Didn't they consider themselves British for quite a bit of the boat journey over and then maybe a few years after?
Historically we are a very complacent people. Probably has something to do with the embarrassment of riches inhabitants have enjoyed since colonization.
Tanoomba is stupid. The Queen had zero influence on that decision. The Governor General, who represents the Queen, made that call after seeking advice from Canadian scholars and experts, and never consulted with the actual Queen. The whole "the British Crown is the head of Canada's government" thing is a technicality at this point, and it's not even technically true. The Governor General is the head of state, not the Queen, depending on which constitutional scholar you talk to. In any case, if a huge constitutional crisis came about the Crown might get involved, but in all likelihood it would be all like "Why the fuck are you asking me? Figure it out for yourselves. You're big boys now!"
I don't know the specific, detailed reasons, but basically it boiled down to Canada being much, much smaller population wise and the British treating us a lot better after they lost the American colonies. Like has been said already, Canada slowly became more and more independent over the decades and centuries, and it was more or less sealed by our involvement in the two World Wars. Repatriating the constitution in 1982 just kind of sealed the deal, although those fuckers in Quebec still haven't signed it and every time the subject comes up the country nearly falls apart.
With as much land (resources) as you guys have, and as small a population to defend it, it's the way to go. California alone has over 3m more people than the entirety of Canada. That's crazy to me.
Absolutely true. I think a better comparison is the province of Alberta, with about 4 million people, is two and a half times bigger than Germany, which has about 82 million. However that being said, a significant portion of our land area is way the fuck up North. The three large territories make up 40% of the country, and only have barely over 100k people living in them, combined. And that's not going to change significantly, because outside of remote mine sites that will fly people in and out, there's little or no reason to ever live up there.
Hurr durr no fucking kidding. I didn't mean to imply that Micha?lle Jean called up the Queen and was like "Hey Lizzy, Micky J here. Stevie kind of screwed the pooch and needs you to call a time out so he can get his shit together. Is that OK?"
This is asinine. Why do we need a representative of the Queen? Why do we have to refer to her as the "Canadian monarch"? Why does she have "constitutional and ceremonial duties" in our country? If the answer to all of those questions is "because it's a symbolic vestigial link to a part of Canada's history, then why does she have the power tosave the prime minister's job when the will of the majority was to kick him out of office?It doesn't matter that Elizabeth II herself didn't have a say in that, her supposedly symbolic representative does have that power, which was conferred upon him/her by the Queen.Wikipedia_sl said:
You can do the same fun thing Australia does, how many Britians (double your population) can you fit into your country? We have a popular Australian Soap Opera here which used to have more British viewers than the entire poplation of Australia :O
Home and Away?
Because we can't even get Quebec to sign the Constitution as it stands without it turning in to an absolute shit fest, is why. And that's not solely because of Quebec. I was too young for Meech Lake and Charlottetown and don't know the details, but a lot of the other provinces were really fucking things up there too. Basically it is more or less impossible to make any changes to our Constitution for political reasons. On top of that, the ramifications for getting the Crown entirely out of our system of government and legal system are absolutely ENORMOUS. There's a reason damn near everything in our legal system is "Queen's Bench" this, and "Royal" that. Do you realize the enormity of reforming all that? We'd basically have to completely rebuild the vast majority of our governmental and legal institutions, from the ground up.
No, for all intents and purposes, the Queen has no voice in the government of Canada. You claimed that Harper asked for permission to prorogue "through" the GG. That's false. Categorically false. The GG made the decision herself after consulting with experts:
I understand that. But the role of the Governor general is to be the stand-in for the Queen while she's crumpeting or whatever in Big Ben. The GG's decisions ARE the Queen's decisions, officially, even if the Queen had nothing to do with them. I wouldn't even care if it was a purely symbolic position. But when the GG makes decisions that affect the future of the country, it's not symbolic any more, and if GG is an important position with important powers, nix the Queen association (even if it's superficial) so we can at least claim to be in control of our own country.
