In the wake of That Interview on Sunday evening, the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to demand once again that we abolish the monarchy in Canada, usually with the same simplistic, hand-wavey assumptions that this is something that could be done at the drop of a hat.  It's not, given the realities of our constitutional amending formula whereby the unanimous consent of the provinces would be required, but beyond those particular considerations, there is another reason why it is unlikely we will ever be able to abolish the Canadian monarchy, which is quite simply that it is unlikely that we will ever be able to agree on what a post-monarchical Canada should actually look like.

This is not an unfamiliar problem.  Australia attempted a referendum in 1999 to abolish their monarchy, but quickly found that they could not agree on what should replace it, and the referendum failed.  In the time since, support for republicanism has waned steadily, so much that 57 percent support for a republic post-referendum has declined to 34 percent this January.  Support for the monarchy has also increased rather than just opposition to republicanism, which may reflect the realization that the current system works well and it's not worth the trouble of trying to fix what isn't broken, as opposed to simply chalking it up to the popularity of William and Kate.

Canada's proximity to the United States often gives people here a sense that we are somehow missing out on their political system and presidential politics, oblivious to just what the system actually entails or engenders.  That the last four years happened, culminating in an attempted insurrection by an outgoing president, seems not to register with many of these republican fans, assured that somehow, it'll be different here, no matter that we have not proven ourselves immune to the same populist impulses that plague that country (and have been known to preview some of it here, albeit in slightly less intense ways).  There is no doubt an element of the republicans in this country who would rush to imitate what they see in the US.

There has been another group of republican fans who seem to think that we could somehow imitate Ireland's presidential system minus the Easter Rebellion (probably).  Superficially, there is a lot to recommend in the model, given that it closely mimics our system of Responsible Government, and their president largely acts in a manner that is consistent with our governors general.  But while it may look like an easy enough system to imitate on the surface, the practical realities of such a change are likely not as widely appreciated given how very different the electoral context is in Canada.

While the Irish president is largely expected to be ceremonial and non-partisan, I have particular doubts that this could realistically be recreated in Canada for two reasons: culture, and logistics.  Ireland is fairly culturally homogenous, and while they may be bilingual as we are, they are not bi-cultural, as was the previous description for the relationship between Quebec and the rest of Canada, before multiculturalism became a Thing (which is actually something that sets off Quebec nationalists, who are paranoid that Québécois culture would disappear among the multicultural mosaic).  Trying to find a unifying figure to serve as a non-partisan president that would satisfy both English and French Canada is going to be particularly difficult and would likely wind up exacerbating tensions as a result.  The current system, whereby governors general alternate between Francophone and Anglophone vice-regals, is one of the more workable compromises of the current system that would be nigh-impossible to achieve under an elected office.

As for logistics, Ireland is the size of a postage stamp, and one could conceivably run a national campaign for the office without needing to rely on the existing partisan networks, most especially because of access to fundraising.  It is very, very expensive to run a national campaign in Canada because of the sheer scope of our geography, and political parties can fund leaders' tours because they have the access to capital that can make it happen.  Trying to run for a non-partisan office without access to those same networks would be a gigantic hurdle for anyone to try and overcome.  In fact, one of the reasons why the Fathers of Confederation abandoned the partially-elected nature of legislative councils when they created the Senate was because the province-wide elections for those positions had already become prohibitively expensive in the 1860s imagine what that would look like on a national scale today.  This is also why it would be exceedingly difficult to keep the post non-partisan, because the kind of logistical feats required to mount a presidential campaign would require the help of existing partisans and their networks.  In either case, it would absolutely taint the notion that whoever won could actually be non-partisan.

I also have a hard time believing that, given the cultural influences we are subjected to, that an Irish-style president could be content to be a ceremonial figurehead and not want to have some kind of electoral mandate to fulfil, which would inevitably bump up against the policy platform of an existing political party, creating friction and accusations that the supposedly non-partisan office did indeed hold partisan biases.  They would also want a budget to be able to fulfil those mandate requirements, which gets even messier given that it would essentially require going to the government for an allowance.  While the model looks good on paper, reality would soon intervene.

We have a system right now that works, regardless of what we think of the current office-holder or her heirs and successors.  It's a system that has survived bad monarchs, and it will again, because it's less about who wears the Crown than it is about the system itself.  Change for the sake of change rarely works out well, and unless a clearly articulated replacement can be agreed upon, agitating for abolition is a bit of putting the cart before the horse.  We should remember that most stable, prosperous, and functionally democratic countries are all constitutional monarchies, and it might be a good idea to hang onto a good thing.

Photo Credit: CBS

It's been a big week for economic data, and more to the point, for how those numbers are being spun for the public's benefit.  Conservative leader Erin O'Toole in particular is trying to establish that his is the party of sound fiscal management, and it's in his particular interest to make the numbers look as bad as possible, and to try and drive the narrative home that the Liberals are somehow incompetent economic managers.  The problem, of course, is that O'Toole and his MPs have been vociferously lying with statistics, but they've been aided in the task by a largely innumerate media that looks for narratives of doom and won't challenge the context of those figures.

The big news out of the week was the release of the fourth quarter GDP figures for 2020, which were surprisingly strong the second strongest in the G7.  One might suppose that this would be worth mentioning, but no, every headline and O'Toole press conference focused on the fact that on an annual basis, the country suffered the biggest hit to GDP since comparable records started being kept in the 1960s.  Never mind that our recovery from the depths of the pandemic-related downturn has been particularly strong, and that the preliminary estimate for January's figures were that they would grow and not contract in spite of the second wave of lockdowns and mockdowns across the country.  This should be good news relatively speaking but you'd be hard pressed to read that.

But while the bigger economic picture attracted the narrative of doom, there were other reports out that looked at the pandemic-related benefits like CERB in the face of wage losses, and the calculation that those benefits were outweighing the wage loss according to the statistical data, giving rise to the notion that perhaps CERB was too generous.  Of course, this would rely on those benefits only being CERB, but it wasn't it was also a number of things like increased Canada Child Benefit or GST credit payments, which absolutely helped those on the very bottom of the income scale, which makes it difficult to try to simply claim that CERB with its rather meager $500 per week payments was "too generous."

This is compounded by other reports, looking at the same StatsCan data, that show that the vast majority of job losses were among those earning below-average wages, and this should come as zero surprise because we know that this has been a demand-side downturn that has largely impacted service industries most especially wholesale and retail trade, and accommodation and food services.  Even more to the point, these are the kinds of jobs that disproportionately employ women and minorities, and the numbers confirm that they have been the worst impacted by this downturn.  It's one of the reasons why this is being termed the "she-cession" (along with the fact that women in other areas of the economy are being forced to drop out of the workforce for the sake of childcare), and why there is such a focus by this government around inclusive growth as the cornerstone of their recovery strategy.

What I found particularly difficult to swallow was O'Toole tweeting about this report, saying "I'm very concerned by the findings of this report.  I don't want any Canadian worker to be left behind or forgotten.  We need to get people back to work safely and quickly."  I'm having a hard time buying his concern for those being "left behind" because he and his party spent the summer railing that CERB was so generous as to be a disincentive to work never mind that in a global pandemic it was necessary to pay people to stay at home, and the fact that it was barely paying more than minimum wage.  If $500/week was indeed a disincentive, then perhaps the problem just might be the low wage rates themselves but his silence about that fact certainly makes it look like his concern is more about people accepting the benefits than the working conditions themselves.

Amidst all of these numbers are of course the deficit figures, which O'Toole again likes to trot out to make the claim that his party would be better economic managers, but I'm not sure there is enough of an attempt to look at the counterfactuals.  Could the money spent to combat this pandemic have been spent better?  Remember that speed and capacity are very real factors money needed to get to people as soon as possible once the lockdowns started, and incomes started to evaporate.  The EI system was too broken to effectively help Canadians in a timely manner, and there were physical limitations as to how fast they could kludge together mechanisms with the existing CRA system to get that money out to people.  It's hard to fathom how any other party or government could have operated any better in these circumstances.  The federal government also doled out eighty to ninety percent of all pandemic spending because of inability or unwillingness from the provinces, and this is certainly reflected in the more recent suite of pandemic benefits where it's the federal government giving bigger payouts to those areas affected by provincially-mandated lockdowns.

The fact that O'Toole has been getting cute about these statistics and others (the false comparisons around unemployment figures has also been of particular concern) is problematic enough, because lying with statistics is still lying.  But the fact that he has not moved away from his positioning for a bro-covery, and the fact that he continues to deride the government's approach to inclusive growth as being "an experiment" as opposed to tried-and-true conservative theories like trickle-down economics, is an indication that he's not actually paying attention to the very figures that he wants you to think he's quoting from.  He may preach about not wanting to leave people behind, but he's pushing policies that will actively harm the very people he says he's looking out for, which should be concerning for the voters he's trying to reach out to in order to win the next election.

Photo Credit: CBC News