confidence of the House either was no slight against Byng; his only duty was to ensure Meighen, who's party all along had more seats than King's Liberals, was given the chance to govern, and Byng did just that.

[T]he GG/Crown is nothing more than a symbolic gesture whose purpose is nothing more than ceremonial.

And there you go again repeating this endless mantra without even a hint of meeting the request I made the last time you spouted it. The validity of your assertion is greatly undermined by the repeated failure on your part to explain 1) why it is so hard to remove the Crown from our system of governance and 2) what is your detailed plan for removing it and the more practical institution to replace it.

[cybercoma]

Just keep ignoring the fact that I'm arguing de facto not de jure power.

It's so hard to remove the Crown because no one gives a crap about it, since it has no practical power. I told you what I would replace the Crown with... an organ grinder with a monkey in a fez hat.

[g_bambino]

Just keep ignoring the fact that I'm arguing de facto not de jure power.

Just keep ignoring the corrections of your errors by claiming your argument's being ignored.

It's so hard to remove the Crown because no one gives a crap about it, since it has no practical power.

So, your logic is: something that's useless was entrenched in the constitution because it's useless. Are you sure you want to stick with that theory?

[cybercoma]

Can you argue something without being condescending? Just curious.

We've always had a GG by tradition. Since the position is entirely pointless there's no harm in keeping it. Getting rid of it would mean a Constitutional amendment that would have the monarchists in the country up in arms. Instead of creating an issue out of something that is functionally ineffectual, we kept the institution. Trudeau quite obviously had bigger problems to deal with at the time.

So if you want to condescend by saying "so something useless was entrenched because it was useless" then yes. That's exactly why.

[Smallc]

We've always had a GG by tradition.

No, we've always had it because it's a constitutionally necessary office.

Since the position is entirely pointless there's no harm in keeping it.

And since it's not pointless?????

Getting rid of it would mean a Constitutional amendment that would have the monarchists in the country up in arms. Instead of creating an issue out of something that is functionally ineffectual, we kept the institution. Trudeau quite obviously had bigger problems to deal with at the time.

Trudeau didn't have to entrench the monarchy into the Constitution with the strongest language for the requirements to amend it....but he did, because it's far more important than you want to admit.

[g_bambino]

Can you argue something without being condescending?

Sure; evidenced by this very argument.

Since the position is entirely pointless there's no harm in keeping it. Getting rid of it would mean a Constitutional amendment that would have the monarchists in the country up in arms.

No. See, the question put to you wasn't "why was the monarchy kept?" It was: why is it so hard to remove it? Which, by extension, could also be put as: why was it literally entrenched into the constitution? Why in 1982 was it made harder to abolish it than before? It wasn't to appease monarchists or traditionalists; there weren't so many that, by their mere number, they instilled fear in the eleven premiers; the traditionalists couldn't stop even the redesign of the national flag; and, again, the monarchy wasn't just kept, it was at patriation cemented more solidly into the constitution.

The reason was because it was realised the Crown is central to Confederation itself: It is a non-partisan, intrinsic part of all eleven governments (as David Smith put it, the Crown is "the organizing principle of Canadian government, [whose] pervasive influence . . .  reaches into every area of government activity in all jurisdictions"), from which they derive their authority equally, thus putting them on an even footing with each other. All the proposed constitutional amendments put forth in the 1970s that would've seen the monarchy eliminated were flatly rejected by the provinces - including Quebec - because, no matter what variation, they inevitably shifted the source of the provinces' powers from the one monarch reigning impartially over the whole country to a political president who very much belonged to Ottawa (in one case being appointed and dismissed by the federal prime minister alone). In short: nothing better could be found, as has been the case since before 1867. And so, because of the Crown's importance and value to the structure of the federal and provincial governments, and to Confederation itself, when it came to adding the amending formula to the constitution in 1982, it was ensured by the premiers that any alteration to the offices of the Queen, governor general, and lieutenant governors would require the agreement of the federal parliament and all ten provincial legislatures.

Michael Valpy said it thusly: "Section 41 (a)... was placed into the unanimity, or consensus, amending formula of the Constitution for a reason: to make it very hard to change. When Pierre Trudeau in 1978 proposed that Parliament alone could alter the status of the head of state (by vesting executive authority in the governor-general acting in the name of the Queen rather than in the Queen herself), every provincial government — including that of Quebec — strenuously objected. No province... was unmindful of the 'watertight compartments' doctrine of Confederation, judicially first expressed in 1892, in which supreme constitutional authority — the 'Crown' — was deemed to be parallel and coequal in concurrent jurisdictions: provincial Crown and federal Crown, provincial lieutenant-governors and federal governor-general, none subordinate to the other and each acting independently as the Sovereign's representative. Thus it came to be four years after Mr. Trudeau's initiative that the 'office of the Queen' — the hydra-headed, divisible queen of the federal state and its constitutional composite parts — could be altered only by resolutions of Parliament and all 10 provincial legislatures."

"[C]onstitutional monarchy is the concreteness of our contemporary federalism, our collective headship of state — sovereignty vested in one particular individual, the reigning monarch, acting in Parliament for some purposes and in the provincial legislatures for others — which has been the key to the autonomy and identity of the Canadian provinces compared to other federations."

The 11/11 requirement for changes to the Crown is the same for amendments to the composition of the Supreme Court and the status of the English and French languages; things that are not trivial, pretty ornaments.

[+]

Edited November 9, 2011 by g_bambino

[cybercoma]

The source of the provinces powers are granted to them by the Constitution, not the GG and the provincial LGs. The idea that the provinces would not be on equal footing because eliminating the GG would put the source of power in Ottawa is hilarious because the source of power already is in Ottawa not only by way of the Constitution, but by virtue of the Lieutenant Governors being appointed by the Governor General who is hand-picked by Prime Ministers anyway. The premiers themselves may suggest their province's Lieutenant Governors in any case. Which again, gives the LG authority because the person selected for the position gets there by way of the elected officials. In nearly every way the GG and LGs are nothing more than ceremonial symbols of the monarchy. They're hand-picked by the Prime Minister (LGs on the suggestion of the Premiers), who gets to his/her position by leading a party that is given a mandate by the people. Whether it's a President in Ottawa or Governor General in Ottawa, it matters not since the position ultimately amounts to donning an outfit and doing the PM's bidding anyway. The only example we have of a GG going against the PM, he was forced days later to do exactly what the PM said anyway because the House made it so. The monarchy doesn't rule anything. The monarchy is nothing more than an historical symbol of rule. The rule of law, the division of powers and the equality of the provinces comes from the Constitution in practice. Any authority that the monarchy still has is nothing but a vestigial anachronism.

Edited November 9, 2011 by cybercoma

[Smallc]

It's clear that you don't get it, but it's also fear that it's because you don't want to get it. The source of all government and state power in Canada is the Crown, full stop, end of story.

[cybercoma]

I get that this is what it says on paper and it's a very nice theoretical way of looking at it, but you refuse to acknowledge that in practice this "source" of power is nothing more than symbolism and ceremony. In reality it is the Constitution that outlines the powers and the people that make the decisions are able to do so because they are elected. The Queen did not give David Johnston power. Stephen Harper handed his position to him. Harper got his power by the public electing a Conservative majority government. The Crown on paper has the power to overturn anything the government does via David Johnston, at the moment. However, the only time that the Governor General tried to go against the wishes of the Prime Minister, the elected representatives of the people forced him to do what the PM asked only days later. It's very nice that on paper we're all the Queen's children. In reality, the Queen means squat and the Governor General is nothing more than a symbol appointed by Prime Ministers. I will petition the government the next time the Governor General needs to be replaced to try and get an organ grinder and monkey in a fez hat put into that position because the person who holds that office simply signs off on whatever the Prime Minister wants and the PM gets to where he/she is by way of the people. Oh but he/she asks the Governor General to form the government because the "power" lies with the monarch.

Edited November 9, 2011 by cybercoma

[Smallc]

Now I'm thinking you just don't get it. The government (Harper et all) derives its power from the Crown. It is the people that get the ultimate say, but all of these things flow through the Crown. It's really the same as the state in a federal system. If the GG is simply a simple, so is the Italian President.

You may not think that the legal and constitutional functions of government are important, but they're what allow a system to function. Without the Crown, there literally is no Canada.

Edited November 9, 2011 by Smallc

[Jerry J. Fortin]

Now I'm thinking you just don't get it. The government (Harper et all) derives its power from the Crown. It is the people that get the ultimate say, but all of these things flow through the Crown. It's really the same as the state in a federal system. If the GG is simply a simple, so is the Italian President.

You may not think that the legal and constitutional functions of government are important, but they're what allow a system to function. Without the Crown, there literally is no Canada.

The "Crown" has no functional power or authority over the nation , the constitution determines everything. The Westminister Act says it all with respect to the powers and responsibility vested in the Crown in very real and practical terms. Canada is a sovereign nation, self governing, independent of the crown. The nation itself exists whether the "Crown" says yea or nay.

[cybercoma]

I'll be sure to take my scissors to an atlas if the monarchy is ever eliminated.

[WWWTT]

Without the Crown, there literally is no Canada.

I agree!

However the crown never acts independant or in contradiction or God forbid do something remotely controversial!

The crown is so intertwined into our establishment,attempting to remove it would cause a massive deficit in Canada.

Actually it can be argued that getting rid of the monarchy(throughout the entire commonwealth) can actually cause a worldwide recession!

And if that is the case then you have to wonder that maybe the crown does hold some important value.

WWWTT