Opinion: In Canada’s hour of need, how will King Charles step up?

John Fraser is executive chair of the National NewsMedia Council, founding president of the Institute for the Study of the Crown in Canada, and author of The Secret of the Crown and Funeral for the Queen: Ten Days in London.

During the current almighty brouhaha with the United States, concerned Canadians have been wondering about the conspicuous silence of their head of state, King Charles III, who seems to be hiding out behind a wall of silence when we need him most. U.S. President Donald Trump has been saying such ridiculous things about the King’s Canadian realm and has just unleashed punitive tariffs. So Canadians want to know: where the dickens is our head of state, who should be telling the Great Grifter to buzz off and concentrate instead on all the ills which beset his own ridiculously indebted country?

The answer is both straightforward and – at the moment – unsatisfyingly complicated because of the nature of our relationship with the world’s only international monarchy. King Charles is a constitutional monarch who is obliged through our system to be an ornament to our democracy, not a political activist. He’s not elected, and therefore is obliged to take guidance from our elected head of government. On Monday, he did finally meet with our lame-duck Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, at Sandringham Castle in England. Although we don’t yet know the specifics of the talks, it’s not hard to guess at their substance.

Mr. Trump has been going merrily about dismantling not only the checks and balances of his own country’s constitutional guardrails, but also barging his way into the internal affairs of all those countries that once thought they were allies and believed in an ordered world of rules and regulations. The Great Grifter doesn’t believe in rules and regulations. He embraces an alternate universe of dictators ruled by random whims and serviced by sycophantic time servers, a hobbled media and craven billionaires. The grotesque betrayal of Ukraine is only the latest assault to afflict a still-reeling world.

Last week, as King of the United Kingdom via its Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, Charles offered Mr. Trump an “unprecedented” second official head-of-state visit to England. Behind the scenes, according to a knowledgeable source who does not have the authority to speak publicly on the subject, there was some actual advance planning aimed at getting His Majesty to be in the United States for this year’s July 4 Independence Day celebrations. If King Charles’s advisers know what’s good for them and for their boss – both in Britain and in Canada – they will insist not only that he head off to the U.S. after he has first been in his Canadian realm for the July 1 celebration of Confederation, but that he go to the U.S. as King of Canada and also return here, however briefly, directly afterward. It’s a gesture that would make a hugely important and symbolic point that won’t be lost on Mr. Trump, who salivates around royalty.

King George’s revenge: Donald Trump is making America a monarchy again

And that is actually what we should expect of this King, for it is not only our due – it makes a point that the Great Grifter needs to learn, with all his menacing talk of Canada becoming the 51st American state. We are a sovereign nation with a democratic system of government that embraces a constitutional monarchy. That monarchy is now needed to defend our sovereignty.

King Charles has actually been longing to come to Canada for several years and has been repeatedly put off. This was before and after he had to deal with his cancer. Now that he seems to be in remission (although he continues to receive treatment) he has had to deal with a hobbled Canadian government that can’t quite figure out what to advise him, except to insist he stay away thanks to a looming election. The constitutional tradition in this country is to keep the sovereign out of sight while any sort of electoral campaign is going on, but in fact the urgent needs of the moment absolutely trump that tradition.

And he will come to Canada before he goes to the United States, despite the current chaotic conditions, and he will do well by us. That is his constitutional duty and his observable nature.

Here then is one of the great and ironic curiosities of our age: King Charles is a democrat at heart and an outstanding humanitarian, and the Great Grifter is an absolutist and outrageous bully. One understands duty; the other hasn’t the first clue what it means.