Senate expenses climbed to $7.2 million in 2023, up nearly 30%
Senators in Canada claimed $7.2 million in expenses in 2023, a nearly 30 per cent increase over the previous year.
It wasn't long ago that Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, claimed members of the Royal Family had made overtly racist comments about the skin colour of their first-born child.
The implication was clear: That there was concern at the heart of the monarchy over how a baby who may look different from the rest of the family because of his biracial mother would fit in.
The fallout was huge. But reactions were largely split between people who saw it as a sign of institutional racism in the monarchy and those who thought the couple had made the whole thing up. After all, there was no hard evidence to back up the claim.
This time, there are papers.
Britain's Guardian newspaper this week unearthed documents, buried in the U.K. national archives, which revealed that the Queen's courtiers had banned ethnic minority immigrants and foreigners from holding clerical positions at Buckingham Palace until at least the late 1960s.
According to the report, the Queen's chief financial manager told civil servants in 1968 that "it was not, in fact, the practice to appoint coloured immigrants or foreigners" to clerical roles, but they were allowed to be hired as domestic servants.
The palace has not clarified when the policy ended, only telling CNN in a statement that "claims based on a second-hand account of conversations from over 50 years ago should not be used to draw or infer conclusions about modern day events or operations."
The investigation also revealed that decades ago, the palace used a parliamentary procedure known as "Queen's consent" to obtain an exemption from U.K. legislation aimed at preventing discrimination in the workplace -- including the hiring of people based on their ethnicity. The Queen is still exempt from those laws today, the Guardian reported.
"The Royal Household and the Sovereign comply with the provisions of the Equality Act, in principle and in practise," the palace told CNN in its statement. "This is reflected in the diversity, inclusion and dignity at work policies, procedures and practises within the Royal Household."
What is missing from these statements is any apology for past racist policies, or insight into the steps the Royal Family plans to take to right those wrongs.
This silence from the Queen's inner circle will not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the behaviour of the palace. Queen Elizabeth is a very traditional monarch who rarely make public statements. She is of a generation that believed remaining silent on almost all issues was the best way of preserving the dignity of the crown.
This strategy has largely served the monarch well during her 69-year stint on the throne, though its success is in part a result of the Queen enjoying enormous popularity among the British public, many of whom accept that she is a woman of a different generation and don't expect her to change.
But the palace reaction will be disappointing to the growing chorus of people calling for change, at a time of racial reckoning in the U.K. and across the globe. And for the younger generations of royals, the Queen's decades of silence could make their lives harder when the time comes for the crown to be passed on.
Some of the younger royals have spent the past decade-plus being public figures, speaking out on issues such as mental health, climate change and equality. This has largely been supported by younger British citizens who have not grown up in the same deferential culture as their parents and grandparents.
Now, it will be more difficult for younger royals to square their public image of enlightenment with the failure, as of now, to condemn their family's institutionally racist hiring policy in the past. It will be particularly hard for Prince William, second in line, who said publicly in response to Harry and Meghan's racism allegations that the royals were "very much not a racist family."
All of this matters because of the unwritten contract that exists between the monarchy and its subjects.
The Royal Family can only be guaranteed of its existence if the public supports it. In the Oprah Winfrey interview, Harry revealed how "scared" members of his family are "of the tabloids turning on them." While the prince might have overestimated the influence that newspapers have over the public, his view of the importance of public relations to his family is correct.
The point at which this all becomes dangerous for the royals is when the public demands greater transparency and accountability, but the palace digs its heels in.
"That is why public opinion plays such a big role," said Catherine Haddon, constitutional expert at the think tank Institute for Government. "With increasing loss of deference in society and increasing pressure for greater transparency, it is hard for the monarchy to stick to the old ways of doing things."
Unlike the claims of racism and neglect made by Harry and Meghan, these employment practices are provable. They do not paint the current monarch in a favourable light, and it's also worth noting that these policies existed during the lifetime of the first in line to the throne, Prince Charles, who is supposedly a more modern royal than his mother.
Worse for the monarchy, there is a chance it could give those on the fence about the Sussexes' contemporary allegation pause for thought: if current senior royals were able to turn a blind eye to racist policies once, is it really implausible they would make racist comments about the colour of a baby's skin?
Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University, is not optimistic the story will shift public thinking around the monarchy in any serious way.
"These debates are not about rational thinking or evidence. People will probably put it into the context of it being historical and of its time," Andrews told CNN. "The Royal Family has a terrible record on race, but no incident has radically changed thinking before, so why would it now?"
Andrews' analysis will probably be accurate in the short term: it's very unlikely that Brits are going to turn on their Queen any time soon. But the combination of hard evidence of racism at the heart of the monarchy and a younger generation that finds such behaviour inexcusable will make the monarch's style of silent leadership impossible for her descendants who will one day sit on her throne.
Senators in Canada claimed $7.2 million in expenses in 2023, a nearly 30 per cent increase over the previous year.
Police say a baby and a pedestrian suffered non-life-threatening injuries after a vehicle struck a baby stroller and dragged it for two blocks before stopping in Squamish, B.C.
Former NDP leader Tom Mulcair says that what's happening now in a trash-littered federal park in Quebec is a perfect metaphor for how the Trudeau government runs things.
Individuals being barred from entering Ontario’s legislature while wearing a keffiyeh say the garment is part of their cultural identity— and the only ones making it political are the politicians banning it.
The RCMP says it has uncovered a plot by two men in Montreal to sell Chinese drones and military equipment to Libya illegally.
The U.S. Justice Department announced a US$138.7 million settlement Tuesday with more than 100 people who accused the FBI of grossly mishandling allegations of sexual assault against Larry Nassar in 2015 and 2016, a critical time gap that allowed the sports doctor to continue to prey on victims before his arrest.
The Vancouver Canucks will be without all-star goalie Thatcher Demko when they face the Nashville Predators in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series.
A 35-year-old man wanted in connection with the murder of Toronto resident 29-year-old Sharmar Powell-Flowers nine months ago has topped the list of the BOLO program’s 25 most wanted fugitives across Canada, police announced Tuesday.
The Canadian Medical Association is asking the federal government to reconsider its proposed changes to capital gains taxation, arguing it will affect doctors' retirement savings.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.
Molly Knight, a Grade 4 student in Nova Scotia, noticed her school library did not have many books on female athletes, so she started her own book drive in hopes of changing that.
Almost 7,000 bars of pure gold were stolen from Pearson International Airport exactly one year ago during an elaborate heist, but so far only a tiny fraction of that stolen loot has been found.