This, they argued, required not only a constitutional amendment, but one triggering the “unanimity” section 41 (a) of the Constitution Act, 1982. Two Laval University law professors challenged Canada’s succession statute in the Quebec courts on the grounds that assent to alterations proposed in a British law could not change the rules of royal succession in Canada. What were the objections to such apparently sensible legislation? The heads of government of the 15 Commonwealth realms that share the Queen as head of state, among them Canada, agreed on these measures at a 2011 meeting in Australia. The Act in question, which had been passed unanimously by Parliament, gave Canada’s approval to British legislation ending male primogeniture – male heirs to the throne outranking female heirs – and repealing an outdated provision discouraging heirs to the throne from marrying Roman Catholics (in which case they would be removed from the line of succession). In that ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the Quebec Court of Appeal’s decision on the validity of Canada’s Succession to the Throne Act, 2013. For instance – as an April judicial ruling makes clear – some supporters of the Crown in Canada can sometimes find themselves in uncomfortably close quarters with Quebec nationalists.
Politics is not the only human endeavour to make strange bedfellows. Michael Valpy is a senior fellow in public policy at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, and an NDP candidate in the 2000 federal election. Serge Joyal is a former Liberal senator from Quebec and Institute board member, and intervened on the side of the Attorney-General of Canada in the challenge to the succession legislation. Michael Jackson is the current president of the Institute and editor of its latest book, Royal Progress: Canada’s Monarchy in the Age of Disruption (Dundurn, 2020). John Fraser is master emeritus of Massey College at the University of Toronto, and founding president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada at Massey College.
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