Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
It's entirely possible to be a Commonwealth member and not have the London-based Queen/King as your head of state.
That said, I am not aware of what the constitutions are like in the other countries where the British monarch is the head of state, so no idea if it's an easy change to make.
In Canada's case though it is virtually impossible to make this change. The monarchy as currently enshrined is effectively padlocked. You'd need the unanimous consent of all of the provinces plus the federal government to get rid of it.
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The institution is padlocked, but the person who holds it is not. Our Parliament could modify the law that determines the line of succession to name anybody as the Queen's successor, so we could in theory create our own royal family without any constitutional changes.
The Canadian throne is legally independent from the British throne, two separate offices that happen to be held by the same person. We have the right to determine the rules to our own throne. When they changed the succession rules a few years ago to make them gender neutral, we had to modify our own law on the matter to match Britain's changes.