Everyone says this, because so far the monarchy has generally done what parliament asks in terms of, for example, appointing a prime minister, appointing senators, etc. Except there was the “King-Byng affair” in which the crown refused to exercise its constitutional power at the behest of the elected government. Now in retrospect, that may have been for the best…but that absolutely should resolve anyone’s question that the monarchy “has zero power in Canada.” People generally remember this as the crown “saving us from ourselves” …I don’t have any strong feelings about that, as long as we recognize that it had the power to do something and still does. I think it shouldn’t have power…if someone else wants to say it should at least we can talk about that…but when we pretend that the monarchy has no power we have to talk about that first.
But ask Australians…they had no interference from the monarchy in their democracy until their “1975 constitutional crisis,” in which the people voted for a prime minister (some evil socialist who did crazy dangerous tankie things like bring in universal healthcare and pull out of the war in Vietnam…practically stalin), the queen then dismissed him, dissolved parliament, and appointed the liberal party leader as her new prime minister, and told them to have a new election.
Legally, Canada is in the exact same position as Australia was at that time. The only real differences are: (a) another 50 years of the monarchy not going rogue and fucking with democracy, but also (b) precedent of the monarchy going rogue and fucking with democracy and getting away with it.
I’m a lawyer, and it blows me away that lawyers here don’t know this stuff…like your whole government is built on a rug that could be pulled out from under you at any time! And look…if the monarchy tried to do something that was overwhelmingly unpopular, it would create a constitutional crisis, but I am sure we would get through it and get to the right result. Absurd to leave that risk on the table if you ask me, but fine… What worries me more is when the question is a bit more ambiguous…what happens if it’s not overwhelming? what happens if the country is split 60/40 on an issue, but many of the 60% are not willing to cause a constitutional crisis, and the monarchy is willing to push the less popular option? (I mean, we know what happens, that’s what happened in australia!).
The King-Byng affair was in a different time when the Governor General was someone from the UK. So British person overruling the Canadian Prime Minister was a big part of the controversy there.
Now that the Governor General is Canadian it’s kind of a nothing burger. A ceremonial position appointed by the PM. The Julie Payette situation was the only time there’s been any potential for anyone outside of the country might have to do something and that would’ve only been if Trudeau asked the Queen to fire her. But it didn’t come to that so whatever.
You’re a lawyer so you’re going to have a tendency to think about hypotheticals about things that aren’t codified into law. But right now we’re all witnessing the US that has all kinds of protections against these kinds of hypotheticals just ignore those laws. Hypothetically a US President couldn’t abuse power and be completely corrupt because he’d be impeached. The laws say so. But that isn’t happening.
It’s obvious now that the only protection against tyranny is the will of the people. If the King abused his position, we would remove the King from power. Unless we lacked the will to do that. If the King knows he’d be removed from his position if he abuses that position he won’t abuse his position since he doesn’t want to be the guy that ends the monarchy. Right now, no one in the US is being prosecuted for Epstein stuff despite their laws. The brother of the King is being prosecuted.
We see a republic where there’s basically an aristocracy that’s above the law and we see a monarchy where the King’s brother is being prosecuted. As a lawyer do you think evidence from the real world is stronger than hypotheticals?
Seems to me it doesn’t really matter what you put into the laws, if the will of the population is weak, the law will be ignored. In the end you have no choice but to trust the people when these hypotheticals arise.
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!”
I do want to point out, the British monarchy has zero power in Canada. Any status they have is purely symbolic.
Everyone says this, because so far the monarchy has generally done what parliament asks in terms of, for example, appointing a prime minister, appointing senators, etc. Except there was the “King-Byng affair” in which the crown refused to exercise its constitutional power at the behest of the elected government. Now in retrospect, that may have been for the best…but that absolutely should resolve anyone’s question that the monarchy “has zero power in Canada.” People generally remember this as the crown “saving us from ourselves” …I don’t have any strong feelings about that, as long as we recognize that it had the power to do something and still does. I think it shouldn’t have power…if someone else wants to say it should at least we can talk about that…but when we pretend that the monarchy has no power we have to talk about that first.
But ask Australians…they had no interference from the monarchy in their democracy until their “1975 constitutional crisis,” in which the people voted for a prime minister (some evil socialist who did crazy dangerous tankie things like bring in universal healthcare and pull out of the war in Vietnam…practically stalin), the queen then dismissed him, dissolved parliament, and appointed the liberal party leader as her new prime minister, and told them to have a new election.
Legally, Canada is in the exact same position as Australia was at that time. The only real differences are: (a) another 50 years of the monarchy not going rogue and fucking with democracy, but also (b) precedent of the monarchy going rogue and fucking with democracy and getting away with it.
I’m a lawyer, and it blows me away that lawyers here don’t know this stuff…like your whole government is built on a rug that could be pulled out from under you at any time! And look…if the monarchy tried to do something that was overwhelmingly unpopular, it would create a constitutional crisis, but I am sure we would get through it and get to the right result. Absurd to leave that risk on the table if you ask me, but fine… What worries me more is when the question is a bit more ambiguous…what happens if it’s not overwhelming? what happens if the country is split 60/40 on an issue, but many of the 60% are not willing to cause a constitutional crisis, and the monarchy is willing to push the less popular option? (I mean, we know what happens, that’s what happened in australia!).
The King-Byng affair was in a different time when the Governor General was someone from the UK. So British person overruling the Canadian Prime Minister was a big part of the controversy there.
Now that the Governor General is Canadian it’s kind of a nothing burger. A ceremonial position appointed by the PM. The Julie Payette situation was the only time there’s been any potential for anyone outside of the country might have to do something and that would’ve only been if Trudeau asked the Queen to fire her. But it didn’t come to that so whatever.
You’re a lawyer so you’re going to have a tendency to think about hypotheticals about things that aren’t codified into law. But right now we’re all witnessing the US that has all kinds of protections against these kinds of hypotheticals just ignore those laws. Hypothetically a US President couldn’t abuse power and be completely corrupt because he’d be impeached. The laws say so. But that isn’t happening.
It’s obvious now that the only protection against tyranny is the will of the people. If the King abused his position, we would remove the King from power. Unless we lacked the will to do that. If the King knows he’d be removed from his position if he abuses that position he won’t abuse his position since he doesn’t want to be the guy that ends the monarchy. Right now, no one in the US is being prosecuted for Epstein stuff despite their laws. The brother of the King is being prosecuted.
We see a republic where there’s basically an aristocracy that’s above the law and we see a monarchy where the King’s brother is being prosecuted. As a lawyer do you think evidence from the real world is stronger than hypotheticals?
Seems to me it doesn’t really matter what you put into the laws, if the will of the population is weak, the law will be ignored. In the end you have no choice but to trust the people when these hypotheticals arise.
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!”