Stephen Harper triggered a long lost memory of a public school detention this week.My crime: in an act of pre-pubescent civil disobedience, my buddy Chris and I decided we would launch into an old rock classic, “Duke of Earl” by Gene Chandler to be precise, when the rest of the class was singing “God Save the Queen.”
We weren’t anti-monarchist and we were too young to be making a political statement.
We just thought singing allegiance to a Queen an ocean away was rather silly.
No sillier, it seems, than Harper’s edict this week that portraits of Queen Elizabeth be hung on the walls of all Canadian embassies, high commissions and consulates around the world.
Approved likenesses are easily downloadable from a government website from the helpful head office in Ottawa.
It is just the latest in a series of moves by Harper, a man who seems determined to single-handedly orchestrate a regal renaissance starring an 85-year-old monarch.
It comes on the heels of the hysteria over William and Kate, who received blanket, fawning coverage across the country in July.
It started with the order by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to remove the work of Quebec artist Alfred Pellan in favour of a portrait of the Queen in the lobby of the foreign affairs building in Ottawa.
Then Harper restored the word “royal” to the full title of the country’s navy and air force.
Its citizenship guide is also heavy on references to the country’s royal ties, our military history and symbols meant to stir a sense of patriotism.
Ray Novak, Harper’s principal secretary, is a longtime card-carrying member of the Monarchist League of Canada and that organization credits Heritage Minister James Moore, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, Baird and Harper himself with putting these matters on the agenda in the capital.
A government that has embraced symbolism over substance says it is restoring tradition and acknowledging the country’s head of state at its foreign missions.
But there is much more at play at here.
It is tossing a gift to its base in Western Canada, eastern Ontario and the Maritimes.
But it is also yanking the country back to another era, making a mockery of years of progress in cutting the colonial apron strings, needlessly tying this government to the United Kingdom.
It is also embarrassing diplomats who are fiercely proud to represent their government abroad, not the Queen.
These are diplomats who know this fealty to the monarchy sends the wrong signal internationally and provides a confused face to senior ministers or heads of state from the countries in which they are based.
The move is consistent with a government that has consistently crafted foreign policy for domestic reasons, but runs counter to Harper’s vow of a more muscular foreign policy in these majority government years.
The wedge here is the NDP’s Quebec caucus, 59 MPs who represent voters who would be unhappy with this anachronistic nod to our British heritage.
It’s a case of the Harper government poking the opposition, daring it to say something explosive, goading it into an insult to the Queen, allowing the government to then accuse New Democrats of being republican or beholden to Quebec interests.
Paul Dewar, the party’s foreign affairs critic, knows this.
He accused the Conservatives of “kicking the hornet’s nest” but he won’t play, going first to the Quebec media to make light of this “Monty Pythonesque” decision.
“We don’t have a minister of foreign affairs, we have a minister of interior decorating,” Dewar said.
The irony in the Harper appeal to patriotism, with his symbolic military might in the north, his return to tradition and his embrace of the royal family, is that he is moving Canada further away from things Canadian.
“He wants you to believe that ‘royal’ means Canadian,” said one former diplomat.
“Canadian means Canadian.”
The Queen would be amused.
Origin
Source: Toronto Star
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