this may be rhetorical flourish and everything, and i'll acknowledge that few canadians really know the historical narrative well, but it is simply.....weird....to have a liberal prime minister fall all over himself for the queen.

the liberals are supposed to be about canadian sovereignty, and the separation of links to the monarchy. this is out of the whig tradition of parliamentary government, as applied to a far flung colony on another continent. there's even a strong historical strain of support for republican government in the liberal party (it's most recent prominent exponent was john manley). it is the desire for separation that drove patriation, which was the end of a very long historical and political process. it is the tories that have historically played up ties to the monarchy and canada's place in the commonwealth, out of the tory tradition of promoting "class harmony" in hierarchical fealty to king & country.

again: i know i'm speaking greek to most people. but, historians are going to look back at this and interpret it as flat out bizarre.

liberal supporters largely expect the prime minister to do the bare minimum in this circumstance, keep the language to the expected formalities, avoid any sort of direct praise (however faint) and get out of the hive's nest as soon as possible.

"the whigs are praising the queen now, are they?"
"indeed. has the whole world gone mad?"

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/full-text-trudeau-toast-queen-1.3340584

jplondon
no. actually, there are liberals (of the large and small-l variety) who see the role of the crown in a constitutinal monarchy.

in fact, i would argue - as a small-l liberal at all times and a large-l liberal on occasion - that personal liberties are best safeguarded in a constitutional monarchy.

i appreciate your historical take on the subject, but, just as democrats and republicans are the reverse of their historical antecedents, liberals are not the direct descendants of their whig progenitors.

any more than today's canadian conservatives bear the slightest resemblance to their 'tory' roots, even going back as recently as two decades.

and, given that, it is possible to share common values - particularly since the definition of the two modern parties is no longer rooted in their differing expectations of parliamentry government.

again, with the exception of the current interation of the conservative party, which sees parliament as an obstacle.

jessica murray
i don't think the differences between the modern parties and their historical roots are, in practice, are as large as you're suggesting.

consider, for example, what we call "free trade". standing in 1988, it seemed strange to see the liberals oppose it (that is, after all, what the term "liberal" actually *means*) and the conservatives (with their history of tory protectionism) support it.

but, if you look at the agreement, it is actually very much closer to the idea of tory protectionism than it is to the idea of free trade. there wasn't really a change in substantive position, so much as the term "free trade" went through a standard orwellian newspeak process to be converted into it's antithesis.

he last election was, at it's core, a choice between increasing authoritarian government under harper or a return to parliamentarian democracy under the liberal party. i don't think this was a corollary. i think it was the direct ballot question.

i also don't understand how you could argue that a constitutional monarchy (where the queen has no power at all) has any effect on the enforcement of rights. not that it's good or bad, but that it's at all remotely relevant...

i mean...

i don't think there's a really strong *anti*-monarchy streak amongst liberal supporters any more, so much as i think that liberal supporters mostly consider the issue dealt with after patriation.

if put it up to a direct plebiscite amongst liberal voters, i'm sure you'd find a hefty majority would support severing all ties. but, it's not a vote driver, either because it's been swept aside as an issue of little substance. a crisis of any sort would no doubt bring it back up, but for now the monarchy is just largely seen as an irrelevance - perhaps a mildly annoying one, but an irrelevance nonetheless. so, it's like - abolition of the monarchy as the head of state if necessary, but not necessarily abolition of the monarchy as the head of state.

so, i don't think a toast in malta is going to really swing anybody's vote or upset anybody.

but, i *do* think that the government ought to be more concerned about distancing itself from the monarchy than cozying up to it. it's that kind of lingering thing that is currently under control, but has the potential to become a tinder box.

under the proper circumstances, i'm certain the ndp could win an election on the issue. it's more a question of avoiding those circumstances.

Patrick Wilson
The patriation you seem to think dealt with the matter only really gave us the power to amend. In Trudeau's '82 Charter, to change the head of state requires the unanimous agreement of both the House of Commons and Senate—all members, as well as unanimous consent of all the provinces’ legislative MLA's. To change that rule requires the same. Good luck with that.

jessica murray
section 41 does not refer to unanimous consent within each body, it only refers to the unanimous consent of all bodies. there is nowhere in canada where support for the monarchy is a populist position. excluding the senate, the various bodies would need to reject an amendment of this sort at their own peril. while it may not be the easiest task, i think it would be a lot easier than repealing the senate. if a crisis were to be set off, i think it would actually be very difficult to fight against abolition - and any party that does so would likely walk out of the situation utterly ruined, even if it succeeds in the short run.

but, the point is that it's the power to write our own laws that is really at the heart of the issue. we today have absolute sovereignty in any functionally meaningful sense. so, it's hard to really come up with any reason why we should be putting any resources into fighting to eject the queen as a nominal head of state when she has no ability to interfere, anyways.

but, that doesn't mean that liberal supporters are gung-ho about the monarchy, or that we're going to interpret cozying up to the monarchy as something that is "ok". it just means there's more important things to concern ourselves with - so long as that actually remains true.

jplondon
well, if we are going to wander off into 'free trade', let me simply say this:

any 'free trade agreement' that requires more than 4,000 pages to codify is anything but 'free'. it is an industry unto itself.

to your original point, though.

i am guilty of not making myself as clear as i might have. my original point should have been this: given its diminishing influence over parliament - beginning at least since the bill of rights,1689, and accelerating since, the monarchy has become less and less of a point of difference between 'tories' and 'whigs' and especially their successor parties in canada.

the differences between 'liberals' and 'conservatives' in their modern, canadian iterations has devoved largely into symbolism. the romantic attachment of either party to the crown (if any) doesn't interest me except as an historical artifact. my concerns there are more a matter of constitutional form.

in short, i don't think the crown matters enough to either party to get worked up over.

with respect to the crown as a bulwark against incursions onto civil liberties by the state, i think my concern there is more a matter of seeing how matters such as lgbt rights and same-sex marriage, for example, have become political footballs by an elected, american head of state.

i don't like social or moral issues subject to the vicissitudes of electoral politics. if we are to have a head of state, let's have one with as little political influence as possible.

and, having none, or next to none i think our model for a head of state is spot on.

jessica murray
i think it's a very complicated question as to whether the president has more or less power than the prime minister. but, i don't think many people that are advocating for the abolition of the monarchy are also advocating for the creation of a presidency; those are rather different positions. i would certainly be opposed to the creation of a canadian presidency, even as i advocate for the abolition of the monarchy.

regarding same sex marriage, that was something that happened here as a consequence of our court system, which is more powerful than the american court system. that's a consequence of a couple of parts of the constitution, including the division of powers. it's certainly a difference in framework. but, i can't see how it's reducible to the existence of a constitutional monarchy.

while i take your point that your position is to prefer a system where power is divested, i just don't see how abolishing the monarchy has much to do with that at all. while i oppose the idea of a canadian presidency, i realize that he's much less powerful than the prime minister in a lot of ways.

now, what i was getting at is that if you look at the narrative of the liberal party since mazkenzie and papineau and through to laurier and mackenzie-king and all the way up to trudeau and chretien, the idea of severing ties to the british monarchy is inherently intertwined with the history of the party, and the country, itself. i don't know how you can claim there's no difference. it was one of the primary differences! there's many complicating factors, such as the liberal party's historical connection to french and irish canadians. but, it's smack dab in the middle of the narrative of the country: a conflict between liberals and tories over the question of british association. and, that itself is precisely the historical narrative of tory-whig differences from the very start of the parliamentary process, as it applied to a distant colony on another continent.

i do not believe that the liberals have retreated from this position, even if i think trudeau's personal history may be somewhat intertwined with a traditionally tory perspective, due to his background as a canadian aristocrat. but, i don't think he changes the party on this. rather, i think the party changes him. in the end, it must. and, don't be surprised if it happens near the end of his mandate - in ten, fifteen years time - that the younger trudeau finishes the job and severs ties entirely. that would be a proper historical narrative.

i'll again point out that it was _exactly_ the narrative of the last election, as well. in some sense, it's remarkable. i don't even think that the narrative still exists in britain, if we can even speak of liberal democrats as "whigs" at all. but, harper presented himself from the start as the quintessential old tory: a "strong leader" to "guide the economy". this is absolute toryism, to the letter. and, trudeau did nothing less than present himself as the absolute foil to this, by promising free votes in parliament and a decentralization of power out of the pmo.

again: that wasn't a sideshow. it was the direct ballot question. and, it was nothing more or less than the classic whig-tory division over the nature of authoritarian government.

Patrick Wilson
Why, then, was the Meech Lake accord defeated by one member of the MB legislature voting no if unanimity was of all members was not required ? You guys are the experts; I just want to understand.

jessica murray
it was about timing. manitoba had to meet a deadline. in order to meet a deadline, it had to skip public consultation. in order to skip public consultation, it had to pass a unanimous vote. elijah harper didn't kill the meech lake accord, so much as he voted to force public consultations on it - because he thought pushing it through without consultations was undemocratic. this prevented manitoba from meeting the deadline, which would have forced other legislatures to also hold public consultations, as their own mechanisms had timelines attached to them, as well.

it was clyde wells that really killed the accord by refusing to allow a vote on it at all

Red_Deer_CatMom
No, historians are going to look back at this and interpret it as a young Prime Minister being friendly and respectful toward an elderly Queen who he met decades before as a child, and even then she'd been Queen for over 20 years.

Is that too "greek" to understand?

jessica murray
no. but it's maybe a little bit barbaric.

i will, however, concede that it may be true - but only if the man turns out to be the dunce his opponents claimed he was.

otherwise, one would think he has defined perspectives about the institution that transcend his experience as a child.

or, at least one would hope for as much.

i mean, there's a picture of me somewhere sitting on brian mulroney's lap at a christmas party. i was about 8 or so. i had no idea who he was. i didn't care, either.

it doesn't affect my opinion of him, today.