Harold Innis on the Peace River, 1924 — field work for his first local classic on The Fur Trade in Canada : An Introduction to Canadian Economic History.

“Great Britain, the United States and Canada” is the title of a now 65-year-old essay by Harold Innis, Canada’s pioneering great economic historian (and the godfather of Marshall McLuhan). As winter at last gives way to spring north of the North American Great Lakes, a few vaguely parallel thoughts about our time today have been brought to mind by four diverse items in the news of the past few weeks.

The first item — from a thematic if not strictly chronological standpoint — is an article by the British political scientist David Runciman, in the March 21, 2013 issue of the London Review of Books. As the print edition of this eminent publication notes, the article documents the recent occasion on which “David Runciman spoke about the crisis in American democracy at the second of this year’s LRB Winter Lectures” — in the still more or less magnificent old imperial metropolis across the sea.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper chats with British Prime Minister David Cameron during a family photo at the G20 Summit in Cannes, France. November 3, 2011. (Photo by Jason Ransom.)

At a time when even some Americans are coming to the conclusion that their democracy is in some sort of crisis, it is not surprising that a British political scientist would elaborate on the  theme. Runciman begins by noting that : “During the early years of the American republic, in the first half of the 19th century, what fascinated outsiders was its sheer implausibility.” As an outsider in (say) the first quarter of the 21st century, Runciman goes on to discuss the various ways in which : “It is starting to look implausible again. Can you really do politics like this and expect it to last?”

Up here in the Canadian true north, strong and free, where we still follow the rather different British model of what has come to be known as parliamentary democracy, we might be inclined to read “How can it work? David Runciman on American democracy” with something of the smug self-satisfaction we so often (and inappropriately) bring to such discussions.

Harold Innis in fact nicely captured all this 65 years ago in “Great Britain, the United States and Canada.” And it is sobering to think that, in this respect at least, so little has changed since then: “A further evidence of political lethargy,” Innis wrote in 1948, “has appeared in an infinite capacity for self-congratulation. Invariably we remark on the superiority of Canadian institutions, Canadian character, and Canadians generally, over Americans. This, of course, is our common North American heritage but in Canada it appears to lead to little more than a congenital tendency toward long arms, with which we can slap our own backs. It is a commonplace …  that we are encouraged in this by our polite friends from the United States and Great Britain.”

Lauren O’Nizzle, a young “super fan” of Harold Innis’s “Minerva’s Owl essay,” and many other remarkable things in Canada today.

At the same time, it also seems arguable that Canadian institutions (and Canadians generally) have made a little progress since the late 1940s. To look on American politics with any  smug self-satisfaction in the spring of 2013 a Canadian has to be deeply attracted to the leadership of Stephen Harper and his new Conservative Party of Canada. Recent opinion polls suggest that barely a third (or less) of the Canada-wide electorate can qualify under this heading at the moment. Over the past week some further dissenting voices have apparently arisen within the tightly monitored corridors of power that structure PM Harper’s Conservative Party itself. And in my own small office, with a window that looks out on an only slightly larger urban North American backyard, I contemplate three other articles of the recent past, that also prompt me to wonder “How can it work?” as I think about Canadian democracy today : “55% of Canadians want change to Canadian head of state instead of continuing with any member of the British royal family” ; “Harper names Tannas to fill Alberta Senate vacancy” ; and “Liberal leadership: Martin Cauchon says Justin Trudeau outdated on approach to Quebec.”

1.  “55% of Canadians want change to Canadian head of state instead of continuing with any member of the British royal family”

Duff Conacher at founding meeting of Your Canada Your Constitution last year.

The new opnion poll which finds that “55% of Canadians want change to Canadian head of state instead of continuing with any member of the British royal family” was released this past March 18, by Duff Conacher’s admirable new group, “Your Canada, Your Constitution — Involving Canadians in their democracy.”

The exact question the poll asked was “Canada’s federal government, and the governments of the 15 other countries that have the British monarchy as their head of state, have agreed to change the rules about who in the royal family can inherit the throne in the future. Experts believe that in order to change these rules in Canada, the Constitution of Canada may have to be changed … If a change to the constitution will need to be made anyway, would you rather continue to have a member of the British Royal family as Canada’s head of state, or see a Canadian born person chosen by Canadians as Canada’s head of state?” There were three possible answers: “(a) Canadian born …  (b) British Royal family …  (c) Don’t know/refused.”

PM Harper and his sovereign.

My own most immediate and visceral reaction to the poll’s finding that 55% of the 2,024 representative  respondents Canada-wide chose “(a) Canadian born”, while only 34% chose “(b) British Royal family”, and 11% chose “(c) Don’t know/refused” is: How can it really be that as many as 34% still want to have the British Royal family as Canada’s head of state?

This statistic is even more distressing when you look at the regional breakdown. To start with here, Quebec (understandably, many will wisely enough observe) has 79% who want a Canadian head of state for Canada, and only13% for the British Royal family. Atlantic Canada and Ontario each have 49% Canadian and 39% British Royal family. Manitoba and Saskatchewan have 46% Canadian and 39% British Royal family. Alberta has 49% Canadian and 37% British Royal family. And British Columbia actually has (in this poll at any rate : students of such polls over the past decade will know this is not always the case) only 39% Canadian and 53% British Royal family. (And in all these cases the residual percentage after the Canadian and British Royal family numbers have been added is of course “Don’t know/refused.”)

Canadian Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, December 6, 2012.

On the one hand, consider these polling results alongside the almost pathologically strategic Stephen Harper’s apt enough short to mid term calculation that his Conservative Party can win a majority of seats in the Canadian House of Commons with less than 40% of the cross-Canada popular vote, overwhelmingly concentrated outside Quebec (and especially in Western Canada and Ontario outside Toronto). In this light you can start to appreciate the subtle cunning of his decision to revive such things as the name “Royal Canadian Navy,” and all that.

On the other hand, polls like this do after all continue to show that a cross-Canada majority, sensibly enough, already no longer supports the British Royal family as the (symbolic) Canadian head of state (whatever that may mean, when the Governor General nowadays appointed by Canadian not British prime ministers has exercised all the practical powers involved, more or less since the end of the Second World War). Ie, from a longer term point of view, it is reasonable to ask “How Can Canadian democracy [continue to] work?”, with the British monarch as its symbolic head of state? (And this point is underlined, when you look at the age-group breakdown for the YCYC’s latest poll: 18–24: 66% Canadian head of state ; 25–34: 60% Canadian ; 35–44: 56% Canadian ;  45–54 : 54% Canadian ; 55–64: 53% ; 65 + : 47%.)

2. “Harper names Tannas to fill Alberta Senate vacancy”

Senator Scott Tannas, on the campaign trail last April.

At the moment it is rather difficult to imagine just how the Canadian history of the future will judge the prime ministerial career of Stephen Harper — which will have lasted for (as some see it) as many as nine all too long years by the time of the next federal election in 2015.

His one undeniable achievement, it seems clear enough, will be to have brought Western Canada into the real corridors of federal power in Ottawa at last. Yet his shorter term efforts to revive the now increasingly archaic and obsolete traditions of the British monarchy in Canada — in an effort to stiffen the support of the strategic minority of the Canadian electorate, on which his clever electoral calculations rest — already  highlight his limitations in the kind of post-colonial nation building that the Canadian future still (almost desperately?) needs.

At the same time again, PM Harper has at least kept a kind of half-faith with the one nation-building objective that has, so to speak, distinguished and even elevated the Western Canadian regional quest for real power at last, at the centre of the continually evolving Canadian confederation of 1867, from sea to sea to sea.

New Alberta Senator Doug Black. Nothing ever comes up roses all the time. As Sun News reported this past September: “In 18 months as chair of the University of Calgary's board of governors, Doug Black — elected as a Tory senator in waiting in April — filed $28,030.88 worth of expense claims ... That's a whopping 64 times what his predecessor claimed — in less than half the time.” He’ll probably feel at home in the still unreformed Senate of Canada. DAN ILIKA/QMI AGENCY.

Back when he first came to office in 2006, Mr. Harper was still talking about the unreformed Senate of Canada (still modelled too much on the historic British House of Lords) as “a relic of the 19th century.” He has gone on to indulge in a veritable orgy of the kind of  unreformed prime ministerial Senate appointments he once swore he would never stoop to. Yet he also still has a bill that at least begins a process of “step by step” Senate reform in Canada waiting in the wings of parliament as it were. (Or, more exactly perhaps, now waiting for a judgment on its constitutionality from the Supreme Court of Canada, at Mr. Harper’s request.)

Moreover, in keeping with the principles of his Senate reform bill, PM Harper has managed to arrange that at least Alberta (where the modern Western Canadian quest for Senate reform has its symbolic heartland) now has two de facto democratically elected senators.

As explained by no less than cbcnews.ca, this past March 25: “Prime Minister Stephen Harper has named Scott Tannas to fill the Senate seat vacated by Bert Brown, who retired last Friday. Tannas, who is president and CEO of Western Financial Group, finished second in Alberta’s senate elections conducted during last April’s provincial election … A statement from the Prime Minister’s Office Monday announcing the appointment said Tannas supports the Conservative government’s reform plans for the Senate, including legislation to limit term lengths for senators and encouraging provinces to hold elections to nominate future appointees … Doug Black, a Calgary lawyer and the chairman of the University of Calgary’s board of governors, received the most votes for nominees to be senators in waiting and was appointed to the Senate in January to replace Liberal Joyce Fairbairn, who retired early for health reasons.”

3. “Liberal leadership: Martin Cauchon says Justin Trudeau outdated on approach to Quebec”

Justin Trudeaum (l) and Martin Cauchon (r) embrace after the Liberal party's first leadership debate in Vancouver, Sunday, January 20, 2013.

Another of Stephen Harper’s all too ambiguous contributions to the kind of nation building that the Canadian future still needs was his strategic engineering of the late November 2006 declaration by the Canadian House of Commons that the Quebecois constitute a nation within a united Canada.

This uniquely Canadian concept, it seems clear enough, has proved not all that popular (to say the least) among the strategic Western Canadian and “rural Ontario” minority political base, on which the fortunes of the current Harper Conservatives depend. And the fact that PM Harper has drawn back more than a little from its implications is arguably another blot on his record as a potential Canadian nation builder — in an era where the real need for some kind of final stage in what the constitutional law professor Brian Slattery has called “the long process of decolonization that Canada has undergone since 1867” has become almost palpable.

At the same time, as Joan Bryden at the Canadian Press has explained in an article yesterday, March 29, 2013: “Justin Trudeau may be the youngest, hippest Liberal leadership contender but, when it comes to Quebec, rival Martin Cauchon says the front-runner is a relic of the past … Trudeau has scoffed at suggestions that attempts must be made to finally secure Quebec’s signature on the Constitution — patriated by his father, Pierre Trudeau, in 1982 over the objections of the province’s separatist government … While that was the right answer during the 1980s and 1990s, when Canadians were fed up with interminable constitutional wrangling, Cauchon says it’s no longer good enough … Trudeau’s response to the national unity question amounts to ‘the good old answers that people used to give’ in the wake of failed constitutional negotiations, Cauchon told The Canadian Press during an interview … ‘Now it’s not the time to go back with those, I would say, empty answers that a lot of people have been using in the past … I say it’s time, actually, to have a closer look at the situation.’”

Quebecois nation in a united Canada.

You don’t have to understand what this actually means to appreciate that bad news of this sort for Justin Trudeau arguably enough amounts to good news for Stephen Harper. What I think it means myself is that — along with the contemporary domestic nation-building themes of Senate reform and the quest for a Canadian head of state (and, no doubt, something about the role of the aboriginal peoples of Canada too) — we need to be more seriously contemplating just what the Quebecois nation in a united Canada means practically. Thomas Mulcair and the federal NDP have arguably come a little closer to fulfilling this need for the Canadian future, than either the Harper Conservatives or the (still, strictly speaking, potential) Trudeau Jr. Liberals. But among all parties and leaders in 2013 the failure to deal constructively with all of the head of state issue, Senate reform, aboriginal rights, and Quebec’s role in the confederation of tomorrow still constitutes what Harold Innis would call “further evidence of political lethargy” in Canada today — following the ancient lamentable traditions he wrote about 65 years ago!

4. Why isn’t David Runciman more impressed by the re-election of President Obama?

The Obamas and the Bidens celebrate their re-election this past November. AP Photo/Chris Carlson.

The one most critical thing I feel myself about “How can it work? David Runciman on American democracy” turns around its failure to acknowledge the vastly positive slant on the American future symbolized by the re-election of Barack Obama last fall. And this may be something that is simply much more striking when you live right next door to democracy in America, as opposed to across the sea. (Even if you do live across the sea in an old “mother country” that ostensibly speaks the same language as the great majority in the American Republic.)

Runciman comes at least somewhat close to all this, when he writes such things as : “Take Obama’s re-election. It isn’t hard to weave it into a recovery narrative …”  But he finally ends on a less optimistic note  — “American democracy may be trapped by its record of success.” My own feeling is that it is much closer to some deepest truth to emphasize the extent to which it really “isn’t hard to weave” Barack Obama’s re-election “into a recovery narrative.”

It wasn’t that long ago that the great vain progressive hope in American politics was “Run Jesse Run,” set beside the incontestable truth that no kind of black man (even one who’s mother was white) could ever become president of the USA. Much more recently, the greatest objective of Obama’s most retrograde Republican opponents was to confine him to a one-term presidency. And, whatever else, they have undeniably failed in this! To me Runciman underrates the extent to which the re-election of Barack Obama presages the beginning of a new era in the history of American democracy, with a more diverse demographic base, and a more realistic agenda for American success (which is not the same as the always unrealistic national goal of “supremacy”) in a rapidly changing (and in most ways for the better) global village.

In this same kind of universe I believe that what Harold Innis called the tradition of Canadian “political lethargy” will at least abate long enough to deal in some workable way with all of the head of state issue, Senate reform, aboriginal rights, and Quebec’s role in the confederation of tomorrow  — now that Stephen Harper has at least and at last brought Western Canada into the corridors of power in Ottawa.

David Runciman hints at the real-world alternative, it seems to me at any rate, when he speculates that, in the year 2072 : “Perhaps, instead of Texas leaving, Mexico will have joined.” If something of this sort does prove true about the longest term future, it seems more than likely that Canada will have joined a few decades or, at the very least, a few years earlier. (And it is interesting, in some ways, that “How can it work? David Runciman on American democracy”  makes no reference to Canada at all.)

Harold Innis (l), Hans Seyle (c), and Alf Earling Porsild (r) on a visit to the Soviet Union, just after the end of the Second World War in 1945.

In Canada, it seems to me right now at any rate, we have perhaps another generation (say to 2045) to put ourselves on more solid “national” foundations (in a political and certainly bilingual and multiracial but of course not in any ethnic or narrowly cultural sense). Strangely enough (perhaps again), the 2012 victory of Barack Obama in the United States seems to have strengthened my belief that, when all is said and done, the Canadian people will finally decide to carry on with the distinctive “free and democratic” future they have been oh-so-gradually and quietly building over the past 146 years. And the parallel future of the American giant next door will similarly prove more resilient and attractive than David Runciman currently seems to fear.

The anniversary has now come and gone. And we want to take this opportunity to just reflect briefly on what it means for the so-called “Commonwealth Realm” of Canada. (While of course wishing the happy couple in their privacy our very best.)

There are those who would say the anniversary means quite a lot up here in the northern wilderness, especially since the couple’s Canadian visit early last summer. And one of them — somewhat surprisingly to us — is the usually more iconoclastic and socially critical  Heather Mallick, at the Toronto Star.

This version of the “See-Through Thing That Made Prince William Hot for Kate Middleton” can now be purchased online for less than £60.

So Ms. Mallick wrote in her column this past Saturday: “Even those who do not love the royals, as is their right, would perhaps agree that the young couple — touring Canada to a roaring welcome, touching down in Hollywood, living quietly in Wales, building a private life and working hard — have done their duty … Their Canadian tour proved that this country, modern and perhaps cynical, will turn out for two great royals … many people quietly wish a long life for Queen Elizabeth II, that the current heir to the throne might wish for a quiet one, and that this Duke and Duchess might show up on the Canadian currency.”

We of course are among those who “do not love the royals, as is their right.” And just in case Ms. Mallick really doesn’t understand, we do not agree with any of her assertions about the young couple. (Although we do agree that she too has every right to make them. Canada today is above all a “free and democratic society,” as in the Constitution Act, 1982. And everyone has a right to believe whatever they like about the British royal family.)

We are also among the great majority of Canadians who did not in fact “turn out for two great royals” last summer. And we cannot for the life of us understand why people who do “love the royals” think it is somehow “cynical” not to — like saying it is cynical not to believe in Santa Claus, especially after you’ve had too much to drink on Christmas Eve.

Kate Middleton and Prince William with California Governor Jerry Brown and wife Anne Gust Brown at the British Consul-General’s residence in LA, July 8, 2011.

We believe that democracy is what’s best in our Canadian society today — and that this is what should be celebrated in the higher symbolism of the Canadian state. Continuing to pretend that the British monarch (who also happens to live in another country) is somehow our official head of state — and hoping that one day “this Duke and Duchess might show up on the Canadian currency” — just contradicts our beliefs in “democracy not monarchy” as the ultimate value.

We also think, we probably should  confess, that, on a more practical plane of being, continuing to pretend that the British monarch (who also happens to live in another country) is somehow our official head of state in the independent, free and democratic, officially bilingual country of Canada today is delusional at best. (And perhaps it is this perception that finally makes those who love the royals as much as Heather Mallick see people who think as we do “cynical”?)

We do agree with yesterday’s Reuter’s report: “Even if, as naysayers argue, the duke and duchess are merely celebrities whose wealth and style are out of reach of all but a few, their popularity reaches far beyond Britain … Media outlets in Britain, the United States, Canada and beyond remain enamored with Catherine and second-in-line-to-the-throne Prince William.”

Rock Hill, Aaron Copland House, in northern Westchester County, New York.

We remain, however, “naysayers” ourselves. And we don’t think that “Media outlets” have quite the same democratic force as the late great Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare For The Common Man” [and nowadays Woman too of course].

As a sign that we still value our British political culture and “Westminster parliamentary democracy” in Canada (which does not require any kind of monarch to function, as such places as India and Ireland today show quite nicely), we also agree with what the great Ricky Gervais said in Hollywood earlier this year: “The Golden Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton … A bit louder. A bit trashier. A bit drunker and more easily bought — allegedly!”

And, as undeniably cute and charming as both ladies are, we democratically look forward to a day when neither Kim Kardashian nor Kate Middleton (nor her husband, nor any other member of the British royal family) appears on our Canadian currency!

The vigil is being organized by the Lount and Matthews Commemoration Committee (Ashok Charles, chair ; Wayne Adam ; Tony O’Donohue ; and Randall White). We quote from a flyer provided by the Committee:

“Samuel Lount and Peter Matthews were executed, in Toronto, on April 12, 1838, for their involvement in the pro-democracy Rebellion of 1837. The popular uprising sought to replace the oligarchic rule which existed at the time with a government that answered to the people’s elected representatives. Lount, Matthews and their fellow rebels, lead by William Lyon Mackenzie, put their lives on the line for their convictions; their efforts and sacrifice contributed to the achievement of democratic government in Canada.

“Please join us on the morning of April 12, from 7:30 am to 8:30 am, at the corner of Toronto Street and Court Street to commemorate these brave men. You are invited to wear black in recognition of their sacrifice. Program will include an address by historian, Randall White and by active Canadian republican, Ashok Charles. Attendees will receive a FREE commemorative t-shirt. For more info: lountandmatthews@gmail.com. ” (Toronto Street, btw, runs north/south for a short distance due north of King Street, a short distance east of Yonge, just above the old King Edward Hotel. The intersection with Court Street is on the east side of Toronto Street — just across  from the former head office of  Mr. Conrad Black.)

A wounded anti-government protestor at Tahrir Square, Cairo on Friday: a man who is not giving up or giving in. Sebastian Scheiner/AP.

[UPDATED FEBRUARY 7, 23]. It is of course very difficult to know just what is going on in Egypt — or the Middle East at large —  right now.  Some three and a half years ago, however, our resident Ontario historian, Randall White, was contemplating the question “Machiavelli .. is he the prince of darkness who haunts democracy in America 2007? ” And on February 4, 2011 it was tempting to wonder just what the 16th century “founder of the modern tough-minded science of politics, direct from the school of hard knocks” might have to do with the events on Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Machiavelli was a great supporter of “citizen armies” in the struggles of the Italian city states of his day (as opposed to the mercenary forces so often employed). And he spent an important part of his civil-service career promoting the development of just such a force in his native city state of Florence. But the kind of sudden and (at least initially) surprisingly effective “street revolt” that we have seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan over the past several weeks was not exactly within the experience of the Italian town-and-country-side of 500 years ago.

Here it seems more apt that the 20th century American community organizer Saul Alinsky (an influence of sorts on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) wrote, apropos of both his own and Machiavelli’s most famous books: “The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the have-nots on how to take it away.”

Gandhi as a lawyer in South-Africa, 1906.

It is similarly intriguing that Alinsky also wrote with some enthusiasm about Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of “passive resistance,” as “the only intelligent, realistic, expedient program which Gandhi had at his disposal.” And there are echoes that seem relevant for the most troubling questions about current events in Egypt, in Alinsky’s stress on how “the kind of means selected and how they can be used is significantly dependent upon the face of the enemy.” Gandhi’s “enemy was a British administration characterized by an old, aristocratic, liberal tradition, one which granted a good deal of freedom to its colonials … the kind of opposition that would have tolerated and ultimately capitulated before the tactic of passive resistance.”  [FOR FEBRUARY 7 and 23  UPDATES CLICK ON "Read the rest of this page" AND/OR SCROLL TO BOTTOM OF PAGE.]

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[IF YOU ARE READING THIS ON OR AFTER FEBRUARY 23, 3011, YOU MAY WANT TO IMMEDIATELY SCROLL DOWN TO THE FEBRUARY 23 UPDATE BELOW.] How will the kind of unarmed mass protest that both Gandhi and Alinsky worked so hard at developing as a source of have-not political power fare, in the face of the resolute and decidedly un-liberal use of armed force by governing establishments that marked the tragic story of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989?  The Tiananmen experience itself answered that question (not unlike the abortive Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the repressed Prague Spring of 1968).  And there are those who have feared that today might finally see something all too similar unfold on some fresh-bloodied pavement of Tahrir Square in Cairo.

Anti-government demonstrators are watched by army soldiers from behind barbed wire as they line up to get into Tahrir Square, Cairo, on Friday. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images.

Yet as we write, the New York Times has reported that: “After signs of a looming crackdown Thursday, Mr. Mubarak’s forces appeared to pull back Friday, and on the 11th day … the atmosphere in Tahrir Square reverted from embattled to jubilant once again. Protesters have remained in uncontested control of the square since about 5:00 a.m. Thursday, when they won a 14-hour war of stones and Molotov cocktails against gangs of Mubarak loyalists … On Friday they abandoned their makeshift barriers to chant, pray and sing the national anthem around the center of the square, where newcomers carried in bags of bread and water. Tens of thousands of others demonstrated in Alexandria and Suez.”

Who knows where it will all end, of course again? But February 4, 2011 in the ancient Land of the Pharaohs may have given a little more hope to a world that needs any hope it can get.

William Faulkner had a hand in writing the screenplay for Howard Hawks’s 1955 Hollywood classic (of sorts), Land of the Pharaohs / aka La Terre des Pharaons, starring Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins. Very few people in Egypt were impressed, no doubt, then or now.

Patrick Martin of the Toronto Globe and Mail, reporting from Cairo, no doubt wisely enough points out: “There was a clear winner in the battle for Egypt this week, but it was neither President Hosni Mubarak nor the Tahrir Square protesters. It was Egypt’s army … There may be doubts about how long Mr. Mubarak can hold on, or about the continued energy of the protesters, but there are no doubts about who really rules this country — who has always ruled it since 1952 — and who will continue to rule it far into the future: the military … On Friday [February 4], for example, the week ended on a relatively peaceful note, for which the 200,000 people who staged an all-day political protest on Tahrir Square can thank the Egyptian Army. It established a hard perimeter around the square that kept out the kind of violent pro-Mubarak demonstrators that attacked them Wednesday and Thursday.”

The fate of Egypt nonetheless rests in the hands of Egyptians — and the army could (in principle at any rate) organize proper democratic elections to succeed Mubarak, and then take a few steps back. (We can dream, can’t we? Someone ought to be dreaming nowadays.)

Anti-government protesters in Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, on Friday, February 4. AFP/Getty Images.

Meanwhile: “Greek prime minister George Papandreou is to visit Egypt  on Sunday to deliver a message from the EU to President Mubarak face to face.” (Shades of Cleopatra, some will say?) And then: “US in talks to ease out Mubarak as Cairo spills over” ; “Egypt has Obama cautiously shifting world view on democracy” ; and “Is the White House using Congress to send tough messages to Mubarak?”

Machiavelli, some will urge, would just be on the side of the Egyptian army’s finally using brute force to reinstall some new kind of essentially military dictatorship, disguised as a new (and perhaps more explicitly “Islamic”) presidential republic, and so forth. But there is another “liberal republican” Machiavelli, others might argue, who would finally come down on the side of the unarmed mass protestors on Tahrir Square — as a kind of high-technological 21st century incarnation of his citizen army concept. In either case he would almost certainly want to remind everyone involved that the “crucial human activity of politics is in its nature a very tricky and even dirty business; if you get involved in it without developing some tricky and dirty skills yourself you will be eaten alive.”

Statue of Niccolo Machiavelli in the outdoor arcade at the Uffizi museum, Florence, Italy, today. Crashworks’ photostream.

And meanwhile again, this past Tuesday Lawrence Martin at the Globe and Mail (no family relation to the aforementioned Patrick Martin at the same newspaper, as far as we know) was aptly enough noting that the “tumult in Tunisia and Egypt brings to mind … the weakened state of Canadian democracy and whether we’re prepared to do anything about it.” Whatever else, the unarmed mass protestors on Tahrir Square in Cairo are showing that, at this moment, they have more raw political courage and real democratic spirit than virtually all of us who live in such a more fortunate “free and democratic society” as Canada — which could also stand some increasingly serious brand of democratic reform. And, the longer they can keep it up, the more it will strengthen their position in the global village of the future. In more than a few ways, no doubt, we could learn as many lessons from them as they could learn from us.

UPDATE FEBRUARY 23: As suggested by the comment below from Ken at the “Buckeye Firearms Association … Defending Your Firearm Rights” (a group in Ohio apparently), there have been various intriguing plot thickenings in what some are calling “the Arab Awakening” since we last reported on February 5 and 7.

Protesters demonstrate against rule of Libya’s Muammar el-Qaddafi in front of White House in Washington.

Like so many others, we think current  events in the Middle East are among the most interesting and potentially constructive things that have happened in the recent history of the global village. At the same time, we continue to believe that it is “very difficult to know just what is going on in Egypt — or even the Middle East at large —  right now.”

For one cut at the latest news, as of February 23, 2011, see: “Qaddafi Grips Capital While Rebels Gain Across Libya/Mercenaries Stream Toward Tripoli as Qaddafi Digs In” ; “Bahrain King in Saudi Arabia to Discuss Unrest” ; “Promoting Democracy is not Imposing Democracy”; “How to win a Nobel Peace Prize: Egypt, Tunisia and beyond”; “Tunisia walks fine line with Islamist revival”; “Thousands protest against interim government in Tunisia”; “US ‘monitors’ Tunisia power transition”; and “Challenges Facing Countries Across North Africa and the Middle East.”

As matters stand, Tunisia and Egypt are the two places where what the Turkish analyst Dogu Ergil has called “The fourth wave of democratization” has (hopefully) set in with some prospect of success. Both places have now completed his first stage of “Transfer of authority from the old power elite to an interim decision-making body.” And this interim body in both cases is (hopefully again) supposed to be organizing credible elections for a freshly constituted democratic political system in the near future. For the moment, as Ergil has also nicely explained: “we can only say that the door to democratization is opened, but there is a long road ahead and the roadmap is not yet at hand. It is currently being drawn up.”

Egyptian street revolt in its triumph.

In Egypt, eg, it remains the case that, as Patrick Martin at the Toronto Globe and Mail urged a few weeks ago: “There was a clear winner in the battle for Egypt … but it was neither President Hosni Mubarak nor the Tahrir Square protesters. It was Egypt’s army.”

Our own supplementary conclusion of this past February 5, however, seems, if anything, a little more likely than it did then: “The fate of Egypt nonetheless rests in the hands of Egyptians — and the army could (in principle at any rate) organize proper democratic elections to succeed Mubarak, and then take a few steps back. (We can dream, can’t we? Someone ought to be dreaming nowadays.)” We continue to dream ourselves — as realistically as we can.

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As for the specific remarks on how Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) relates to all this, from Ken at the Buckeye Firearms Association (again see his comment below), we should begin by pointing out that at least half the several individuals involved in our February 5 posting have been reading and re-reading Machiavelli for decades  — and not just The Prince and The Discourses, but also, eg, his comic play Mandragola and his History of Florence.

Thousands of Shia Muslims demonstrating in Manama against the Bahraini government. Photo: Zizou scorpion.

The key point our long study of Machiavelli has made clear to us is that — as urged in our original commentary — “the kind of sudden and (at least initially) surprisingly effective ‘street revolt’ that we have seen in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan over the past several weeks was not exactly within the experience of the Italian town-and-country-side of 500 years ago.”

(And this would apply as well of course to such more recent events in such places as Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, and Libya too, allowing that as yet only the street revolts in Tunisia and Egypt can be counted as altogether surprisingly effective, although Libya does seem on the verge of something similar as we write here, despite Qaddafi’s digging in in Tripoli?)

Insofar as some “What would Machiavelli think if he were alive today” does nonetheless make some  sense, as a kind of helpful current entertainment, we would see the point Ken at the Buckeye Firearms Association is trying to make as fundamentally the same as our February 5 argument that “there is another ‘liberal republican’ Machiavelli, others might argue, who would finally come down on the side of the unarmed mass protesters on Tahrir Square — as a kind of high-technological 21st century incarnation of his citizen army concept.”

The one thing unambiguously clear to us is that “viewing Eygpt, Lybia, Tunisia etc, Nicollo would” NOT “without hesitation, say that the Princes should have chosen to be loved, since they could not even begin to implement the fear caveats.”  [And btw, his first name is usually spelled “Niccolo” in English, or even “Niccolò,”  not “ Nicollo,” as Ken writes — though there does seem some slight room for debate about spelling here.]

Even the mere ghost of Niccolo today would be much too smart to proffer such jejune advice as “you should have chosen to be loved” to the likes of Hosni Mubarak, Muammar el-Qaddafi, and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in 2011. In theory, perhaps, there may have been a time in the more distant past when these authoritarian rulers could have at least tried to choose to be loved. (Although to us a deeper understanding of Machiavelli’s message would be that the choice between fear and love is not exactly an either-or proposition.) But at that time they in fact chose to be feared, because in those days they could realistically make that choice (or “implement the fear caveats,” as Ken puts it): that’s why they became authoritarian rulers in the first place.

Young Tunisians hard at work in their street revolt.

The interesting question for us today is why the politics of fear finally gave out — in Tunisia and Egypt at least, so far — when it did, in 2011: not whether Mubarak, Qaddafi, and Ben Ali actually could have or would have chosen to be loved many moons ago. No successful adviser to princes commands respect by giving advice about what should have been done in some distant past, as opposed to what must be done right now. (And Machiavelli was in fact, for a time, a successful adviser to princes: that is one key part of his writing that makes it so interesting, even today.)

Our reciprocal apologies to Ken and his Ohio rifles in any case.  But our thanks as well. Debate is the lifeblood of democracy, and even a mistaken argument can sometimes advance the debate!

UPDATE FEBRUARY 7: By late this past weekend there seems to have been some movement towards some kind of compromise resolution of the current impasse in Egypt. See, eg:

“Opposition, Mubarak regime to draft ‘road map’ for landmark talks … The Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak has taken a giant step toward the goals of the country’s opposition … The meetings Sunday between Vice-President Omar Suleiman and representatives of several opposition parties were unprecedented in nature …”

“Egyptian opposition softens demand for Mubarak’s immediate exit … The main Egyptian opposition groups eased up on their insistence that President Hosni Mubarak step down immediately, agreeing instead on Sunday to join in talks toward overhauling the country’s political system at a more gradual pace while Mubarak remains in office. “

Just how durable or extensive — or widely supported — this kind of compromise resolution will prove to be of course remains quite unclear.  (And the same goes for just what its specific content is likely to be — and the relative weight of religious and secular impulses among the participating “main … opposition groups.”) For the moment, we would agree, it does nonetheless seem impressive that something of this sort seems to be happening.

There is no one quite like Maurice Duplessis in Canadian federal politics today. (Those not currently in jail who share the opinions of Conrad Black might even want to add unfortunately.) But there is concern in the Ottawa air that in 2009 we are “Witnessing a democracy’s decline.” A learned book has just been published on Canadian federal politics with the somewhat ominous title Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis. And a meeting at Metro Hall in Toronto this past still-so-called Victoria Day holiday could make you wonder whether all this is, in some important enough degree, the legacy of a history in which especially English-speaking Canadians, as constitutional monarchists, have believed that authority actually does descend from the Divine Right of Kings (and nowadays Queens too, of course).

* * * *

I attended the event at Metro Hall myself, 14 PM ET, Monday, November 18, 2009.  The master of ceremonies was Phil Taylor of radio station CIUT’s The Taylor Report. And the lead speaker was Peter Donolo, Director of Communications for Prime Minister Jean Chrtien from 1993 to 1999, and currently an executive  vice president and partner at the polling and consulting firm The Strategic Counsel.

It suggests at least something about both the Canadian present and future that a political insider quite as eminent as Peter Donolo is speaking at something called Canada after the Queen: Options and opportunities – a forum about the growth of public opinion for ending the monarchy and what Canada should be doing to prepare for a republic.

There were also remarks from Tom Freda, national director of the sponsoring organization, Citizens for a Canadian Republic, and from Charles Roach, the Toronto civil rights lawyer who is leading a pioneering Charter of Rights court challenge of the current compulsory oath to the offshore Queen across the sea for new Canadian citizens.

The comic and satirist Alan Park, a regular cast member on CBC’s Air Farce LIVE, heaped much amusing good-natured abuse on an increasingly obsolete  institution. (Her majesty the Queen of England is nothing more than a corporation. It’s like swearing allegiance to Kentucky Fried Chicken.) My friend and colleague Randall White offered some slightly less comedic and vaguely more respectable remarks as well, on the constitutional ins and outs of abolishing the British monarchy in Canada at last. And he has kindly allowed me to reproduce these remarks here, for whoever may or may not be interested:

Canada after the Queen: Options and opportunities

We live in an age of renewal and re-invention, Barack Obama told us last week. And this sums up my feelings about our topic today – Canada after the Queen: Options and opportunities.

Cutting our very last apron string to the offshore monarch far away in Buckingham Palace, at the end of the present reign of Elizabeth II, or even earlier, will open up a new age of renewal and re-invention in Canada. And that’s exactly what we need, I think, if our unique Canadian institutions are going to survive the 21st century.

I also agree with Bob Hepburn at the Toronto Star, in his column just this past week, It’s time Canada said goodbye to the Queen. As he has pointed out: Over the past 15 years, polls have repeatedly shown the majority of Canadians favour abolishing our ties to the monarchy.

Yet as Bob Hepburn has explained as well: it will take … time before Canada says goodbye to the Queen. This is partly because, he goes on, few of us care deeply about the issue and few politicians dare to rock the boat. It is also, I think,  because, as the opponents of saying goodbye like to stress, when you start to think about it the exercise is bound to be somewhat complicated.

To me the main conclusion from all this is that, however long it may take to reach the ultimate objective, it’s time right now to start sorting out the complications – so that we will be prepared, e.g., if the present reign of the 83-year-old Elizabeth II should unhappily come to a sudden end.

What I am going to do here, just to stimulate debate, is quickly suggest four such complications – and how they might be managed in a new Canadian age of renewal and re-invention.

The Canadian people … don’t ask, don’t tell

The first complication concerns a matter of  principle. As things stand, the practical sovereign power in Canada today is the Canadian people who, among other things, vote in elections and referendums. Yet what is now known as the Constitution Act 1867 still prescribes that the formal or theoretical sovereign power in Canada is the British monarch.

What saying goodbye to the Queen means in this context is saying hello to the Canadian people, in both theory and practice. And what some opponents of saying goodbye to the Queen argue here is that Canada has still not evolved to the point where there is such a thing as a Canadian people, capable of taking over sovereign power from the British monarch, theoretically as well as practically. Our policy now about the Canadian people, if you like, is don’t ask, don’t tell.

I don`t myself agree with this point of view at all. But I do think we who want to say goodbye to the Queen have to frankly recognize that the modern Canadian people constitute a quite complicated and diverse historical phenomenon. We stretch from the fur-trading first nations in the 16th century to the latest new Canadian citizens from around the world in the 21st century. We have two official languages, and a dazzling rainbow of cultural origins in the global village.

I ran into an intriguing document in this connection, while doing research for the Charter of Rights challenge to the compulsory Canadian citizenship oath to the Queen, currently being advanced by Charles Roach, Michael McAteer, Ashok Charles, and others, in the Ontario courts.

This document is a 1996 article by the Osgoode Hall Law School professor Brian Slattery, called The Organic Constitution: Aboriginal Peoples and the Evolution of Canada. Its key argument is that Aboriginal peoples should be viewed as active participants in generating the basic norms that govern us – not as people on the fringes. They are where the Canadian people begin. And, Brian Slattery urges, understanding this at last in our time represents a further stage in the long process of decolonization that Canada has undergone since 1867.

Saying goodbye to the Queen will represent the very last stage in this long process of decolonization. Meanwhile, what do we have to do about the aboriginal beginnings of the Canadian people, to get ready for saying goodbye properly? Happily, I think, what is needed has already been at least begun, in sections 25 and 35 of the Constitution Act 1982, which recognize the historic rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada. But there are a few other particular dimensions to the present-day Canadian people that still do need some ultimate constitutional clarification. And I will come back to this at the end of my remarks.

The parliamentary democratic alternative … India and Ireland as models

The second complication I want to talk about focuses on the question what are we going to replace the British monarchy in Canada with? Or, who is going to personify the newly sovereign Canadian people, in form as well as practice, in the institutions of government?

Some among those who do not want to say goodbye to the Queen claim that the only serious answer to this question is the presidential-congressional system of government that prevails in the United States. And, they add triumphantly, this is outside Canada’s historic traditions. For Canada to adopt this alternative would be tantamount to joining the United States.

In fact, however, most members of the present Commonwealth of Nations are republics. And the majority of republics in the world today are not modelled on the United States, but on republicanized versions of the traditional British-style parliamentary institutions that Canada continues to share with such places as Ireland and India.

The trick here is in principle simple enough, and has been done before by other former British dominions like Canada. You just convert the present appointed office of governor general, as de facto head of state responsible to the offshore Queen, into some form of elected head of state in law as well as practice, responsible to the Canadian people.

Bob Hepburn’s Toronto Star column of this past week does an excellent job of summarizing all this, I think. And I can’t do any better than quote him directly: Most Commonwealth countries dropped their ties to the monarchy long ago without creating constitutional or political chaos. Most have a prime minister, who leads the elected government, and a president, who is the largely ceremonial head of state … There are several ways to elect a head of state. For example, in India the president is elected by members of parliament and state legislatures. In Ireland, the president is directly elected by all voters … Canada could safely choose either route. And if too many Canadians are upset over the title president’ because of its American connotations, then we could find a less controversial title.

In principle, we could start working on reforming or democratizing our present office of governor general, to get it ready for this kind of ultimate republican transformation, right away – without broaching any controversial constitutional amendments. For this we would need a very high-minded and public-spirited prime minister in office. And whether such a person actually exists at the moment I won’t try to predict. But in the history of this country so far, I think it’s fair to say, stranger things have happened!

The McWhinney shuffle … something worth thinking about at least

The last two complications of saying goodbye to the offshore Queen both relate to certain technicalities of amending the current provisions about the British monarchy in the Canadian constitution. And the first thing to underline here is that we almost have two written constitutions in Canada today (as well as a rather mysterious unwritten one). We have an old written constitution now known as the Constitution Act 1867, and a still fairly new one called the Constitution Act 1982 (which also contains the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms).

Certain sections of the Constitution Act 1867 in its current state still prescribe the Queen’s formal sovereignty over Canada today (sections 9, 17, and 128 are among the most obvious examples). On the other hand, political scientists like the now retired Frederick Vaughan of the University of Guelph have urged that the republicanism of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms [in the Constitution Act 1982] has severed Canadians from their ancestral monarchical foundations.’

Yet, to wave goodbye altogether to the monarchy in Canada we will have to amend the monarchist sections of the old Constitution Act 1867. And despite its underlying republicanism, the amending formula prescribed in the Constitution Act 1982, for changes to the office of the Queen,  requires the approval of the Senate and House of Commons and … the legislative  assembly of each province.

Those who never want to say goodbye to the Queen often urge that the need for unanimous provincial approval of changes involving the constitutional monarchy in Canada makes any such changes practically impossible. But the third complication in the process is actually intended to get around this problem – in some first instance at least.

To quote from a not entirely friendly source, Upon … the death or abdication of a sovereign … it is customary for the accession of the new monarch to be publicly proclaimed by the Governor  General, on behalf of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, which meets at Rideau Hall after the accession. And Edward McWhinney, a now retired constitutional lawyer, professor of law, and  Member of the Canadian House of Commons, has argued that failure to make this proclamation would result in an empty throne for Canada, leaving the Governor General as full head of state.

Put another way, if e.g., the present reign of the 83-year-old Elizabeth II should unhappily come to a sudden end, without any prior Canadian constitutional amendments regarding the office of the Queen and so forth, a federal prime minister and government so inclined could say goodbye to the British monarchy in Canada without a constitutional amendment, by advising the Governor General of the day not to proclaim any successor to the Queen in Canada.

A cross-country referendum on amending the Constitution … eventually

There have of course been criticisms of Edward McWhinney’s proposal from Canadian monarchists. And even for ardent republicans it can only be a useful transitional measure. To end the British monarchy in Canada definitively and altogether according to Hoyle, there will no doubt eventually have to be amendments under the Constitution Act 1982 to those parts of the Constitution Act 1867 that still prescribe the Queen’s formal sovereignty over Canada.

Here I come to the final fourth complication in the process of change we are discussing today. I agree that our unhappy experience trying to amend  the present Canadian constitution in the early 1990s – under the terms of the so-called Charlottetown Accord, if anyone still remembers that – has made Canadian politicians and related public officials quite reluctant to open up any further cans of constitutional worms for any immediately foreseeable future.

At the same time, however, as I noted earlier, there remain at least two particular dimensions to the present-day Canadian people that still do need some ultimate constitutional clarification in their own right. They are the place of the Quebecois within the larger Canadian people, and the role of similar geographically based diversities in other parts of the country, reflected in the longstanding debate on Canadian Senate reform.

Perhaps because I am not taking the proper medication, I still have faith that at some point we in Canada will at last agree on what to do about these thorny constitutional issues, and move to get it done. When this happens, it will also present an opportunity for constitutional amendments that definitively say goodbye to the British monarchy in Canada.

When this opportunity finally arises it seems to me as well that if you look back at the last time we dealt with such matters – in the Charlottetown Accord of 1992 – it was not any inability of all 10 provinces to agree on the details of reform that ultimately made constitutional change impossible. All 10 provinces did agree to the Charlottetown Accord. What finally stopped the thing was its failure to gain majority approval from the practically sovereign people of Canada in a national referendum. This referendum was not necessary under the Constitution Act 1982. But our political leaders of the day felt that the quite large changes envisioned in the Charlottetown Accord had to be endorsed by the Canadian people if they were going to work.

This unwritten precedent, I think, almost certainly means that there will finally have to be a national referendum to end the formal role of the British monarchy in Canada today. And my feeling is that if Canadian republicans can win this referendum, in all 10 provinces, then the approval of all 10 provincial legislatures will look after itself.

This also gives me as much of a conclusion as I have to my complicated and I hope not too vastly confusing remarks here. Whatever else may or may not eventually prove true, the main challenge for all of us who do want to see the end of the British monarchy in Canada is to help build more and more popular support for this objective.

As Bob Hepburn has noted, we already have a majority on our side. The most obvious task ahead is to promote a larger and larger majority among the practically sovereign Canadian people. When this majority is large enough, the now quite obsolete old colonial monarchy in Canada will finally come to an altogether definitive end – like an over-ripe apple falling from a tree.

UPDATE: For more on this subject see an October 19, 2009 article by Randall White in the Toronto Star: “Who is our head of state: Jean or the Queen? … The debate started by Michaëlle Jean touches on the future of the monarchy in Canada.”