Not everyone in Canada was happy to see King Charles deliver the speech from the throne this week. But I was. Not because I’m a staunch monarchist. I’m not. I’d be quite happy to have a thoroughly Canadian Head of State, and perhaps, with our recently awakened sense of national identity and patriotism, that’s something we can aspire to in the future. But in the meantime, the fact that our elected government announces its plans and aspirations through a person speaking from an enduring and abiding throne is one of the things that clearly separates us from Americans. The King, his predecessors and surrogates, represents an unbroken chain that dates to the Magna Carta, which limits the power of the head of state and asserts the primacy of the rule of law. The founders of the great American republic who opted to break the final bonds of monarchy, inadvertently set stage for the would-be king who now occupies what passes for the American palace on Pennsylvania Avenue. When the King spoke in Parliament last week, he said words written by a government chosen by the people. His own opinions are largely unspoken and frankly, irrelevant. The same cannot be said of the United States, where every utterance of the head of state produces chaos and uncertainty. Canadians are not better than Americans – and our system of government has it faults, including the concentration of power on the Prime Minister’s Office – but we are proudly and profoundly different. And no where is that more apparent than in the role, characters, tone and behaviour of the two men who wear the crowns.
