Charles III will officially become the King of Canada
The ceremony will take place in a month and a half, but there is already a lot of controversy about the forthcoming event.
On May 6, the son of Elizabeth II, who has ruled since 1952, will be enthroned as the king of the Commonwealth. Canada will have a new monarch for the first time in 70 years. His Majesty's coronation will take place at Westminster Abbey in London.
"As a constitutional monarch, His Majesty King Charles III doesn't "rule" the country. However, asCanada´s Head of State, he remains a fundamental part of Canada's system of government and our sense of identity," says a statement on the Canadian government website.
As soon as this news appeared on the Canadian prime minister's official Twitter, comments began to flood in from those who see differently Canada's relationship with the British Crown.
Here are just a few of them, vividly characterizing the crack in society on this issue (author's punctuation respected): "Money would be better spent on OUR poor rather than an entitled billionaire", "we don’t want to be a commonwealth anymore", "Sorry busy sorting my sock drawer that day!", "Time to become a free republic! Cut the ties with the colonial masters!! We’re in the 21st century!!"
Opponents of the monarchy and this relations between Canada and Britain are indeed numerous. Many Canadians do not want any dependence on Britain, either legislatively or ceremonially.
For proponents of the monarchy, however, the role of His Majesty as the living embodiment of the Crown is to unite Canadians and to give a collective sense of belonging to the country. The opposing camp claims that Canadians are ready to live independently. To them the very mechanism of dependence of an entire nation on a family that lives on another continent seems obsolete. In these contradictions lies the intractability of the problem now.
According to a recent poll, about half of the Canadian population is ready to reconsider the relationship between Canada and Britain. The Canadian government has not in recent years taken to comment on the royal family scandals with the Duke of Sussex Harry and Meghan Markle, nor on the need to review the Canadian-British relationship.
Breaking relations with the monarchy, if it comes to such measures, could take years. It would require enormous legal procedures, a refusal to give constitutional power to the Crown, which would entail a change in the Canadian law. Such procedure could begin with a constitutional amendment, that would require the approval of Parliament and all ten provinces.
