King Charles, on the job at last, looking rather diffident, or perhaps just chilly because he was wearing a kilt, while addressing the Scottish Parliament (Photo: Scottish Parliament).
King Charles, on the job at last, looking rather diffident, or perhaps just chilly because he was wearing a kilt, while addressing the Scottish Parliament. Credit: Scottish Parliament Credit: Scottish Parliament

On Saturday, it became official.

King Charles III, the former Prince Charles, finally got the job he could have had in 2001 if the British monarchy had the same mandatory retirement age as the Canadian Senate, which, arguably, would have made sense.

I mean, you really shouldn’t have to wait until you’re 74-years-old to have your first day on a job you’ve been apprenticing for since you were in short pants!

Actually, that’s not quite right. King Charles already had the job. He qualified the moment his mom passed on. The coronation just makes it official, at a cost of £100 million or so.

It would appear, though, that the idea of having a British Monarch (possibly soon just an English monarch) as the King or Queen of Canada is nowadays greeted with a distinct lack of enthusiasm north of the 49th Parallel. 

There appears to have been some fondness for the late Queen Elizabeth around here. For her son, not so much. 

A recent Angus Reid Institute poll indicated 60 per cent of Canadians thought the country should do away with the monarchy altogether. Almost as many, close to half anyway, don’t particularly like the guy. They aren’t big fans of his wife either.

Yes, the mood of Canada just now is definitely republican. The mood of politically Conservative Canada, nowadays, is Republican, which is something different and considerably worse, and peculiar given this history of political Conservatism in Canada.

Be that as it may, I am here to tell you that Canada needs to keep King Charles III.

As that hero of neoliberals and other bad people, Margaret Thatcher, famously used to say about a number of ideas considerably worse than a constitutional monarchy, “There Is No Alternative (TINA).”

This will be self-evident if you are a genuinely patriotic Canadian — not that there’s anything intrinsically Canadian about the British Monarchy at this point in our history — and not one of those 1776 convoy fakers. 

I know, I know: We could have a president as head of state. We could even elect a president and be democratic about it too. 

But here’s the thing — it’s not that the optics of being subjects of a foreign monarch from a royal line that has plenty to answer for are so fabulous. It’s that when you hunker down and think about the theoretical alternatives, they are all likely to be worse upon application. 

I am in favour of keeping Canada a constitutional monarchy because, notwithstanding the sins of less-than-constitutional monarchs of the past, it is absolutely the best solution to the key constitutional problem caused by the Westminster Parliamentary system — which we are locked into for the foreseeable future by our Constitution. 

That is to say, it answers the question of how to resolve a minority standoff in the House of Commons or a provincial legislature. 

Were it available to Canada, the U.S. separation of powers system would leave the country in the same fix as the United States — government by a sclerotic institution incapable of making a decision or instituting a reform.

That idea appeals to extreme reactionaries on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border because they understand it makes positive change difficult. That’s why Preston Manning dreamed for years of a U.S.-style elected Senate to hobble the occasionally reformist instincts of the House of Commons. 

It is why the United States government is barely able to keep an agreement abroad or solve a problem at home, no matter how serious. Anyway, as noted, it’s not available to us without major constitutional reform, improbable at best and quite likely to be a disaster if attempted. 

Weirdly, as a result of TINA, it’s even possible to imagine we’ll feel the need to remain a constitutional monarchy with a British monarch after what’s left of the dis-United Kingdom has become a republic, which would be considerably easier to do in a unitary state like England than a federation like Canada.

Regardless, someone is bound to say that if we have to stick with the Westminster system or something similar (not a barrier to electoral reform, by the way) we could elect a president to do the monarch’s job of resolving deadlocks after a Parliamentary election. 

But an elected president would make resolving deadlocks inherently partisan and untrustworthy, which we can assume is why the French take to the streets every 55 years or so and smash nearly everything in sight! As a matter of fact, they seem to be doing that right now. 

Alternatively, as some Canadians suggest in their sillier moments, perhaps we should have a home-grown monarchy of our own. 

But who? 

Our historical ties to Britain solve what would otherwise be a terrible political ordeal of its own, after which we would have an inevitably less disinterested tie-breaker. 

Indeed, there is something to be said for a monarch so far away that an individual doesn’t really have enough of a stake in the place to get the royal knickers in a twist over a local issue, but near enough in this global village that the same individual can have a little influence over our local vice-regal personages.

Nor should we forget that the land on which we live here in Alberta is Treaty Land, and that the treaties were signed between First Nations and the British Crown. 

As for the currently unpopular Charles, there’s evidence that the guy is more simpatico with the fundamental beliefs of most Canadians. He’s definitely greener than your average monarch, and he’s unlikely to get all that worked up about drag queens – indeed, he’s a member of the Most Noble Order of the Garter!

So maybe he’ll grow on us. 

In addition, it is hardly necessary to say, Canada’s ties to the Crown are a powerful symbolic separation from our overbearing next-door neighbour that basically cannot be replaced.

Those ubiquitous crowns on nearly everything Canadian are no bad thing. 

A Canadian republic? It would be subsumed quickly in the crumbling, chaotic, dystopic, culturally imperialist train-wreck next door. 

We don’t have to love this king. But if we want to keep our country, we probably need to keep him around. 

So, as tepid as this may sound, Two cheers for King Charles III! Long may he reign!

David J. Climenhaga

David J. Climenhaga

David Climenhaga is a journalist and trade union communicator who has worked in senior writing and editing positions with the Globe and Mail and the Calgary Herald. He left journalism after the strike...