The more Canadians talk about the monarchy, the more the consensus is strengthened that Canada needs its own head of state. I've always thought the monarchist effusions of the Harper government, for all that they may rally the base and dismay the rest of us, are generally contributing to that evolution of opinion in Canada.
But now the government seems really to be pushing Canadians toward abolition. as Philippe Lagassé demonstrates at the Maclean's website.
Monarchist lore always insists that the Crown is truly Canadian, not some leftover British anachronism. But the latest Harperian legislation on the crown declares that no, the Crown truly is British, and we just have some leftover, warmed-over hand-me-down version of it. Of course that is true enough, but it is not what monarchical preservationists often admit so clearly.
Update, February 4: via Aaron Wherry, this is Australian constitutional scholar Anne Twomey's devastating analysis of the Canadian parliament's response to what seems to be growing into a succession crisis for the Canadian head of state. She demonstrates, in fact, that the Canadian legislation only means that Canada is consenting to Britain changing its line of succession -- not that they need or want our assent. The Canadian malie-priority line of succession apparently remains unchanged.
