Illustration by Graham Roumieu, Updated 21:16, May. 16, 2021 | Published 13:07, May. 13, 2021
Canada’s Victoria Day does a lot of heavy lifting. Officially, May 24 marks the birthday of the monarch who reigned when this country was founded, as well as the ceremonial recognition of our current Queen. In the beer-commercial version, people gather for barbecues on the long weekend or to open up their vacation homes unofficially kicking off the start of summer. This year, with parts of the country isolated by COVID-19 restrictions and a sober tinge to the air, Victoria Day has a special poignancy. What, exactly, are we celebrating?
The country has changed a lot since its founding. The recent headline-making rifts in the royal family, and the death of Prince Philip, have created the impression of the autumn of an empire a generational shift, as it were. According to a recent Leger poll prompted by the departure of former governor general Julie Payette, 53 percent of Canadian
Could Canada decouple itself from the Crown?
Yes, but it wouldn’t be easy. The real impediment to the abolition of the monarchy is the constitutional amending formula. When Canada patriated the constitution, in 1982,
1 it adopted a set of conditions for making changes to it. For most amendments, you need seven out of ten provinces and the federal government to agree. But the Constitution Act lays out a series of areas that require unanimity. Those include making changes to the office of the Queen.
Unanimity is the highest threshold to amend the constitution. I wouldn’t say meeting it is impossible, but it would require an extraordinary amount of consensus. I think folks, when they agreed to this formula, probably were naive about how hard it would be to use. And, because of the precedent from the Charlottetown Accord,