5 Reasons to Abolish the Crown

The Crown, and our current structure of government in which four levels of government manage the country, is at the heart of many of Canada’s most contentious issues. But when the Crown does get discussed, the discussion is about the more visible aspects of the Crown. like the role of the Governor-General, proroguing Parliament, the monarchy, etc. Other aspects usually escape the news and have to be found in academic literature, like the fact that the provincial governments have the same source of authority as the federal government. Or that no one really knows where First Nations governments fit within the federal-provincial-municipal structure.

A lot of people fixate on the fact that Canada is a democratic state with an unelected British Queen, but I don’t particularly care about that. The monarchy is just a symptom of the Crown-based system of government. Arguing that the monarchy is undemocratic is fair game, but the monarch has no real power left. They wave, sign papers, and spend the Sovereign Grant. Any recommendation to abolish the monarchy needs to include a discussion of what to do with the Crown.

I have read a thing or two about the Crown, and I do not recall anyone who recommended totally abolishing the Crown in Canada. Google “abolish the crown Canada” and you will find plenty of articles about monarchy, but none of them are explicitly about abolishing the Crown.

So here are my five reasons why Canada should seriously consider abolishing the Crown and find a new source of sovereign authority.

1. The treaties with the First Nations are signed with the Crown. Eliminating the Crown would remove the shaky legal basis for Canada’s usage of its current territory. The Canadian government would have to come to the negotiating table with a fair and honest, or at least better, deal for the Indigenous peoples, and for once the First Nations would hold real bargaining power. Imagine what would happen to the economic situation of the First Nations if Canada had to pay market-rate rent.
2. The Senate is composed of people who are undemocratically appointed by the Crown. Getting rid of the Crown opens the door to redesigning the federal government. The Senate can technically be abolished without abolishing the Crown, but they are both massive undertakings that require the consent of all ten provinces. We’ll get a 2 for 1 deal by lumping them together. The new federal government should be a fully elected, rep by pop, unicameral body.   
3. The map of Canada should be redrawn to eliminate an entire level of government. Again, this could happen without eliminating the Crown, but it requires consensus from provincial governments who would lose their source of authority, so let’s make it a 3 for 1 deal. Divide up the country into about 30-40 provinces and get rid of municipal governments altogether. We’ll have two levels of government that have clearly defined areas of interest. The federal government will deal with matters of national interest, while powerful local governments that can tax, spend, and borrow will deal with local issues. Disagreements over resource development policy, transit, health care, etc. can never be eliminated, but at the moment there are simply too many levels of government and too many grey areas between federal and provincial jurisdiction. I’ll rant about that later.
4. The office of the Governor General will be abolished. Is there any current need (forget historical reasons) for the governor-general? The PM will move into Rideau Hall and 24 Sussex will be turned into the Canadian Museum of Asbestos and Mould.
5. I won’t have to listen to non-Canadians uninformed complaints about Canada’s monarchy.  

There are a few downsides to getting rid of the Crown.

1. It could destroy Canada. The uneasy alliance of disparate provinces under Ottawa exists because creating a British-flavoured federal state in northern North America was preferable to the alternatives that existed between 1864-1949. Asking what type of government of Canadians prefer now opens the doors to the idea that Canada will never make sense. 1980 and 1995 would pale in comparison.  
2. Canada loses important precedents. No Constitution can delineate powers in all possible eventualities, so we would have to restart the process of setting precedents.
3. There is no guarantee of equitable treatment, no matter how we structure government. Ontario may still dominate the country, French Canadians may never feel like equal partners, pipelines may never get built, Indigenous rights may never be fully respected, and the territories will continue to melt.

Before any of this happens, the role of the First Nations in the decision-making process concerning the Crown needs to be settled. I could take a limited perspective and argue that, as nominally sovereign entities that have treaties with the Crown on a nation-to-nation basis, they are not involved in deciding whether that Crown should be abolished. Or I could argue that, as the Canadian citizens who have the strongest invested interest in the Canadian Crown, they must be seriously involved in the process. This is an issue for the 634 First Nations to decide themselves, which would be a massive undertaking.

Thomas Jefferson argued that prudence dictates that governments should not be disposed of for light and transient reasons. Abolishing the Crown because 41% of Canadians do not want King Charles III is a light and transient reason. Hopefully the country never hits a point where Canadians feel the need to violently overthrow the current system, but I wonder if a serious rethinking of our system could add value to “what to do” discussions.