The provinces would immediately turn to their well-worn playbook. Our practice of using omnibus amendment bills for major national reforms shuts the door to a stand-alone amendment that would remove the King as head of state and simultaneously create an office to replace him.Īssume the Trudeau government initiated an amendment to replace Charles with a ceremonial president selected by a supermajority vote of both houses of Parliament sitting jointly. Even before patriation in 1981, we were wedded to bundling together multiple reforms into one enormous mega-constitutional amendment bill. Third, we have grown unable to make major national amendments on a single constitutional subject. Today, territories would again expect a seat at the table. Second, the Northwest Territories and Yukon both voted in the Charlottetown referendum even though the Constitution does not include territories in the amendment process. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. We have never successfully used this impossible procedure.
If we want to get rid of the King, we must use the most difficult one: the unanimity procedure requiring approval of both houses of Parliament and each of the country’s 10 provincial legislatures. The Constitution enumerates five amendment procedures, each growing increasingly more complex. The legal obligations alone are daunting. What makes our Constitution so hard to amend is a lethal combination of legal obligations and historical precedents that conspire to slay major reforms even before they are proposed. The problem is that we cannot become a republic without a constitutional amendment, and the Canadian Constitution is the world’s most difficult to amend. Like it or not, we are stuck with Charles and his heirs for as long as our current Constitution endures. Our Constitution has handcuffed us to the monarchy and thrown away the key. Our nationwide disapproval of King Charles raises an obvious question: why don’t we just replace him with a homegrown Canadian head of state? The sad truth is that we can’t. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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