National Affairs
Why not just relax and enjoy it?
Claire Hoy

With Prince Charles and his wife Camilla currently visiting Canada, the usual suspects, i.e. the champions of Republicanism, are working overtime attempting to convince us all that we'd be better off without having any formal ties whatsoever to our country's basic history.

A group calling itself Citizens for a Canadian Republic, for example, recently dispatched an urgent news release claiming that the Royal visit "raises serious questions."

The most serious, apparently, is that the planned protests by a small group of rogue Quebec separatists during the Prince's visits to Gatineau and Montreal is "proof of the monarchy's threat to national unity."

Oh,please. "Proof." Imagine radical separatist being upset at anything that reminds them of our British history.

Who would have thought? And who, other than complete dolts, would consider this as a "proof" (of a) serious ...threat to national unity?"

These are the same protesters who are horrified at the sight of an English word on a sign, and who were outraged at the thought of recognizing the anniversary of the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, arguably one of the most significant battles in North American history, and the very foundation of our country.

It also was the battle which, contrary to the mores of the day, allowed for the then existing French culture not only to survive but to flourish.

The other "serious questions" about the Royal visit, we're told, is that it "costs about a million dollars a day to host the Queen," a figure, in the context of multi-billion dollar budgets, is barely noticeable and, in my view, well worth the cost.

Then there is the crowd favourite, the fact that public opinion polls are reputed to show that the majority of Canadians "are firmly against the continuation of the British monarchy, including 70 percent of those under the age of 40."

It is true that the most recent poll, conducted for Canwest News Service and Global National late last month, found that 53 percent said Canada should end its constitutional ties to the monarchy after the Queen dies and 49 percent said we should abandon our constitutional monarchy structure altogether and become a republic, like our friends to the south, with an elected head of state.

In addition, 60 percent said the Queen and the Royal Family should have no formal role in Canadian society, and that they "simply celebrities and nothing more."

Ask yourself this: should we really decide on the very nature of our constitutional democracy based solely on the current likes and dislikes of 1,005 people who happened to talk to the pollster - likely less than 10 percent of the people the pollster called, since more and more people have no interest in talking to pollsters these days?

And what of those opinions? How many are offered by people who have absolutely no idea why our constitution is as it is? Not that it is necessarily their fault. Face it, this is a country where only three provinces - that's THREE - make Canadian history a mandatory high school topic, a shameful statistic which shows no respect or recognition of how we came to be the great country that we are.

But this typical CBC hubris might have better served the country had Mercer asked Canadians what they know about their own country.

Americans are taught their own history. Canadians aren't. But then, such an effort wouldn't appeal to the latent anti-American sentiments of the chattering classes and instead of generating cheap humor it may have underscored the serious ignorance of our own history.

And for those who think that maintaining our current constitutional ties raises "serious issues" we have only to look at the efforts of then prime minister Brian Mulroney in trying to rewrite the constitution, and how those efforts brought to country to the brink of breaking up.

I suspect that even those people in the poll who want to nix the monarchy and who understand our history, and who gave more than two seconds of thought to the question, would, when it comes down to it, rather let sleeping dogs lie than renew the whole spectre of Meech Lake revisited.

Canada is a proud and independent country. Our recognition of our history through the monarchy is not a threat to our independence in any way.

There is no good reason to risk re-opening a constitutional crisis based simply on the republican dreams of a few zealots and the collective ignorance of public opinion polls.

Why not just relax and enjoy it? The worst than can be said is that those ties do no harm.

The best is that it shows we are proud from whence we came.