Last week marked the 91st anniversary of the Statute of Westminster, a British law that was Canada’s all-but-final achievement of independence from the United Kingdom.
It was enacted in 1931 on recommendations from the Balfour Report of 1926, which had declared that Britain and its Dominions—Canada et al—were constitutionally “equal in status.”
However, Britain still had the ability to amend the Canadian constitution, and Canada took time to cut its legal ties to England. Meanwhile, it adopted its own national symbols, like the Canadian flag, featuring the red maple leaf, which debuted in 1965.
So, the anniversary is hardly unimportant, especially now that Charles III is the new king, replacing the late and lamented Queen Elizabeth II, and a growing yet still quiet movement is underway to break entirely away from the monarchy and form the Republic of Canada.
It would be no easy task, beginning with the fact that all 10 provinces and territories must agree with the breakaway.
Barbados became a republic in 2021, replacing the British monarch as its head of state and severing its last remaining colonial bonds nearly 400 years after the first English ships arrived at the Caribbean island.
The new republic was born to the cheers of hundreds of people lining Chamberlain Bridge in the capital, Bridgetown, at the stroke of midnight. A 21-gun salute fired as the national anthem of Barbados was played over a crowded Heroes Square.
Sandra Mason, lawyer, politician and diplomat, was sworn in as Barbados’s first president in the shadow of Barbados’s parliament. She was previously the eighth and final governor-general from 2018 to 2021, the second woman to hold the office.
In other words, she was Barbados’ Mary Simon.
Me? I am okay with the status quo. I look south to the United States and see a divided republic now steeped in a boiling hatred that scarily showed its ugly head in the recent mid-term elections, and the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.
During both, politicians were screaming libels at one another.
Christian Walker, a conservative influencer and estranged son of Herschel Walker, posted a string of harsh tweets after his Republican father was defeated in Georgia’s majority-deciding Senate race. He slammed both his father and the Republican Party, accusing them of engaging in identity politics and betraying the party.
Christian, who quickly became one of the senatorial candidate’s fiercest critics during the election, described his dad a “backstabber,” claiming that “everyone with a brain begged” him not to run for office when former President Donald Trump called him “for months demanding that he run.”
“We got the middle finger,” Walker wrote. “He ran.”
Located as we are north of the United States, we have no choice but to bear witness to the socially dysfunctional presidential republic to our south—still caught up in centuries old black-white racism, weekly killings because of its persistent devotion to the right to bear arms, and a dangerous form of overly and overtly partisan politics.
To me, it’s a mess.
Even the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with its wanton spending of billions and disregard for the country’s massive debt and deficit do not dampen the love of country.
There are disappointments but no serious rifts, even as Alberta toys with ignoring certain federal decisions or mandates.
Remember the efforts of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sweating over the political Rubik’s cube of Canada in his frustrating attempt at the Charlottetown and the Meech Lake Accords, and one could imagine the trials—and the costs—of Canada becoming a republic.
It works now as a constitutional democracy.
Don’t fix what’s not yet even close to being broken.
