Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Prime Minister is my Head of State

I don't care whether the Queen of England or the Governor General of Canada wants to refer to themselves as Canada's "head of state". I don't care. I defer the ultimate power over my dominion to my Prime Minister, be he Liberal or Conservative. I swear allegiance to my Prime Minister. Let the "royalists" squabble over bread crumbs. I could not care less than I already do. “Head of state” in title, but not in authority. Does the Queen have the authority to sack the GG?

Maybe it is because of my Scottish ancestry that I am resistant to the British Monarchy declaring themselves the ultimate ruler of my government. Call yourself whatever you want Michelle, but if she is developing a "God complex" this should be her last term at the post. Let's not let our public servants become too carried away with their own importance to our democracy (police, soldiers, paramedics, doctors, and firefighters notwithstanding).

Can we get on to the next subject please? This story has no legs, and nobody other than a few egg heads really gives a shit.

2 comments:

  1. You really should know and understand how our government is constituted before making such claims.

    The separation of "Head of State" from "Head of Government" is very important in preserving our freedoms (although we have a proxy lesson on that, the English Civil War) where the authority of the Crown was replaced by the authority of Parliament.

    While it is true that today the residual powers of the Crown are limited, they are very real and can be used to prevent us from falling off a cliff 9such as the "coalition fiasco").

    This is an imperfect system (as are all systems), but far better than most others in use, and far superior to ones where authority devolves to a single man or small clique.

    BTW, since the GG is the Queen's representative in Canada, HRH can indeed remove the GG, although in practice she defers to the advice of her senior elected minister in Canada and the Privy Council

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  2. Thank you for the constitutional history lesson. I honestly could not care less. I would favour the dissolution of the Governor General office. I swear no allegiance to the British crown.

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