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The monarchy means that prime ministers, who are generally only directly elected by people in a small geographic constituency, get to exercise the power of a he

The monarchy means that prime ministers, who are generally only directly elected by people in a small geographic constituency, get to exercise the power of a head of state, via the monarch. Even weirder in this case, the prime minister (not directly elected by the general populace) appointed an Governor General (not elected at all) to a position with monarchic powers, and that power was used against him.

3pt14159 4y ago
I know this seems weird to outsiders, but as a Canadian I quite like it. Having PMs elected by MPs means that it is harder for a single rabble rousing politician to sweep to power and distort the use of, say, the military. Having Governers General appointed by PMs, and confirmed by the monarch, means that someone outside of politics (usually a well respected figure like a university president or astronaut) holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called. Since it's via appointment, the monarch doesn't bear the brunt of the public rage for it. And since the monarch must confirm the GG it means that the position can't be stuffed with an obvious political hack. It jives better than it sounds it would jive. It's like checks and balances with as many arguments and gridlock. As an aside, I feel the same way about the Notwithstanding Clause[0] of the Canadian Constitution. It's a useful tool to diffuse hard issues that can't be used against the public to stop them from voting or speaking and since it automatically expires after a short, preset time the power is ultimately in the hands of the electorate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...
- amanwithnoplan 4y ago
  >someone outside of politics [...] holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called This seems like only a theoretical red line. If/when the GG does anything against the advice of the PM it's a crisis moment. There was a bit of a media fuss in 2008 but then the GG just did as she was told, no?
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Is your system notably different from most parliamentary systems? The PM is usually selected by seeing who can put together a large enough coalition of parties, in terms of the sum of MPs in those parties, right? Is the difference that your MPs actually vote, rather than it being assumed that they follow their party leadership, or something like that? But I imagine the parties must have a way of keeping their MPs in line… I mean that isn’t how it works in the US of course but I was under the impression our system was more unusual. Parliamentary systems seem quite popular. (In the US it often seems like we’ve got this weird old version of Representative Democracy XP, while most of the rest of the advanced democracies have updated to Representative Democracy 10: Parliamentary Edition. We had a bunch of the original devs on staff, so they wrote a bunch of in-house patches, which let us keep XP running well past EOL, but now it turns out layering on patches like that results in an incredibly fragile system and we can’t update anything without possibly taking down the whole system.)
  - SllX 4y ago
    Well, it’s more like if XP had never died and was seeing continuous ongoing development. The kernel isn’t patched often, but the layers above are very very actively maintained by Congress, State Legislatures, Governor’s Mansions, the White House and a diffuse network of courts from SCOTUS to the lowliest traffic court in the little towns that can’t really afford them but charge obscene fines to maintain their traffic courts. If you’re only interested in XP’s kernel rather than the rest of it, you’re going to have a bad time.
- derefr 4y ago
  In est, you can think of the GG’s appointment as being done by the Sovereign — just with the nomination process delegated to the country’s current PM in order to minimize the Sovereign’s workload (especially for the Commonwealth, where they don’t live anywhere near the country themselves, and so don’t have an independently-legible candidate pool to choose a GG from. Back when Canada first became independent, appointing a GG independent of the PM would have meant a transatlantic voyage!) Likely, if these countries were only just de-colonizing and ratifying constitutions today — where the existence of an intelligence service with global reach, directly reporting to the Sovereign, can be assumed — then the GG appointment for each country would be probably be done directly by the Sovereign, with MI6 analysts doing the nominations and then the countries’ PMs (or trusted delegate cabinet ministers) merely doing recorded interviews for the Sovereign to watch and evaluate.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    > you can think of the GG’s appointment as being done by the Sovereign — just with the nomination process delegated to the country’s current PM in order to minimize the Sovereign’s workload Is there are practical difference between this description and just saying that the country's PM does the appointment? I guess one test would be what happens if the sovereign decides to override the PM. What happens then?
- rfwhyte 4y ago
  As a fellow Canadian I f*cking HATE it. Hereditary monarchies are pure unabashed evil. Monarchs only hold their positions because some ancestor of theirs was a better murderer than everyone else. They have massive wealth / land holdings, huge incomes and tremendous influence in politics and other spheres, despite not being elected nor actually earning any of their ill-gotten gains. That being said, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the benefits our current system affords, though there's precisely ZERO reason those functions need to be performed by a monarch. There are other ways to achieve the same results without needing to prop up and pander to the spoilt, entitled children of some long dead yet highly effective murderer.
  - ulrashida 4y ago
    Agree in principle, but it's not quite as cut and dry as one might hope. The most prominent example of this are the various Indigenous matters the country is still working through. For many of these peoples they did not create agreements with the Canadian government, but rather with the monarch of the day. Over time we will likely disentangle ourselves, but it is definitely a multi-faceted question.
  - 3pt14159 4y ago
    Well, I make no bones about the fact I loved the Queen. So take this with as much salt as you think you need, but I honestly think that there isn't really a better solution than what we have. Queen Elizebeth did not want the role of monarch. She literally prayed to God when she found out that she was in the direct line of succession. She asked for a brother, so she wouldn't have this heavy burden of responsibility. If we want a single, final, sole, human decision maker I do not see how we can accomplish this without a monarchy that doesn't come with the massive downsides of attracting those that have a lust for power. That the monarchy is essentially toothless in all but the most dire circumstances is a feature not a bug. It's like the folks in the military that get slated to man the nuclear weapons silos. Very few want the job because they know that they're only need in the very rare circumstance where the whole world is on the line. It's illiquid power. As for the rest of it, the holdings, etc. I looked at the Queen as essentially a guardian of nature and an encourager of those in the military, intelligence and of the many charities that exist across The Common Wealth. Yes, she had many fancy dinners, but we got more than what we paid for. Whether encouraging a single little girl to become a doctor when she grows up or slapping a good-hearted wealthy guy on the back when he donates a colossal fortune to helping orphans the return on investment is obvious. Fifteen minutes of her time yielded (and continues to yield) tremendous return.
rgavuliak 4y ago
> not directly elected by the general populace Why does this matter? A Prime minister is the result of a general populace choice.
- MagnumOpus 4y ago
  I think OP means the prime minister has to be voted in by his own party's members of parliament - and OP trusts the integrity and foresight of 300 MPs more than that of the unwashed general electorate. (He might have had a point 50 or 100 years ago when the majority of MPs took pride in integrity and public service and weren't mostly full-time party hacks and climbers of the greasy pole...)
- anonymous_sorry 4y ago
  It's a factor, but in a general election voters have to balance multiple considerations. From which local candidate is going to be a good advocate for my area, via which policy platform is best, all the way up to who should have the nuclear codes. And then the candidate Prime Minister you (partially) based your decision on might resign, and the MPs of the governing party will pick a new person to exercise those powers, with no recourse to the electorate. This is not theoretical. In the UK it's happened twice in the last six months.

3pt14159 4y ago

I know this seems weird to outsiders, but as a Canadian I quite like it. Having PMs elected by MPs means that it is harder for a single rabble rousing politician to sweep to power and distort the use of, say, the military. Having Governers General appointed by PMs, and confirmed by the monarch, means that someone outside of politics (usually a well respected figure like a university president or astronaut) holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called. Since it's via appointment, the monarch doesn't bear the brunt of the public rage for it. And since the monarch must confirm the GG it means that the position can't be stuffed with an obvious political hack. It jives better than it sounds it would jive. It's like checks and balances with as many arguments and gridlock. As an aside, I feel the same way about the Notwithstanding Clause[0] of the Canadian Constitution. It's a useful tool to diffuse hard issues that can't be used against the public to stop them from voting or speaking and since it automatically expires after a short, preset time the power is ultimately in the hands of the electorate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

amanwithnoplan 4y ago
>someone outside of politics [...] holds the final red line about whether or not an election must be called This seems like only a theoretical red line. If/when the GG does anything against the advice of the PM it's a crisis moment. There was a bit of a media fuss in 2008 but then the GG just did as she was told, no?
bee_rider 4y ago
Is your system notably different from most parliamentary systems? The PM is usually selected by seeing who can put together a large enough coalition of parties, in terms of the sum of MPs in those parties, right? Is the difference that your MPs actually vote, rather than it being assumed that they follow their party leadership, or something like that? But I imagine the parties must have a way of keeping their MPs in line… I mean that isn’t how it works in the US of course but I was under the impression our system was more unusual. Parliamentary systems seem quite popular. (In the US it often seems like we’ve got this weird old version of Representative Democracy XP, while most of the rest of the advanced democracies have updated to Representative Democracy 10: Parliamentary Edition. We had a bunch of the original devs on staff, so they wrote a bunch of in-house patches, which let us keep XP running well past EOL, but now it turns out layering on patches like that results in an incredibly fragile system and we can’t update anything without possibly taking down the whole system.)
- SllX 4y ago
  Well, it’s more like if XP had never died and was seeing continuous ongoing development. The kernel isn’t patched often, but the layers above are very very actively maintained by Congress, State Legislatures, Governor’s Mansions, the White House and a diffuse network of courts from SCOTUS to the lowliest traffic court in the little towns that can’t really afford them but charge obscene fines to maintain their traffic courts. If you’re only interested in XP’s kernel rather than the rest of it, you’re going to have a bad time.
derefr 4y ago
In est, you can think of the GG’s appointment as being done by the Sovereign — just with the nomination process delegated to the country’s current PM in order to minimize the Sovereign’s workload (especially for the Commonwealth, where they don’t live anywhere near the country themselves, and so don’t have an independently-legible candidate pool to choose a GG from. Back when Canada first became independent, appointing a GG independent of the PM would have meant a transatlantic voyage!) Likely, if these countries were only just de-colonizing and ratifying constitutions today — where the existence of an intelligence service with global reach, directly reporting to the Sovereign, can be assumed — then the GG appointment for each country would be probably be done directly by the Sovereign, with MI6 analysts doing the nominations and then the countries’ PMs (or trusted delegate cabinet ministers) merely doing recorded interviews for the Sovereign to watch and evaluate.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  > you can think of the GG’s appointment as being done by the Sovereign — just with the nomination process delegated to the country’s current PM in order to minimize the Sovereign’s workload Is there are practical difference between this description and just saying that the country's PM does the appointment? I guess one test would be what happens if the sovereign decides to override the PM. What happens then?
rfwhyte 4y ago
As a fellow Canadian I f*cking HATE it. Hereditary monarchies are pure unabashed evil. Monarchs only hold their positions because some ancestor of theirs was a better murderer than everyone else. They have massive wealth / land holdings, huge incomes and tremendous influence in politics and other spheres, despite not being elected nor actually earning any of their ill-gotten gains. That being said, I agree with you wholeheartedly about the benefits our current system affords, though there's precisely ZERO reason those functions need to be performed by a monarch. There are other ways to achieve the same results without needing to prop up and pander to the spoilt, entitled children of some long dead yet highly effective murderer.
- ulrashida 4y ago
  Agree in principle, but it's not quite as cut and dry as one might hope. The most prominent example of this are the various Indigenous matters the country is still working through. For many of these peoples they did not create agreements with the Canadian government, but rather with the monarch of the day. Over time we will likely disentangle ourselves, but it is definitely a multi-faceted question.
- 3pt14159 4y ago
  Well, I make no bones about the fact I loved the Queen. So take this with as much salt as you think you need, but I honestly think that there isn't really a better solution than what we have. Queen Elizebeth did not want the role of monarch. She literally prayed to God when she found out that she was in the direct line of succession. She asked for a brother, so she wouldn't have this heavy burden of responsibility. If we want a single, final, sole, human decision maker I do not see how we can accomplish this without a monarchy that doesn't come with the massive downsides of attracting those that have a lust for power. That the monarchy is essentially toothless in all but the most dire circumstances is a feature not a bug. It's like the folks in the military that get slated to man the nuclear weapons silos. Very few want the job because they know that they're only need in the very rare circumstance where the whole world is on the line. It's illiquid power. As for the rest of it, the holdings, etc. I looked at the Queen as essentially a guardian of nature and an encourager of those in the military, intelligence and of the many charities that exist across The Common Wealth. Yes, she had many fancy dinners, but we got more than what we paid for. Whether encouraging a single little girl to become a doctor when she grows up or slapping a good-hearted wealthy guy on the back when he donates a colossal fortune to helping orphans the return on investment is obvious. Fifteen minutes of her time yielded (and continues to yield) tremendous return.

rgavuliak 4y ago

> not directly elected by the general populace Why does this matter? A Prime minister is the result of a general populace choice.

MagnumOpus 4y ago
I think OP means the prime minister has to be voted in by his own party's members of parliament - and OP trusts the integrity and foresight of 300 MPs more than that of the unwashed general electorate. (He might have had a point 50 or 100 years ago when the majority of MPs took pride in integrity and public service and weren't mostly full-time party hacks and climbers of the greasy pole...)
anonymous_sorry 4y ago
It's a factor, but in a general election voters have to balance multiple considerations. From which local candidate is going to be a good advocate for my area, via which policy platform is best, all the way up to who should have the nuclear codes. And then the candidate Prime Minister you (partially) based your decision on might resign, and the MPs of the governing party will pick a new person to exercise those powers, with no recourse to the electorate. This is not theoretical. In the UK it's happened twice in the last six months.