Wednesday, October 12, 2022

#ABOLISHMONARCHY
Majority of Canadians want referendum on monarchy ties after queen’s death: poll


The coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, adorned with a Royal Standard and the Imperial State Crown is pulled by a Gun Carriage of The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery, during a ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall. Wednesday Sept. 14, 2022. Thousands of members of the public are expected to come to pay their final respects at her lying in state. 
(Isabel Infantes/pool photo via AP)© Provided by Global News

Majority of Canadians want referendum on monarchy ties after queen’s death: poll

Nearly 60 per cent of Canadians want a referendum held to determine whether the country stays tied to the British monarchy, a new poll suggests — despite nearly equal support both for and against preserving those ties.


The Ipsos poll, conducted exclusively for Global News just days after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, found support for a referendum on the future of the monarchy has gone up since last year, from 53 per cent in 2021 to 58 per cent today.

"(Canadians) would like to have their say," said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs.

Whether support continues to grow for holding a vote on the issue will likely depend on "the performance of King Charles III and what people feel about him after we get out of this period of mourning" for the queen, Bricker added.

Ipsos interviewed over 1,000 Canadians online earlier this week for the survey.

The results suggest King Charles has a lot to prove with the Canadian public.


While 82 per cent of respondents said they approve of Queen Elizabeth's performance as monarch, just 56 per cent agree Charles will do a good job in her place. Even worse, only 44 per cent said they view Charles favourably, with that support dipping to just 27 per cent for his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort.

"There's never been a great deal of enthusiasm about King Charles," said Bricker, who pointed to the bruising his reputation took in the aftermath of his divorce from Princess Diana.

"People aren't hostile about the new King, but they're certainly not as enamoured with him as they were with his mother. ... That 82 per cent (support) is not just a sympathy number for Queen Elizabeth. She consistently got numbers like this for as long as we've been polling.

"It's a very, very hard act to follow."

‘We shall all miss her immensely’: Canadian MPs pay tribute to Queen in special Parliament session

Notably, Canadians appear eager to skip over King Charles' right entirely and enter the era of William, Charles' son and the new heir apparent.

Compared to 47 per cent of survey respondents who believe King Charles and Camilla will help keep the monarchy relevant to Canada, 60 per cent feel the same about Prince William and Princess Catherine — though that number has fallen seven points since 2016.

Both William and his brother Harry, as well as their respective wives Kate and Meghan, earned a majority of support from respondents compared to their father. William scored the highest support rating among them, with 66 per cent saying they view him favourably.

Read more:
As King Charles III begins his reign, what legacy will he bring to the British throne?

Overall, only a slim majority (54 per cent) said Canada should sever its ties with the monarchy now that Queen Elizabeth has died. That number largely aligns with other polls held both before and after the queen's death.

That majority was largely driven by respondents in Quebec, where 79 per cent of those surveyed agreed Canada should separate from the monarchy. In English Canada, support for such a move only reached 46 per cent on average, with only Saskatchewan and Manitoba seeing a slight majority.

Younger Canadians under 55 years old also drove animosity toward the monarchy, with 57 per cent saying the bond should be severed compared to 49 per cent of older Canadians.

Those relative splits in opinion were also seen when survey participants were asked if they agreed with arguments both for and against keeping the monarchy in Canada.

Poll: Majority of Canadians not feeling impacted by Queen’s death


A small majority (between 55 and 61 per cent) agreed that the constitutional monarchy helps to define Canadian identity and should continue as the current form of government, that keeping the monarchy helps separate Canada from the United States, and that it is important to Canadian heritage.

Yet the roughly same range of respondents also agreed that the royal family should not have any formal role in Canadian society and should not be seen as more than celebrities; that Canada is not a truly independent nation if it stays tied to the monarchy; and that the monarchy is too linked to the history of colonialism and slavery to have a place in modern Canadian society.

"All of this suggests that Canadians are not particularly intense on this issue one way or another, though they are somewhat concerned about it," Bricker said.

"There's definitely more room for the anti-monarchy side to grow ... as one generation replaces the other. But right now ... these symbolic feelings are not enough to trigger something decisive yet."

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between September 13 and 14, 2022, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1,001 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

GLOBAL NEWS - Sean Boynton - Sept 16, 2022




Messy process to abolish monarchy likely ‘nonstarter’ amid pressing problems: Trudeau

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the complicated process that would come with any attempts to abolish the monarchy are likely a "nonstarter" for Canadians amid pressing national problems like inflation, climate change and the need for continued work on reconciliation.


Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau arrives at 10 Downing Street for a bilateral meeting with Britain's Prime Minister Liz Truss, in London, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2022. 
(Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)

In an interview with Global News from London, U.K., where he is part of a Canadian delegation attending the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, Trudeau reflected on what her death means for this country, and why he thinks Canadians have bigger things on their minds than abolishing the monarchy.

"We are able to have all the strength of debates that we need to have in Canada without worrying about the overarching stability of institutions because they are embodied by structures that have been in place for hundreds of years," Trudeau said in the interview, which airs in full Sunday on Global National.

"Canadians have been through a lot of constitutional wrangling over the past decades. I think the appetite for what it would take when there are so many big things to focus on, is simply a nonstarter."

Among the big challenges, he pointed to are inflation and the cost of living, climate change, greater clean technology jobs, reconciliation with Canada's Indigenous peoples, and global affairs in what his defence minister, Anita Anand, earlier this year called a "darker" and "more chaotic" world.

Last week, Ipsos polling conducted exclusively for Global News just days after the death of the queen suggested nearly 60 per cent of Canadians want a referendum on the future of the monarchy.

That's an increase from last year, when the sentiment stood at just over half of respondents.

At the same time, that poll suggested there is nearly equal support among those who favour both preserving or eliminating the ties to the monarchy.

In particular, the polling indicated King Charles III has a lot to prove with the Canadian public.

While 82 per cent of respondents said they approved of Queen Elizabeth’s performance as monarch, just 56 per cent agreed Charles will do a good job in her place. Even worse, only 44 per cent said they view Charles favourably, with that support dipping to just 27 per cent for his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort.

“It’s a very, very hard act to follow," said Darrell Bricker, CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs, last week.

However, abolishing the monarchy would require a feat of political maneuvering that has rarely been seen throughout the years, requiring unanimous agreement among the House of Commons, the Senate and all of the provincial legislatures.

Read more:
Queen Elizabeth death: What will her passing mean for the future of Canada’s monarchy?

Trudeau said his impression of the new king is that he will be "steady and engaged and thoughtful like his mother was."

"He knows Canada very well. He spent so much time there. He's been active on protecting the planet, on engaging with people around the world. He's very interested in Indigenous reconciliation," Trudeau said.

"There's a lot of good work to do that he is going to be able to to lead, within the limits and the position he has. But I think his commitment to listening, engaging, learning, embodying a thoughtful, generational path forward rather than short-term political preoccupations is exactly the kind of frame that I think democracies like ours need."

Read more:
Ahead of queen’s funeral, governor general says King Charles ‘committed to reconciliation’

Gov. Gen. Mary Simon, who is also in London as part of the delegation for the queen's funeral, expressed similar thoughts in an interview with The West Block's Mercedes Stephenson on Sunday.

Simon, who is the first Indigenous person to hold the position as the monarch's representative in Canada, described King Charles as “very different” from his mother, while being "very committed to reconciliation … between Indigenous peoples and the Crown."

“He has told me directly that he’s committed to working on these issues, and hopefully I’ll have a lot of opportunities to continue working with them," Simon said in the interview.

Video: Gov. Gen. Mary Simon remembers the queen’s calm, steadfast leadership

Trudeau added he believes that rather than being an impediment to reconciliation, the Crown is "a powerful tool" in those efforts.

"It's going to be a part of the path forward. Appointing the first Indigenous Governor-General, for example, was a key step forward in reconciliation," he said.

"Having a King who is making deliberate efforts to learn, to understand, to embody a new relationship with Indigenous peoples that we're developing as a country is essential."

Video: Queen Elizabeth death: Can King Charles III keep the monarchy alive?

Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, Trudeau's spouse, also weighed in.

"Symbolic institutions are not just symbols. They also have the power to validate, recognize and legitimize people's emotions and their lives and what they have gone through," she said.

"And I think that holds a great strength and depth."

The symbol that the monarchy represents, the prime minister added, also gives Canadians a powerful opportunity to "position ourselves in the sweep of history" as the Crown passes from the longest-reigning monarch in British history to the first King in 70 years.

"We know how fast everything moves and how complicated, how troubled the world is right now," he continued.

"This is a moment to take stock, to reflect on where we're going and what we're focusing on and how we continue to be there for each other — in a world that is changing, but still has symbols of steadiness that we can anchor ourselves to."

Amanda Connolly - Sept 18, 2022
— With files from Global News' Sean Boynton.

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