Today, I’m working on a co-authored paper that will compare how the Canadian and Australian systems of federalism have historically dealt with the issue of the monarchy. Canada and Australia are unique in the Commonwealth in that they are both federations and monarchies. In fact, they are compound monarchies. Despite the similarities, these two federations have developed very different approaches to changing the rules governing the royal succession: in Australia, the state governments have been involved in the process via a first ministers’ conference and the passage of resolutions in the state parliaments. In Canada, the federal government has legislated unilaterally without even consulting the provinces. Our paper seeks to explain this historical pattern by looking at the constitutional histories of the two countries.
Our paper is historical, not legal, as we are legal laymen. However, it is informed by the on-going debate about the constitutionality of Canada’s Succession to The Throne Act, 2013. This statute is designed to make it possible for the Duchess of Cambridge’s eldest child, irrespective of gender, to inherit the Canadian Crown. Equivalent laws have either been passed or are in process in other former “White Dominions” of the British Empire. As you may know, the constitutionality of the Canadian law is currently being challenged in Canada’s courts. In my personal view, this piece of legislation, which purports to change the rules governing the inheritance of the Canadian crown, constitutes a substantive change to the Canadian constitution about which the provincial governments should have been consulted. [My co-author, who is a specialist in Australian political history, is agnostic on the issue of whether the 2013 Canadian statute is unconstitutional]. The Canadian federal government’s decision to change the rules of succession without the involvement of the provinces is incompatible with the explicit meaning of Section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982, as a distinguished Australia legal academic has pointed out.
The exclusion of Canada’s provinces from the revision of Canada’s rules of succession is particularly anomalous because they have, in general, greater powers than those the states in Australia’s relatively centralized version of federalism enjoy. Moreover, one of Canada’s provinces is recognized as a “nation,” a status claimed by no Australian state. My own personal view, which won’t appear in our academic paper, is that if Australia’s sub-national units, the states, have the right to have a say in the alteration of the rules of the royal succession, surely Canada’s provinces should also have been participants in the process.
The Past Speaks 