No Reason for Canada’s Monarchy

Having a Queen is incompatible with Canadian values

This fall, the duke and duchess of Cambridge–Prince William and Kate Middleton—will be returning to Canada for their second visit.

The royal couple has not toured our country since 2011 and their return is a fitting occasion to re-examine the role that the House of Windsor plays in Canadian politics.

As a former colony of Britain, Canada has a history of claiming independence from its motherland. We chose to diplomatically negotiate our sovereignty instead of sparking a revolution like America did and fighting a war against the Crown.

Because of this, citizens of modern Canada are still living with the consequences of traveling along a slower and more peaceful route towards a becoming a sovereign nation.

Although the Queen—and by extension the House of Windsor—maintain a strictly symbolic influence over Canada’s political structure, the existence of a monarchy in Canada is still a violation of our values, such as equality, democracy, and cultural pluralism.

Canada cannot claim to uphold the virtue of equality if our country’s head of state is a foreign monarch who holds a position exclusive to those born into the House of Windsor.

Furthermore, the existence of a monarchy is incompatible with democratic principles and the ideal of all citizens being treated fairly and equally under the law. In a monarchy, the Queen or King is chosen based on their lineage, not elected based on their merits. Any monarch is exalted as a ruler who sits atop a highly hierarchical social structure simply based on their birth parents, which is certainly an anti-democratic notion.

Fairness and equality of opportunity are foreign in a hiercharchy, especially one that borrows the idea of a monarchy from the ancient social structure of feudalism, such as Britain’s.

It’s also difficult to maintain Canada’s desire for multiculturalism while the country’s head of state is limited to being a British citizen and an Anglican Christian.

The British monarchy is not only incompatible with Canadian values, it also embodies undemocratic governance, hereditary privilege, inequality, and classism—all of which are values that Canadians have rejected.