Re – “It is time to leave the monarchy behind”

Oct 18, 2017

I am so disappointed to see you falling for the uninformed, populist notion that the monarchy is irrelevant to modern democracy in Canada (“Time to leave the monarchy behind”, Oct. 5.) Dismissing the Governor General’s role as merely ceremonial is an all too common view, but it is a serious mistake: it actually puts our constitutional democracy at risk.

This risk was demonstrated with frightening clarity in December of 2008, when then Governor General Michaelle Jean let herself be hoodwinked into suspending the recently-elected Parliament, preventing it from performing what my father, the late constitutional expert Eugene Forsey, affirmed as the House of Commons’ “most essential function” – deciding who forms the government. Ms. Jean failed to understand and carry out her constitutional duty to allow our elected representatives to vote confidence or otherwise in Mr. Harper’s government. That failure by the Crown’s representative saddled Canadians with a constitutionally illegitimate government through the more than two years that followed (for more detail, see https://helenforsey.wordpress.com/articles/government-and-the-constitution/)

In our Canadian system of parliamentary democracy, the Crown, as my father repeatedly explained, “represents the common interests of the citizenry as a whole, not the partisan interests of any government or party.” John Ralston Saul makes the same point: “The Governor General is the protector of the Crown; that is, of the people. It is a role above power, a concept of the state above interests.” Saul also notes that Aboriginal leaders regularly invoke the authority and honour of the Crown to defend the treaties and the nation-to-nation relationships that mere governments have almost always failed to uphold.
It is time for Canadians to get over their adolescent rejection of the monarchy and realize the truth of Eugene Forsey’s affirmation: “The Crown is the embodiment of the interests of the whole people, the guardian of the Constitution, ultimately the sole protection of the people if MPs or ministers forget their duty and try to become masters, not servants."

Helen Forsey