Barbados ditched the Crown last year. Now that the Queen is gone, could Canada do the same?

Queen Elizabeth’s death this week has already sparked many important questions: What kind of King will Charles be , when will the money change, even, what will happen to the corgis ? But one of the most controversial ones, with the passing of the popular monarch, is: Could this be the time to cut ties with the royals? Or at least to re-examine those ties? It’s something the Caribbean nation of Barbados has recently done, severing its connections to the Crown and shifting from constitutional monarchy to republic in November 2021. Experts say this moment will open up conversations here in Canada about making a similar move but practically, it would be messy to unravel these long-standing relationships. Melanie Newton, an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto, who grew up in Barbados and served as a youth representative on the Barbados Constitution Review Commission in the late 1990s, said there was “overwhelming” public opinion that country should become a republic. “And then in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd and at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, the government of (Prime Minister) Mia Mottley ... decided that this was really the moment,” she said. “The time to finally figure out a path to do this.” The country gained independence in 1966, after a colonial history stretching back to the 17th century. But like Canada, Barbados remained a constitutional monarchy, with the Queen as its head of state. It remains a part of the Commonwealth — a loose collection of countries that are mostly former territories of the British Empire, including Kenya, Bangladesh and Australia. The nation’s first president and new head of state, Sandra Mason, was sworn in at a ceremony in the capital of Bridgetown on Nov. 30, 2021, attended by both then-prince Charles and the most famous living Barbadian, Rihanna (the singer was declared a national hero during the transition). In his speech at that ceremony Charles acknowledged the “appalling atrocity of slavery,” and the country’s role as a hub for the slave trade, under British rule. This history of colonialism and slavery, as well as Brexit, and the Windrush scandal — when many older people who’d come from the Caribbean to work in Britain decades before were stripped of their rights — all played a part in this wave of public sentiment toward ditching the Crown, Newton said. As well, there were not very many Barbadians left who remembered colonialism and “no longer any kind of tie there.” The island side-stepped a public referendum on the matter — a handful of other nations, including Australia, have had them and failed to win support for severing royal ties. This was partly because Barbados had a framework for the transition, Newton said, but also because the issue had already been “litigated in court of public opinion.” On Friday, in his first speech to his subjects as monarch, King Charles III did not address the possibility of further fracturing under his reign. But he did address the “deep sense of gratitude” his family shares with those in the United Kingdom, and alongside all the countries where the Queen was Head of State, in the Commonwealth and across the world, “for the more than 70 years in which my Mother, as Queen, served the people of so many nations.” Jonathan Malloy, a professor of political science at Carleton University, said Elizabeth’s death has opened up space for questions on the future of the monarchy in Canada that had been put off. “The longevity of the Queen allowed a lot of pent-up conversations to say, well, wait until the Queen goes ... Well, the Queen’s gone,” he said. “A lot of people are saying this is now a time to change, but although the person, the monarch, has changed, the system is completely the same as it was yesterday.” It would be possible, but tough practically for Canada to follow in the footsteps of Barbados, said Malloy. “It’s simply a massive job,” he said, likening connections with the monarchy to a computer operating system. “You don’t really think about it, but everything, particularly the legal system, is just based on this Crown.” It would require the agreement of all the provinces — and the “unspoken question,” said Malloy, is what does “agreement” even mean. “It would be hard to see us moving away from the monarchy without a national referendum at least,” he said, and individual provinces might also want them. Such a change would require strong political will, driven by public opinion. Unlike in places such as Australia — or Jamaica , whose government announced an intent to remove the crown as the head of state earlier this year — Malloy just doesn’t see this in Canada at the moment. Newton, however, said the Queen’s death could spark such discussions. “I think it certainly opens up really important conversations here and I think it’s a real chance for public education about what the concept of the Crown actually means.” There’s a “mythology” particularly among white Canadians about the “Crown as benign institution,” which is rooted in the belief that slavery did not exist in this country, she said. When in reality it was “a very important part of Canada’s economic and political history,” and “a foundation to the order of racial inequality here.” At the same time, as someone who lost her own grandmother during the pandemic, Newton recognizes that this is a sad moment for many. “I think her death is immensely significant,” she said. “And I think the conversation about a republic is really a separate one, from really thinking through what the legacy of Queen Elizabeth is.” May Warren is a Toronto-based breaking news reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @maywarren11