The King's Speech, Canadian version

Today Charles III opens the Parliament of Canada in person, only the third time the monarchy has ever done so: and the audience is Washington and world opinion

The King in right of Canada

At 11.00 am this morning (EDT: 4.00 pm in London), His Majesty The King will open the 45th Canadian Parliament in Ottawa and will deliver the Speech from the Throne in the Senate Chamber of the Parliament Buildings. As with the United Kingdom Parliament, every session of the Parliament of Canada begins with a Throne Speech written by the government, which sets out its legislative intentions for the forthcoming session. This is the first time the new parliament will have met after the federal general election on 28 April.

The constitutional formation of the Parliament of Canada is, understandably, very similar to that of the Westminster Parliament, being tripartite: the British North America Act 1867 defines the legislature as “consisting of the Queen, an Upper House styled the Senate, and the House of Commons” (which is the only other House of Commons in the world, apart from the UK’s). The King-in-Parliament as the ultimate legislative authority is represented by the necessity for bills to be granted Royal Assent in order to become acts, and by the exclusive power of the monarch to summon and dissolve Parliament. The government’s political agenda is delivered in the Speech from the Throne because it is His Majesty’s Government.

It is worth emphasising that Charles III is not opening Parliament as the British monarch, but as King of Canada; more formally, when acting at a federal level, he is the King in right of Canada, as the Crown is also the source of authority in Canada’s provinces. For example, when he is exercising his authority in the Province of Ontario to appoint ministers to the Government of Ontario, or to grant Royal Assent (performed through the Lieutenant Governor) to bills passed by the Legislative Assembly, he acts as the King in right of Ontario. (This means that the sovereign can sometimes in theory have formal legal dealings with himself at the interaction of the federal and provincial governments: agreements can be made between the King in right of Canada and the King in right of Ontario, or any other province.)

Charles is also, separately from his title in the United Kingdom, King of Antigua and Barbuda; King of Australia; King of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas; King of Belize; King of Grenada; King of Jamaica; King of New Zealand; King of Papua New Guinea; King of Saint Christopher and Nevis; King of Saint Lucia; King of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; King of Solomon Islands; and King of Tuvalu. Additionally, he is King of Gibraltar; King in right of the Bailiwick of Guernsey; King in right of the Bailiwick of Jersey; Lord of Mann; and, though not by heredity, Head of the Commonwealth.

While it is extremely unusual for the monarch not to open the UK Parliament in person—since 1901, the King or Queen has only been absent on six occasions—for obvious reasons it is equally rare for him or her to do so in Canada. The Speech from the Throne is usually delivered by the Governor General of Canada, the King’s representative in the country, currently Her Excellency the Right Honourable Mary Simon, a former civil servant and diplomat.

(From the Confederation of Canada in 1867 until 1952, governors general were usually senior political or military figures from Britain, like the Duke of Devonshire (1916-21), Lord Tweedsmuir (the author and politician John Buchan) (1935-40) and Field Marshal Viscount Alexander of Tunis (1946-52). However, the 18th Governor General, appointed in 1952, was Canadian diplomat Vincent Massey, who had briefly been a cabinet minister before serving as Canada’s Envoy Extraordinary to the United States and then High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. He was the first Governor General to have been born in Canada, and the first not to hold (or be heir to) a peerage title. Since 1952, all governors general have been born or raised in Canada—Adrienne Clarkson (1999-2005) was a refugee from Japanese-occupied Hong Kong while her successor Michaëlle Jean (2005-10) was a refugee from Haiti—but they still tend to have backgrounds as politicians, civil servants or other public figures.)

This will be only the third occasion on which the Speech from the Throne has been delivered by the monarch in person. Queen Elizabeth II opened the 23rd Canadian Parliament in October 1957 and the third Session of the 30th Canadian Parliament in October 1977. In addition, the third Session of the 13th Canadian Parliament was opened in September 1919 by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) on behalf of his father, George V.

In the beginning was the word

The origins of the Speech from the Throne—in the United Kingdom, His Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech or the Gracious Address, and informally the King’s Speech—is not wholly clear. Under the Tudor monarchy, the Lord High Chancellor or, if no chancellor was in office, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal would address Parliament when it assembled to explain the “cause of the summons”, or why Parliament had been summoned; it was not the practice for Parliament to sit effectively permanently until the Glorious Revolution in 1688/89. The King would be in attendance to open Parliament but would not usually speak at any length. After King James VI of Scotland acceded to the English throne in 1603, he chose to address Parliament in person at its opening, and first did so in March 1604. Initially his successor Charles reverted to the old practice of the Lord Chancellor giving the address, but as his reign wore on he spoke more frequently himself.

Monarchs had addressed Parliament before on many occasions, not only at the opening of a parliament or a session. Equally, the speech to a newly assembled parliament, explaining why it had been summoned and what the King wished to achieve, could be delivered by other office-holders than the Lord Chancellor. In the period before 1348 it was variously delivered by the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and the Archbishop of Canterbury, before it became standard for the Lord Chancellor, as presiding officer of the House of Lords, to deliver an address. However, speeches were made on the Lord Chancellor’s behalf by the Bishop of Winchester (1410), the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal (1431), the Bishop of Lincoln (1453, 1467) and the Bishop of Rochester (1472).

From 1604 to 1649, the King only addressed Parliament at the beginning of the parliament itself. After the Restoration in 1660, however, the monarch generally gave an address at the beginning each individual session of the Parliament. Until 1679, the King’s speech would be relatively short, after which the Lord Chancellor would give a more detailed description of the intentions of the government. During the reign of George I (1714-27), the Lord Chancellor read the Gracious Speech on the King’s behalf, as George’s English was poor. The Prince Regent, later George IV, opened Parliament on behalf of his father George III from 1812 before continuing to do so as King himself after 1820. However, after 1826 he ceased to open Parliament himself until his death four years later.

Queen Victoria generally opened Parliament in person for the first 25 years of her reign. After the death of Prince Albert, the Prince Consort, in 1861, however, she attended only seven more times in 40 years. In her absence, Parliament was opened by a Royal Commission, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) usually acting as one of the Commissioners, and the Lord Chancellor usually delivered the Gracious Speech.

The ‘Westminster model’ around the world

The exportation of parliamentary procedure and practice was one of the notable legacies of the British Empire. Speeches from the Throne, or some kind of equivalent proceeding, are a feature not just of the Parliament of Canada, but of the Parliament of Australia and the New Zealand Parliament, where they are usually given by the Governor General; of the provincial legislatures in Canada, where the Lieutenant Governor gives the speech; of the Canadian territorial legislatures, where the Commissioner carries out the function; in the Australian states and territories, where the Governor delivers the speech; and in some of the British Overseas Territories, Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the Governor also reads the address.

Perhaps oddly, given the greater distance, Elizabeth II gave the Speech from the Throne to the Parliament of Australia more often she did in Canada, in 1954, 1974 and 1977; while she delivered the address to the New Zealand Parliament on seven occasions—1954, 1963, 1970, 1974, 1977, 1986 and 1990. During her tour of Australia in 1954, she also opened new sessions of the Parliament of New South Wales, the Parliament of Tasmania, the Parliament of Victoria and the Parliament of South Australia. She also opened a session of the Parliament of New South Wales in 1992. (Unlike the state legislatures in Australia, it is not clear whether the monarch can fulfil the same role in Canadian provincial and territorial legislatures.)

What did he mean by that?

It is clearly not coincidence that the King is delivering the Speech from the Throne to open the new Canadian Parliament in person now. The royal visit is for two days only, 26-27 May, and the King and Queen are only visiting Ottawa. Charles III is 76 years old and still receiving treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer. There has clearly been a conscious choice for him to open the new parliament in person.

This is not an issue of detailed policy. In Canada as in the UK, the King has no authorship of the speech he reads, and that has long been the case. As far back as 1841, the Leader of the House of Commons, Lord John Russell, told MPs as a matter of settled constitutional fact and practice that the Gracious Speech was “the result of advice of Ministers, and Ministers alone are responsible for it”. Until the early 20th century, the content of the address was given final approval at a meeting of the Privy Council, until which point the monarch had the right to request minor changes or to seek clarification on any measures which required elucidation. Now, it is even more a fait accompli.

On the other hand, it doesn’t require enormous insight to decode the tone of the Canadian government’s official pronouncements on the royal visit. Although this is the King’s 20th visit to Canada, it is described as “a momentous and historic occasion that underscores Canada’s identity and sovereignty as a constitutional monarchy”, one which will “strengthen the bond between Canada and the monarchy, offering a unique opportunity to deepen understanding of the Crown’s role in Canadian democracy”.

When this is set against a backdrop of the President of the United States openly advocating the benefits of Canada being absorbed into the US as the 51st state, as well as rehearsing a long list of tediously predictable and inaccurate grievances, the royal visit, and the association of the King with Mark Carney’s government—or rather, the King’s government, of which Carney is the chief minister—is a firm assertion of Canada’s autonomy and independence. It follows an often-awkward encounter in the Oval Office earlier in the month, in which the Canadian Prime Minister was explicit that his country was “not for sale”. Trump responded by advising Carney that he should “never say never”, though that was unmistakeably what he was indeed saying.

President Trump’s acquisitiveness towards Canada should be shocking but his manner of doing business over the past 10 years has been like placing a frog in cold water and gradually increasing the heat. Geopolitics are now at a rolling boil and yet we can find it oddly easy to ignore the fact that a US president is talking without restraint about using at least “economic force” to induce Canada to give up its independence. The effect seems to have been to galvanise Canadians into a sense of national solidarity. The King will certainly welcome the opportunity to remind not just Canadians but the world that he is King of Canada, not simply a distance British overlord, and that the monarchy can be a unified force when the country faces hostility and adversity.

When Sir Keir Starmer sweetened his own White House meeting with President Trump by inviting him to undertake a second state visit to the UK and producing a personal communication from the King to that effect, some criticised him for involving the monarchy in politics. But the Crown is inherently political: what it must avoid is partisan identification or a sense of partiality in its dealings with governments. Trump’s menacing approaches to Canada are far more than that, touching on the basic maintenance of Canada as an independent country, and it is quite proper for the monarch of that country to offer a sense of unity and defend it against external threats of every kind.

Whether this gambit works is a wholly different matter.