RANDALL WHITE, CANADA’S CAPITAL FROM 4 ½ HOURS WEST. TOWN OF EAST TORONTO, ON. SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 2025. So in Ottawa this past Friday, March 14 Mark Carney was sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Canada, along with the other 23 members of his new leaner federal cabinet, at the head of his “new Canadian government.”

Already there is polling evidence that the new Mark Carney Liberals — not quite the same as the old Justin Trudeau Liberals, though there are inevitable common cabinet ministers — just might have a bright new future.

(1) Some polling evidence on Carney

The Carney Liberals could even defeat the sloganeering Pierre Poilievre Conservatives, in the snap federal election that PM Carney is widely expected to call very soon.

(Possibly even before the scheduled return of the Canadian House of Commons on Monday, March 24?)

An EKOS poll taken March 10–13 showed a dramatic 50% popular support for the Liberals under their new leader Mark Carney, elected March 9. Conservatives were at 32%, and New Democrats at a dismal 8%.

Numbers like this could mean something as widely thought crazily impossible only a few months ago as a Liberal majority government, in the coming snap election.

Meanwhile, in Mainstreet polls since late last year Conservatives have fallen from 47% popular support around November 21, 2024 to 39% around March 12, 2025. Between the same two dates New Democrats have even more precipitously fallen from 17% to 8%.

Liberals have risen from 17% to 41%. (At least 2 points ahead of the Conservatives — not as buoyant as the EKOS poll putting them 18 points ahead , but still ahead!)

(2) Swearing allegiance to King Charles III quaintly obsolete at best

As far as the ceremonial swearing-in of Mr. Carney and his cabinet itself goes, I share rhe views of my many fellow supporters of a free and democratic Canadian republic, not too much further down the road.

I find the various oaths of allegiance to King Charles III across the Atlantic Ocean (“the offshore monarch” as the late Toronto city councillor and staunch Canadian republican Tony O’Donohue liked to say) quaintly obsolete at best.

Ultimately the monarchy openly enough in the Constitution Act, 1867 has become a philosophical slight on what the Constitution Act, 1982 calls the “free and democratic society” we enjoy as a practical matter in Canada today.

I should quickly add something else here — especially at this moment in the Trumpian insanity of the US-Canada trade war.

Fully realizing at last the modern Canadian democracy that has been evolving since the 16th and 17th centuries, in a parliamentary democratic Canadian republic of the 21st century, has nothing at all to do with political institutions like those in the United States of America.

(As wonderful as these institutions may still prove to be, in the very end.)

(3) Democratizing the monarchical office of Governor General in a parliamentary republic

Canada’s path to its ultimate modern democratic republican future (predestined most recently in the 1830s and 1840s as well as 1867 and 1982) has already been marked out by such fellow former British dominions as Ireland and India.

For further examples of the genre beyond the old British empire see such present-day parliamentary democratic republics as Iceland or Germany.

These four 21st century countries of the world today — Germany, Iceland, India, and Ireland — broadly present two somewhat different models of, as it were, democratizing the monarchical office of Governor General, under a parliamentary republican constitution.

(In all other respects Canada’s various federal, provincial, and municipal governmental, legal, and political systems would continue to operate as they do now — with their, ahem, usual growing efficiency and effectiveness.)

(4) The monarchy and Donald Trump’s Putinesque rhetoric on Canada

There are those who see Canada’s present so-called “constitutional monarchy” — and even the person of King Charles III across the seas — as some kind of defense against US President Donald Trump’s Putinesque rhetoric on treating Canada like some sort of US 51st state.

To me the deeper historical truth points to almost exactly the opposite argument.

Canada has still not, so to speak, cut the ultimate symbolic apron strings that still attach even politicians like Justin Trudeau to the British monarchy (along with the new PM Carney and his cabinet, who have just been so frequently swearing allegiance to King Charles III).

For better or worse, this is taken as a sign of weakness by political opponents of Canada as a founding member of the United Nations in 1945, like President Donald Trump’s America.

That King Charles III who lives, works, and worships in the United Kingdom, is still somehow Canada’s official “head of state” can suggest to some minds, in other words, that Canada is a place which is used to and even likes being colonized.

As the Trumpian story goes, the great majority of Canadians probably would be happier being colonized by the more up-to-date United States than the old-school United Kingdom.

In fact opinion polls have suggested that no more than 10% of Canadians find Donald Trump II’s new colonialist and imperialist rhetoric about Canada attractive.

A recent Abacus poll on MP oaths of office commissioned by the ginger group Republic Now – République du Canada also suggested that 91% of Canadians today prefer “I promise to conscientiously discharge the duties of my position, serve the interests of my constituents and my nation, and uphold Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

Only 9% want the current oath : “I do swear that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to His Majesty King Charles the Third.”

(5) Mark Carney and the old Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto

Meanwhile, I was at a hockey game last night at the old (but now newly and nicely refurbished) Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

The home team lost (and something a bit foolishly called the Queen’s Cup was at stake). But I met a friend of a friend who described himself as a “Bay Street guy.” He noted as well that he had voted for Conservative Doug Ford in the recent Ontario provincial election.

At the same time, he was finding what former bank governor and new Liberal leader Mark Carney was saying about Canada and its future growth very attractive and persuasive.

I asked him if he’d actually vote Liberal in the much anticipated coming federal election. Without a lot of thought he said he would (while quietly adding that, as a Bay Street guy, “I won’t say too much about it at work”). Far from scientific of course … but it all made me think that not everything in Canada is hopeless right now …