Monarchy in Canada - Public Understanding

Public Understanding

Commentators have in the late 20th and early 21st centuries stated that contemporary Canadians had and have a poor understanding of the Canadian monarchy. Former Governor General Adrienne Clarkson said there is "an abysmal lack of knowledge about the system" and Senator Lowell Murray wrote in 2003: "The Crown has become irrelevant to most Canadian's understanding of our system of Government," which he attributed to the "fault of successive generations of politicians, of an educational system that has never given the institution due study, and of past vice-regal incumbents themselves." These comments were echoed by teacher and author Nathan Tidridge, who asserted in his 2011 book, Canada's Constitutional Monarchy: An Introduction to Our Form of Government, that, beginning in the 1960s, the role of the Crown disappeared from provincial education curricula, as the general subject of civics came to receive less attention. Michael Valpy also pointed to the fact that "The crown's role in the machinery of Canada's constitutional monarchy rarely sees daylight. Only a handful of times in our history has it been subjected to glaring sunshine, unfortunately resulting in a black hole of public understanding as to how it works." As well, the position of prime minister had undergone what has been described as a "presidentialisation", to the point that its incumbents publicly outshine the actual head of state.

David S. Donovan felt that Canadians mostly considered the monarch and her representatives as purely ceremonial and symbolic figures. It was argued by Alfred Neitsch that this undermined the Crown's legitimacy as a check and balance in the governmental system.