It's a meme in the Canadian monarchist lobby that Canada could not abolish the monarchy even if it wanted to, because the crown is so deeply embedded into our constitutional fabric that it cannot be removed.
Barbados, another Commonwealth parliamentary democracy, has just decided to mark its fiftieth anniversary of self-government.by becoming a republic next year. Somehow the relatively small corps of legal and constitutional experts in Barbados expects no difficulty in making the necessary tweaks to the Bajan constitution. In Parliament the government "does not expect any opposition," and a spokesperson for Her Majesty confirms it's a decision for Barbados to make for itself.
Hmm. Canada marks the 150th anniversary of confederation in 2017. I bet we could assemble enough lawyers to produce the necessary tweaks by then.
(Interesting things you notice on Wikipedia: Barbados has an upper house rather resembling Canada's, except that some appointments are made by the prime minister, some by the leader of the opposition, and some by the governor-general at his sole discretion. Not sure I like that last bit, but I guess if the governor general were a real head of state rather than one appointed by the prime minister, it could be an option.)
UPDATE: Here's a weird one, a plan for unrestricted movement of people between countries of the Commonwealth.
"We are virtually the same people," CFMO director James Skinner told CBC NewsExcept wait. It isn't for the Commonwealth, exactly It's just Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Britain. Those African, Caribbean and Asian members of the commonwealth may also have the "shared language, government, and common law legal system," but nope, they don't make the cut.
