In which one of our favourite democratic socialists repurposes his anti-populist vehemence into pro-monarchy passion.

Brian Topp

May 4, 2023

As I write this, King Charles III is about to be crowned, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is waging a media campaign against him, shopping an internet poll that suggests that a majority of Canadians would vote against recognizing him as the King of Canada.

As we can see by the declining scale of its Parliamentary appropriation, the CBC isn’t very good at making friends among any of Canada’s political parties.  It is therefore entirely in its tradition to now court royal vengeance through these shocking acts of lèse-majesté.

However, since our national broadcaster seems determined to offend its last remaining audience (senior citizens, who generally like the monarchy) by provoking the debate, let’s bite.

Should Canada keep the monarchy?

I say yes, because we need the monarchy to defend our democratic institutions from Canada’s present Conservative Party.

This may seem an odd thing to say, since the Conservative Party we once had was the principal spokesperson for the British connection; defender of the monarchy; upholder of our heritage and traditions; and keen to celebrate all visiting royals.

John Diefenbaker was never happier than when he was hosting Queen Elizabeth.

Provincial conservative parties turned many of our provincial legislatures into temples worshiping the Crown. The Alberta Legislature, for example, is encrusted with paintings and flags celebrating our country’s British, royal and military traditions — gigantic portraits of King George and Queen Mary still dominate the rotunda.

But that party is dead and buried — corrupted and destroyed by Preston Manning and Stephen Harper. Replaced by a hardening right-wing populist reform party in all but name, pursuing culture war memes and (increasingly) the agenda of Canada’s growing “convoy” politics. Canada’s current Conservative Party has left behind the British connection and is finding its inspiration today from the south, in the Trump Republican Party, and in the hard-right populist parties of continental Europe.

John Diefenbaker was never happier than when he was hosting Queen Elizabeth. 

Parties like that look for enemies — individuals and groups — to vilify. Parties like that aren’t overly concerned with accuracy and truth, to be polite.

And parties like that only care about power, not the enduring and historic value of either our democracy or our institutions. In this, they are the opposite of conservatives. As Mr. Trump in the US and various populist right-wing leaders in Europe have demonstrated, they do not believe in guardrails, norms, or any limit to what they can do in office.

Parties like that also don’t concede potential positions of power to worthy diplomats, university chancellors, broadcasters, astronauts or Indigenous leaders — the sorts of people we are used to seeing as our Governors-General.

Parties like that act to seize those offices, and then to exploit them to pursue their no-guardrails agenda.

That being so, if we exchanged the Crown for an elected presidency, our “party like that” would run a populist right-wing candidate to get control of its inherent authority. And in a first-past-the-post system of the sort we insist on using in Canada, they could win the office with a fraction of the vote. And then we would have minority rule under a modern hard-right populist Conservative, in office to supposedly serve as the referee of our entire political system.

No thanks.

I don’t think trading King Charles for someone like Jason Kenney or Pierre Karl Péladeau would serve us well. We could, of course, put up new guardrails to prevent this — insisting that our new president be a ceremonial one, appointed and not elected. But what, then, would be the point of the change?

And how would we populism-proof the office from a future Parliament controlled by, say, a coalition “Conservative”/Bloc Quebecois government like we had under Harper for the first half of his run?

It is one of the ironies of our political history that it would have been safe to dispense with the monarchy when we had normal political parties, including a blue one that would have defended the Crown to the death.

But since that is no longer true, let us keep the monarchy — in general, to defend our democracy and our democratic institutions. And specifically, to ensure the highest office in the land is never corrupted into assisting minority rule by Canada’s convoy party.

Contributing writer Brian Topp is a partner at GT & Company, chair of the Broadbent Institute and teaches at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. He is a former national president of the NDP and was chief of staff to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.