To my fellow Canadian Queenzoners, why does Canada include a picture of Queen Elizabeth in their money? I know Canada was under French and British rule before gaining their independence, so why include the face of the monarch who is from the country from which you separated from? Just curious.
Ohforgodsake. That's not Queen Elizabeth, it's Pamela Anderson. You can only marry so many screwed up rock stars before you hit a wall.
OK I lied! It is QE. She's on the money because she's still the Queen of Canada. The functional power lies with the people of Canada through parliament, but we've never severed the ties to the British monarchy, though the formal relationship has gone through various evolutions, most recently in the Canada Act of 1982. There remains a significant constitutional role and it actually costs Canadians more per capita than it does Brits to maintain the monarchy in our respective countries. There is a whole structure embedded including formal constitutional representatives of the Queen at both the federal level (the Governor General of Canada) and at provincial levels (Lieutenant Governors in each province). An example of a function is that new laws created through Parliament/the Senate must receive Royal assent to become enacted. It's a formality - we're not actually asking her permission or anything.
Our current conservative government is very pro-monarchy and recently, to some controversy, reinstated the word "Royal" in the Canadian Navy and Air Force more than 40 years after it was dropped. So its now the 'Royal Canadian Navy'again. So at the moment we seem to be drawing closer to Britain and that history rather than pulling further away. For this trouble we get high maintenance houseguests fairly regularly. Prince Charles and Camilla are coming later this month for a few days.
More Canadian money trivia. The Royal (Royal again..ha ha) Canadian Mint struck it's last penny on May 4th. We're dropping it officially and business will round up or down to the nearest nickel for cash transactions. Also, we've got these funky new plastic polymer bills with elaborate transparent panels that will replace/have replaced the 100, 50, 20, 10 and 5 dollar bills by 2013.They feel funny. They look funny. But they spend well. link
I think we got the recipe from Australia or something.
aren't there still links between Canada and the UK? That's probably why she's on the money...
And getting new money is such a pain... its fun for the first three days and then its a nightmare cos nobody knows how much anything is, and its hard to keep track of it!
But it is kinda fun though :D
Simple answer:
Canada is part of the British commonwealth, so the Queen of England is the head of state. The governor general is the Queen's representative here.
Even most Canadians don't know that. They think the prime minister is the head of state, when in reality he's just the leader of the party elected with the most seats in parliament.
The Real Wizard wrote:
Simple answer:
Canada is part of the British commonwealth, so the Queen of England is the head of state. The governor general is the Queen's representative here.
Even most Canadians don't know that. They think the prime minister is the head of state, when in reality he's just the leader of the party elected with the most seats in parliament.
That's the same for parliamentary democracies that still have a king/queen the world over. Even the Dutch newspapers sometimes refer to our Prime Minister as the head-of-state when technically that's still the queen. The problem is that the PM has all the powers and responsibilities of a head-of-state, but without the actual title, whereas a king/queen still has the title, but none of the powers and responsibilities. It's what you get from combining two rather incompatible systems.