Avalon

The Queen is coming for a visit. Every time a royal comes to Nova Scotia we discuss the question ’should we retain the Monarchy’? Leaving aside the loyalty and historical side of this question there are some very practical benefits to having a Monarch.

Firstly the Monarch is the Head of State, or when they are not present the Lieutenant Governor General is the Head of State. In the U.S. the President is the Head of State along with all of the other roles that the President plays. Our Premier is not burdened by the ceremonial role of Head of State; formally meeting dignitaries, hosting official functions, delivering speeches etc. These are all safely delegated to the Lieutenant Governor General.

Technically all political power rests with the Monarch. In actual fact this power is all delegated to the Provincial government after an election when the Lieutenant Governor General asks a party leader to form a government and then the Lieutenant Governor General takes a back seat. There is a real advantage to this system. If something catastrophic were to happen to our government or, since we do not have a written Constitution comprehensively outlining how our government works, matters were to go into uncharted waters (as they did at the federal level when a potential coalition government was offering to displace the reigning Tories) then the Monarch’s representative would become the focal point and serve as a force for continuity in our political process, a sort of political stability insurance policy.
It is also important to remember that for these benefits we pay next to nothing. All that Nova Scotians pay is support of a Lieutenant Governor General and the occasional royal visit. A bargain.

I had an interesting day attending ChangeCamp Halifax at The Hub in downtown Halifax recently. The sessions were an open space discussion looking at ways to improve Halifax. The turnout and the depth of people was impressive. Several discussions revolved around municipal reform, especially HRM and my group came up with several ideas:
1. Encourage the development of municipal parties to allow various ‘visions’ for the city to compete. Currently HRM has a gaggle of councilors each protecting their own turf which makes it hard for larger projects to be pushed.
2. Ask the provincial government for a review of the structure of HRM’s municipal government, most people seemed to think that something needed to be done. And only the provincial government can do that as Councilor Jim Smith said recently, “… We get all of our authority through the provincial government, so every time we want to strengthen (the bylaws), we have to go through this process of almost begging the provincial government to take these things seriously and help us out.” This could be part of a wider Atlantica Party policy of promoting a general review of provincial and municipal power sharing in order to empower local government where it makes sense.
3. We discussed a pilot project to encourage a ‘test’ councilor to make a real effort, over say a year, to meet and engage as many constituents as possible to show that dialog can happen.
4. Form a volunteer municipal watchdog/reporting service to give feedback on Councils’ activities and voting.