Queen Elizabeth II, the longest reigning monarch of the British crown, passed away at the age of 96 on Sep. 8, 2022.
This presents an interesting question for commonwealth countries such as Canada and Australia, who each have been constitutional monarchies under the British crown for well over a century.
Has the time come for Canada to drop the crown and become a republic? In my opinion the answer is yes, and this is the best chance we’re going to get for a while.
With the Queen alive, the thought of abolishing the monarchy within Canada was seldom discussed and most Canadians were content with preserving the status quo. But with her deceased and Charles taking the crown as King, debates have been renewed in Canada and Australia as to what is the best path forward.
The truth of the matter is that people around the world aren’t going to be as receptive to Charles at the helm opposed to Elizabeth who reigned for over 70 years.
The time has come for Canada to become a republic akin to France or the United States and to drop this antiquated political system. We as a country deserve to be represented by a head of state who actually resides in Canada. Not some symbolic, tokenistic monarch who lives across the ocean and likely couldn’t even tell you the first thing about Canada or the issues facing Canadians.
The majority of countries on the North and South American continents are run by republican presidential political systems. Nineteen out of 22 countries. The only outliers being Canada, Suriname, and Belize.
When I think of monarchies in the world, the most prominent one aside from Britain that comes to mind is Saudi Arabia. A country that has a despicable record on human rights and is renowned for building their country on the backs of slave labour and being (allegedly) affiliated with the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001.
Now obviously, the British monarchy doesn’t have as such a horrid record on human rights in the past few decades in comparison to Saudi Arabia. But the Indigenous community in Canada might have a differing opinion on that matter.
The Canadian government, the catholic church, and by extension the British monarch ran residential schools from Canada’s conception up until 1996. These residential schools ripped indigenous children away from their communities, their families, their culture and sought to anglicize them. So it’s safe to assume that the indigenous community doesn’t share the same rose tinted glasses towards the monarchy as others might.
Obviously uprooting an entire political system and replacing it with a new one isn’t something that can just happen overnight. But unless Charles abdicates the throne or passes away in the near future, this seems like our best chance as a country to finally become independent.
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