King Charles III will soon land in Ottawa to deliver the throne speech that kicks off a new session of Parliament. It’s only the third time the Canadian monarch has read the speech from the throne, and it’s happening now for a reason.
“If you want to make a point about Canadian sovereignty, what better symbol than the embodiment of that sovereignty?” said Philippe Lagassé, a professor at Carleton University who specializes in the role of the Crown in Canada’s political system.
“The King is the personification of the state. He is at the apex of it because he personifies it. He is, therefore, the legal personality of Canada,” Lagassé added.
For months, Trump has threatened to make Canada the 51st U.S. state, as recently as his Oval Office meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney. Trump’s ambassador to Canada, for his part, said he knows the King’s visit is meant to fight back against the U.S. president’s threats.
“I know what the implication is. It’s all about the 51st state [remarks]” said U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, in an interview with CBC’s The House that will air Saturday. But Hoekstra added the annexation saga is “over.”
King Charles and Queen Camilla visited Canada House in London on its 100th anniversary, one week before his historic opening of Canada’s Parliament, and as Canada resists U.S. trade war pressure and 51st state taunts by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The expectation that Trump would have an interest comes from his admiration for the royal family and the King, Lagassé said.
In February, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer brought Trump an invitation from King Charles to meet at Balmoral, a royal estate in Scotland. After reading the invitation in front of reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said it would be an “honour” to visit the “fantastic” country.
Lagassé said Charles’s trip to Canada is a “useful reminder” to the U.S. president that he is both the British and Canadian monarch.
“If you respect and admire the king of the United Kingdom, perhaps you should also respect and admire the King of Canada, given that is the same person. So there is that signal being sent, which is not unimportant,” Lagassé added.
‘It’s a big joke:’ Québec MNA
Not everyone is impressed by the royal visit. Parti Québécois MNA Pascal Bérubé said on Thursday the king is an “archaic and colonial symbol.”
“It’s a big joke,” Bérubé said, adding that Canada is “not that strong” if its response to the U.S. president’s threats is bringing over the King since “he’s not frightening at all.”
Catherine Gentilcore, another Parti Québécois MNA, questioned “how is the king convincing in any way?”
“So to express Canada’s power, you have to go get a foreign king?” Gentilcore added.
Quebec sovereigntists like Bérubé and Gentilcore have long criticized the monarchy’s role in Canadian politics. Two years ago, the provincial government passed a law making the oath of allegiance to the King optional.
In early May, the federal Bloc Québécois said in French that Carney’s decision to invite Charles is “revealing of Liberal values,” and those are “irreconcilable with those of Quebecers, who reject [the monarchy] and are attached to the values of democracy and modernity.”
Leader Yves-François Blanchet said he and his caucus won’t attend Tuesday’s throne speech.
Patricia Treble, author of the Write Royalty blog on Substack, pushed back on Gentilcore’s words and said King Charles is “not a foreign king. When he comes to Canada, he is the Canadian king. He’s invited by his government in Ottawa.”
Treble described the Canadian crown as a fire extinguisher that gets dusty and is only used in an emergency.
King Charles and other members of the Royal Family are showing some subtle but notable signs of support for Canada amid its economic fight with the United States.
“It has been tested and it is coming down off the wall,” Treble said. “And we are going to see it on Monday and Tuesday in Ottawa.”
Lagassé said that “Quebecers, as forward-looking as they are, have also inherited these institutions. Their national assembly is also an assembly in the British model. They have a lieutenant-governor.”
“We should also remember our institutions — whether we like them or not, whether or not we want to change them — for now, this is what they are and they are quite significant at this moment.”
Perry Bellegarde, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations and the honourary president of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, pointed out that Indigenous peoples have a key relationship with the Crown.
“We have a treaty relationship with the Crown that was entered into nation-to-nation and and there was a strong connection and a strong sacred covenant and that could never be broken,” said Bellegarde, who was among the Canadians who greeted the King and Queen at Canada House in London earlier this week.
“We always have the union jack at our Treaty Day,” Bellegarde added. “That’s the relationship with the Crown we have… So you have to respect all those institutions of governance.”
